Practices and representations of gender: Autochthone women in the Portuguese State of India, 1500s–1600s

Abstract

Interactions between Europeans and the societies and cultures of contact during the early modern process of empire-building depended on the agency of women. This seems particularly apparent in the Portuguese case. Even if many of these interactions were imposed, women were crucial elements in the dynamics and outcomes of European colonization. This affected Portuguese and autochthone women alike, even if on different scales and levels. This article focuses on the latter. Between resistance, conflict, cheating, defection, intermingling and assimilation, those women performed as intermediaries between different worlds. Their presence and agency were vital to economic flows, as they were essential in negotiation processes. They were influential in social organization, through their role in the family, and in the reconfiguration of colonial settings. The concept of intersectionality underlines this analysis by describing the ways by which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity and other forms of discrimination intersected to create unique historical dynamics.