This historical-social study aimed to examine the symbolic elements that express the hierarchizing division between the male and female, contained in newspaper reports published about the return home of the nurses who worked in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force's Health Service, and to discuss the symbolic effects these reports produced. The historical sources of the study, consisting of photographic, written and oral documents, were classified and analyzed in the light of Pierre Bourdieu's Social Theory and Michelle Perrot's studies on Women's History. The research revealed that the way the news reports about the arrival of these nurses to Brazil were disseminated represented the reproduction of a symbolic strategy to enforce political and social interests in force, and that contained the ideas about the hierarchizing division of the social world into male and female.
history of nursing; military nursing; world war II
