Martha Teresita de Barbieri García was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. While her parents and siblings lived in Colonia, she lived at her grandmother's house in the capital between the ages of two and six because of her health problems with tuberculosis. At the age of six, she returned with her parents to Colonia where she completed her elementary school studies. She began her university education at the University of the Republic (UDELAR). Her first studies were in Law and Art History.[1] At the age of 21, she entered the School of Social Work from which she graduated as a Social Worker. She also began to be politically active in socialism. She traveled several times to Cuba, in 1959, during the Cuban Revolution.
She came to sociology through a seminar in the Faculty of Humanities on sociological research. In 1968, she moved to Santiago de Chile to begin a Master's in Sociology at FLACSO. In 1972, she published her master's thesis entitled: El acceso de la mujer a las carreras y ocupaciones tecnológicas de nivel medio (Santiago de Chile, 1972).[2]
Career and research
Among her first research work on women was a UNESCO project in Chile to evaluate a secondary education program for women: she chose schools for girls in Valparaíso, Talca, and Valdivia. Then she discovered – Barbieri explained in an interview at CIMAC – that there was almost no bibliography "that had to do with women or the female sex"; she reflected on the fact that women had to assume all the work of domestic burden, child care, and so forth.[2] She resided in Chile during the government of Salvador Allende and, after the coup d'état, she went to Buenos Aires,[2] and a month later, she traveled with her family to Mexico, where she settled in 1973.[1]
After being a research assistant in the Social Development Division of ECLAC, she began working with Raúl Benítez Zenteno at UNAM's Institute of Social Research in the areas of Sociology of Population and Demography. She was a professor at UNAM for more than 33 years. In addition to ECLAC, she was a consultant for other international organizations such as the ILO and UNICEF.[5]
Research on the gender category
Barbieri's research includes theoretical and methodological questions on gender, in which she analyzed and systematized knowledge on social differentiation based on the social constructions that organize and determine human beings as sexed beings.[4]
"... los sistemas de sexo y género son los conjuntos de prácticas, símbolos, representaciones, normas y valores sociales que las sociedades elaboran a partir de la diferencia sexual anátomo-fisiológica y que dan sentido a la satisfacción de los impulsos sexuales, a la reproducción de las especie humana y en general al relacionamiento entre las personas... son, por lo tanto, el objeto de estudio más amplio para comprender y explicar el par subordinación femenina-dominación masculine."
" ... the systems of sex and gender are the sets of practices, symbols, representations, norms and social values that societies elaborate on the basis of the anatomical-physiological sexual difference and that give meaning to the satisfaction of sexual impulses, to the reproduction of the human species and in general to the relationship between people... they are, therefore, the broadest object of study to understand and explain the pair female subordination-male domination."
Barbieri's commitment to study these systems of social action and the meaning of action in relation to sexuality and reproduction was of a category, she said, that leaves open the possibility of the existence of different forms of relationship between women and men, between the feminine and the masculine. She also pointed out that gender problems are present in all of society and that, therefore, it is the responsibility of men and women deputies to introduce gender problems in all issues and in all areas of the Chamber of Deputies. She recommended to the legislators "not to make the language of gender vindication a heavy language that, after using it so much, repeating it and always being with the same thing, becomes boring, tiresome and generates rejection". In her document entitled Relaciones de Género en el Trabajo Parlamentario, she stated it was necessary to use imagination, to consult a thesaurus, to try to lighten and change the language.[4]
Barbieri's research covered a variety of areas, including peasant and working women, domestic work and daily life, population policies, reproductive and health rights, gender, spheres and spheres of action. Her most recent work focused on women's participation in the state sphere.[1]
2012. Honored by UNAM's Institute of Social Researchfor "sowing the foundations of gender studies in Mexico" in the framework of International Women's Day.[7]
Recognition by FLACSO in Chile as an "illustrious personage".[2]
Selected works
Books
El acceso de las mujeres a las carreras y ocupaciones tecnológicas de nivel medio. Santiago, ELAS-Unesco. (1972)
Las unidades agrícolas industriales para la mujer campesina en México Geneva, International Labor Organization (1983).
"La mujer obrera chilena: una aproximación a su studio". With Lucía Ribeiro, Cuadernos de la realidad nacional, 16, (1973), pp. 167-201.
"El trabajo doméstico entre obreras y esposas de obreros". México, UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Mimeo, (1980).
"Políticas de población y la mujer: antecedentes para su estudio", Revista mexicana de sociología, vol. 45, (1983), no. 1, pp. 293-308.
"Las mujeres, menos madres: control de la natalidad: ¿control de la mujer?", Nueva Sociedad, 75, (1985), pp. 105-113.
"Sobre la categoría de género: una introducción teórico-metodológica", Debates en Sociología, 18, (1993), pp. 145-169.
"Geschlechterverhältnis zwischen Modernisierung und Krise", with Marianne Braig, Mexiko heute. Frankfurt, Vervuert, (1996), pp. 388-408.
"Los ámbitos de acción de las mujeres", Narda Henríquez (ed.). Encrucijadas del saber: los estudios de género en las ciencias sociales. Lima, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, (1996), pp. 107-132.
"Los ámbitos de acción de las mujeres", Marianne Braig, Ursula Ferdinand, Martha Zapata (eds.). Begegnungen und Einmischungen: Festschrift für Renate Rott zum 60. Geburstag. Stuttgart, Heinz, (1997), pp. 213-233.
"Cambio sociodemográfico, políticas de población y derechos reproductivos en México", Adriana Ortiz-Ortega (comp.). Derechos reproductivos de las mujeres: un debate sobre justicia social en México. México, Edamex, (1999), pp. 101-145.
"Una mirada desde el género a las comisiones legislativas", Revista Cimacnoticias, 9, no. 29 (2003)
"Más de tres décadas de los estudios de género en América Latina", Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 66. (October, 2004): pp. 197-214
"Público, doméstico y privado en la Cámara de Diputados.", Imágenes de la familia en el cambio de siglo: universo familiar y procesos demográficos contemporáneos, coordinated by Marina Ariza & Orlandina de Oliveira. México: UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, 2004.
^"Teresita de Barbieri". flacsochile.org (in Spanish). 3 May 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-05-03. Retrieved 21 April 2023 – via web.archive.org.