9.17. Gendered Memory, Gendered Silences

This paper investigates the paradoxical persistence of gender-based violence in Mexico, despite being a country with progressive gender legislation and a powerful feminist movement. Through Inductive Thematic Analysis of qualitative interviews with Mexicans aged 19-30, I interrogate the perceptions of patriarchal social norms among young adults, framing patriarchal social norms as an object of memory, and asking: What social mechanisms prevent the memory and recognition of patriarchal violence to translate into material change? The findings show that participants consistently displaced adherence to patriarchal norms onto ‘other’ communities, generations, or regions, constructing a narrative of a completed generational shift towards egalitarianism, while continuing to reproduce and uphold patriarchal norms. I argue that this constitutes a form of collective forgetting, a mnemonic strategy preventing critical engagement with the foundations of gender-based violence. This is a phenomenon that I have deemed gender-blindness: a discursive commitment to gender equality that simultaneously obscures the ongoing operation of patriarchal structures in daily life. While memorialisation and legislative efforts condemn gender-based violence, the social mechanisms that reproduce the patriarchy remain potent, yet un-remembered and un-acknowledged. These findings reveal that for gender equality to take root, it is necessary to move beyond commemorating violence to critically interrogate the everyday practices that ensure its social reproduction. This case study from Mexico offers crucial insights into the global challenges of resisting anti-gender backlash, with memory serving not just as a record of past violence, but as a tool for disarming its present-day mechanisms.

During the late Qing Dynasty in China, the first cohort of female students traveled to Japan, marking the earliest instance of Chinese women studying abroad. With a desire to elevate the social status of their fellow women, they often engaged in various publishing activities, such as founding magazines that featured numerous translations of foreign works. Some contributors even translated and compiled the knowledge they had acquired while studying in Japan into textbooks for women’s education. Sun Qingru, who studied at Seijo Female School in Tokyo from 1906 to 1907, contributed to The Magazine of the New Chinese Woman, a periodical aimed at cultivating female citizens capable of pursuing diverse professions and participating in politics on equal footing with men. Within a single year, she translated and compiled the content she had studied at Seijo into a ten-volume Female Instructor’s Lecture in March 1908. In August 1909, three volumes of this work passed the textbook review of the Qing Ministry of Education and were directly adopted as official textbooks, while another three were designated as reference books. Despite their significance, these sources have remained largely overlooked in existing scholarship. Through publishing activities and pedagogical practices oriented toward advancing women’s education, Sun Qingru and her peers reshaped gendered knowledge and forged networks and communities among Chinese in Japan that transcended political boundaries, as well as constituted forms of “memory work”: conscious efforts to inscribe women’s voices and experiences into public discourse, thereby shaping collective memory and challenging male-dominated historical narratives. This paper employs historical source analysis, focusing on Sun Qingru’s contributions and publications, exploring how late Qing Chinese women in Japan transformed their personal educational experiences into collective feminist memory, thereby fostering transnational memory communities in East Asia and filling gaps in research on underexplored individuals of Chinese gender history.

Research Question: How do women’s experiences and contributions become remembered—or remain invisible—within the institutional memory of a semi-peripheral European university? In what ways does gender intersect with academic hierarchies, regional identity, and epistemic power to shape who is remembered and who is forgotten? Methodology: The paper draws on the collective research and editorial project Niewidzia(l)ne. Kobiety i historia Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu (The (In)Visible: Women and the History of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), which combines archival research, oral history, and feminist participatory methods. Through archival reading, biographical reconstruction, and narrative analysis, the study explores how women’s intellectual and organizational labor has been documented, silenced, or reinterpreted within postwar and post-socialist academic cultures. An intersectional approach links gender and locality, showing how the peripherality of an Eastern European university produces specific modes of invisibility distinct from global North narratives. Key Findings: Institutional memory in universities often reproduces gendered hierarchies of recognition, presenting neutrality as an erasure of women’s presence. In the case of Nicolaus Copernicus University, women’s academic work—administrative, pedagogical, and intellectual—has been remembered selectively and rarely commemorated publicly. By tracing micro-histories of female scholars and staff, the project reveals how structural and symbolic invisibility persist despite democratization. This paper situates Niewidzia(l)ne within broader debates on intersectionality and academic citizenship, arguing that feminist archival practice can act as a form of epistemic resistance—transforming peripherality into a site of critical remembrance and democratic renewal.

In Portugal, the transition to democracy after decades of authoritarian rule has profoundly shaped both collective memory and individual experience. For older LGBTQ+ people, these societal changes intersect with personal histories marked by repression, invisibility, and social stigma. While much research examines Portugal’s political transition, less attention has been paid to how marginalised bodies carry and transmit memories of authoritarianism and democratic change. Older LGBTQ+ individuals face a dual marginalisation, as sexual minorities and as older citizens, making their perspectives particularly valuable for understanding democratic memory. Current memory studies often prioritise official archives and public commemorations, overlooking embodied and lived experiences that challenge dominant narratives. There is a need to recognise how personal stories and ageing bodies function as “living archives” of repression, resilience, and resistance. This study draws on biographical interviews with older LGBTQ+ people who grew up during the Portuguese dictatorship. Participants were invited to recount their life stories across dictatorship and democratic periods, reflecting on identity, visibility, and social change. Analysis focused on identifying patterns of memory inscription, strategies of resilience, and experiences of marginalisation and recognition. This paper argues that queer ageing bodies operate as repositories of embodied memory, preserving traces of oppression, survival, and social transformation outside official accounts. By situating these experiences within broader democratic narratives, it highlights how marginalised voices can challenge normative temporalities and expand collective memory. The study contributes to debates on memory and democracy by demonstrating the importance of recognising embodied, intimate, and subaltern experiences as essential for more inclusive and plural understandings of democratic history.