Sobre o que falamos quando falamos em gênero na ciência da informação?

Abstract

Overview: Nowadays, various scientific fields conduct research on gender. This study investigates under what perspectives this domain is addressed by Library and Information Science (LIS.) Purpose: The aim is to identify how the field appropriates and/or contributes to gender studies; understanting gender as a representative term related to social roles and expectations of behavior attributed to people according to their sex. Method: Keywords from the International Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database were analyzed, given its tradition and importance in the LIS field. A total of 588 articles were retrieved between the period of 1980 and 2016. Given the large volume of keywords retrieved, cloud tags were generated and analyzed in order to identify the most used terms per decade. Key findings: The results indicate that gender was addressed by LIS from different perspectives over the years, but generally maintained the main focus on issues related to women’s studies and gender differences. In addition, it is observed that Gender is studied in LIS within traditional topics of the area, such as Information Retrieval and Scientific Communication. Conclusion: The increase in the number of articles published since the 1980s indicates that gender research in LIS is in significant expansion. This study opens new possibilities for research and analysis on how LIS addresses gender in its scientific discoveries.