Analysis of Two Thesauri Specializing in Women's and Gender Studies

In developing and using knowledge organization systems (KOSs), it is important not to perpetuate historically privileged views that reproduce a representation and organization guided by a dominant logic. This study aimed to analyze terms in two thesauri specializing in women's and gender studies used to represent the content of articles with the topics of women and gender. The research has a qualitative nature and used a descriptive methodological approach and bibliographic research procedures. It analyzed keywords from scientific articles of the Revista de Estudos Feministas-REF (Journal of Feminist Studies) and the corresponding terms in two thesauri: Tesauropara estudosdeg & ecirc;nero esobre mulheres (Thesaurus for studies on gender and women) and the Tesauro deg & eacute;nero: lenguaje con equidad (Gender thesaurus: language with equity). The methodological approach is descriptive using bibliographical research procedures. The keywords analyzed were taken from scientific articles published in the 'Articles' section of the three volumes of the REF for the year 2022, available online. The limitation of the analysis period (2022) is justified as a sampling of keywords used to represent current themes on gender and women. Regarding the number of terms per article (one to three), the rationale was that they needed to have literary and usage warrants; moreover, limiting the terms allowed for adequate time quality for analysis and focusing on qualitative aspects through sample analysis. Significant incompatibilities were found between the keywords and the terms in the analyzed thesauri. It was concluded that for the representation and organization of knowledge to be relevant and legitimate, they must be aligned with the economic, political, and social context in which they are inserted. Thesauri, like all KOSs (systems of concepts), need their terms and semantic relationships to be continuously discussed and negotiated as a developmental step, in a spiral-like fashion. If updating is fundamental, the adoption of KOSs in scientific journals is also highly recommended for quality in the process of representation and retrieval of the scientific knowledge produced.