Analysis of the representation of women work at the Tauá city fair of entrepeneur women

Abstract

This article’s object of study is the representation of women based on the discursive practice of the event “Feira da Mulher Empreendedora de Tauá” – FeMET (Tauá City Fair of Entrepeneur Women). Our theoretical framework is based on Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics and The Grammar of Visual Design. The general objective of the research is to understand how the visual representations of women emerge in the posters of the fair. Furthermore, this study also seeks to understand the role of semiosises in sociocultural contexts and their ability to shape meanings and influence gender norms. Our corpus of analysis consists of 13 posters promoting FeMET, published on the official page of the Municipality of Tauá, in Sertão dos Inhamuns, Ceará. However, for the purposes of a detailed analysis, we have chosen to work with a limited selection, focusing on the first poster of this set, which was the poster used to publicize the first edition of the fair. The posters are multimodal pieces that combine visual and verbal elements to convey information about the event and create a visual narrative. The results point to evidence of work precarization, values of hegemonic domination, asymmetrical power relations and perpetuation of gender stereotypes.