Resumo

The Brazilian university context of parties and sport competitions, where alcoholic drinks are present, is an environment that contributes to the young women's being seen as objects.

Understand in what way violent situations against women in the Brazilian university context demonstrate the different facets of objectification and commodification.

The act of transforming a human being into an object for the satisfaction of somebody else’s desire is called objectification (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Beyond being treated as an object a woman may be transformed into a commodity (Hartsock, 2004), that is to say, into something which possesses value when used (material goods useful to human beings), sold or exchanged (which makes it alienable or exchangeable for other commodities) and of low differentiation (Marx, 1936; Belk et al., 1989; Kopytoff, 1986).

In our study we used 20 in-depth interviews (of the one-to-one type) and documentary analysis as our principle source for the collection of data, the interviews being undertaken in two phases, held in the years 2017 and 2018, the documentary analysis also being undertaken during those two years.

To deal with the data collected, the 27-plus hours of interviews, totalling 378 pages with single spacing and Times New Roman size 12 type, were transcribed. There was, therefore, careful control of the data-collection, their coding, classification and analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The transcriptions were transferred to Atlas TI software, appropriate for the qualitative analysis (Friese, 2014), and the coding was undertaken line-by-line to identify the principal concepts or codes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

As our principal results we emphasize the woman’s ample objectification and commodification in the university context and their negative consequences, such as self-objectification in its personal and professional aspects demonstrated by reports of uncertainty regarding their bodies, in exercising the activities of leadership and their choice of profession (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Gray et al., 2011).

Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women's lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of women quarterly, 21(2), 173-206. Hirschman, E. C., & Hill, R. P. (1999). On human commoditization: A model based upon African- American slavery. ACR North American Advances. Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective, edit by Arjun Appadurai, 64-92. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.