This article analyzes the debate on women emancipation in Recife, between 1870 and 1920, assuming that the struggles of women, feminist or not, in Pernambuco and other Brazilian states, no longer fit into the narrative that named this moment as "first wave" of the movement. There is an episteme on "the feminine" that put the focus on "women's issues", resignifying what is being a woman, and moving it. This intense debate multiplied the possibilities of the feminine, in a complex and paradoxical movement in order to build collective identity and establish women as subject of rights before a country that changed its form of government, however, remained conservative, oligarchic, and with a narrow conception of democracy and citizenship. Such women - who braved distinctly masculine spaces and questioned truths about their sex, their body and their intelligence, through the written word, by publishing polemical articles, with or without pseudonyms - were essential at introducing a new feminine identity with a modern aspect.
Women; Feminisms; Citizenship; Gender Relations