‘Boys wear blue and girls wear pink’: Critical Discourse Analysis on ‘gender ideology’ in the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights

Abstract

This article investigates what was the main ideology guiding the public policies of the Ministry of Women,  Family and Human Rights (MMFDH) in the Jair Bolsonaro  administration (2019-2022). In his inauguration speech,  Bolsonaro stated that one of his government’s objectives  would be to combat ‘gender ideology’ and defend ‘true  human rights’. Thus, this research starts from the  perspective that there is a dispute in Brazil around the  notion of human rights, and the use of the phrase ‘gender  ideology’ is a key element to understand how this dispute  occurs in the political scenario, especially with regard to  creating moral panic regarding LGBTIQIA+ people. With  the aim of understanding the guiding ideology of public  policies developed by the MMFDH, a state sector where  this dispute seemed to be a central element, Critical   Discourse Analysis was used as an analytical methodology. To compose the research corpus, the speeches of the main representatives of the MMFDH, Damares Alves and Angela  Gandra, were analyzed from January 2, 2019 to March 31,  2022. We concluded that, in the period analyzed, the  MMFDH was a promoter of ‘gender ideology’.