“Como si fueran varones”: gender discourse and performance in public spaces as a generational conflict

Abstract

Gender performances are the dramaturgical expression of gender identities; they are actions that show for “others” the adjustment or deviation of what it means to be men, women, trans. The work focuses on social conflicts - minimal, opaque - that are identified through the “speech analysis” (Canales, 2013) of a fragment of a discussion group carried out within the research “Youth, Cities and Generations” (CSIC; 2014-2019). The analysis reveals possible repertoires of action according to what is identified as the gender of the people who perform them, indicating tensions and disputes between generations of women (born between 1990-2000 and born before 1960). Discourses that indicate what should be done, how, when, where, who and with whom in public spaces, are different between generations of women (born between 1990 and 2000 and born before 1960), evidencing different gender dictations, tensions, and conflicts. What is in dispute - how women should behave in the urban public space - manifests the power struggle over gender ideologies, which confronts generations (older women and young women) in Uruguay.