WOMEN’S INVISIBILITY – A LONG NARRATIVE

Abstract

The idea of a social and political absence of women in History comes from afar. However, this absence is, in fact, an ideological construction, due to the invisibility imposed on women, which has relegated them to a passive role in symbolic areas spanning from economy to the very body of discourse. In a continuously changing world, one might argue that women have now achieved a meaningful presence in all social, economic, artistic and scientific areas. And yet, a question remains to be answered: does the public visibility of women nowadays actually find a correspondence in the scientific, and academic fields? Furthermore, what is their actual impact in these fields? In Academia, Feminist, Women and Gender Studies have been making a major contribution in exposing and scrutinizing that invisibility in all areas of knowledge – Archeology being no exception. In the case of Portugal, starting in the years immediately following the Revolution of 1974, women have been increasingly taking part in all fields of research Archeology being one of the most important and intellectually challenging one. Hence the urgency of reflecting on how historical restrictions framing women’s work in Archeology have been fought and overcome. In the dawn of this new millennium and this era of globalization, it is crucial to understand these efforts in light of the collective of women archeologists.