The Gender Workshop promotes feminist talks with people whose lives and work contribute to women's causes and gender equality in the most diverse fields.

Bio notes

Rita Araújo, geological engineer and pole dance instructor

I'm Rita.

Ever since I was a child, I've heard that there were things that girls couldn't do because it didn't look good or they weren't capable!
It was usually based on three assumptions:

• Girls weren't strong enough
• Girls couldn't be too outgoing because she'd be considered crazy, easy, etc.
• Girls shouldn't have more authority than boys

I was always called a tomboy and although I'm 47 today, this is still true in society.
This upbringing could have greatly affected me, but in fact I opted for a degree in geological engineering, worked as a technical director in a quarry for 16 years, where I was responsible for teams of men.
When I needed to find a sport that I could identify with, Pole Dance was the perfect answer.
Using new perspectives and ways of approaching things, we developed creative tools to tackle problems, whether they be physical, mental, social or emotional.
Girls have strength, girls have the power of choice and girls can be extroverted.
Women can be whatever they want.

Catarina Martins | Associate Professor with Aggregation title of German Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Research Fellow of the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. She was lecturer for Portuguese, for several years, at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. She holds a Ph. D. in German Literature from the University of Coimbra (2008). Her current research interests include comparative literature, theories of culture, post colonialism and feminism. She also studies african lusophone, francophone and anglophone literatures, in particular by women writers, concentrating on feminist questions, on the one hand, and on the representation of childhood, on the other. She has published several articles in all these research fields. She teaches in PhD programmes in Feminist Studies, Discourses: History, culture and society and Literary and Cultural Studies.


Activity under the Doctoral Programme in Feminist Studies (FLUC/CES)