
Institutional gender and sexuality policy in Brazilian federal universities
Nuances: Estudos sobre Educação, Presidente Prudente, v. 36, n. 00, e025002, 2025. e-ISSN: 2236-0441
DOI: 10.32930/nuances.v36i00.10848 14
guidance for postgraduate courses. Law 12,711/2012
16
, which provides for admission to federal
universities, established the reservation of places for black, mixed-race, indigenous people, and
people with disabilities in undergraduate courses. In the scope of postgraduate studies, the MEC
issued Ordinance no. 13/2016 to induce the reservation of vacancies. However, this instrument
was revoked during the Bolsonaro government by Ordinance no. 545/2020 of the MEC, which,
after the negative reaction, also revoked it, making the 2016 document valid again. However,
on August 9, 2023, the Chamber of Deputies approved PL n. 5,384/2020, which amends Law
no. 12,711/2012 in order to make the reservation of places for postgraduate courses mandatory.
This project, which extended the reservation of vacancies to quilombola people, was approved
by the Federal Senate and sanctioned by the Presidency of the Republic in the form of Ordinary
Law no. 14,723 on November 13, 2023.
The establishment of vacancies beyond the identities established by law demonstrated
progress considering the absence of an explicit legal obligation to develop these policies aimed
at transvestites, transsexuals, non-binary people, and people with other gender identities.
Although necessary, they turned out to be very few compared to the total number of federal
universities. A survey carried out by Folha de São Paulo in 2019 identified quotas for
transgender people in 12
17
of the 63 existing universities (Watanabe, 2019). Since then, the
creation of at least
18
eight more policies with reserved places have been identified by the
following universities: FURG, UFG, UFJF, UFMA, UFPE, UFSJ, UNIFAP and UNIFESP.
Among the instruments analyzed, it was found that, in most policies, transvestites,
transsexuals, and transgender people compete with other minorities, such as black people,
indigenous people, etc., with only five universities offering exclusive vacancies for these
identities. In all cases, these policies were aimed at transvestites and transsexuals, while some
did not mention the transgender category. This fact raises doubts regarding the recipients of a
given policy and may even be intentional, given the aspects of each identity, whereby
transvestites and transsexuals are the most socially marginalized (Benevides, 2023).
However, two universities mentioned identities other than transvestites, transsexuals,
and transgender, UFABC and UFMA. The first, although it did not mention transvestite identity
16
The Law No. 13,409/2016 changed art. 3rd of Law no. 12,711/2012, now also considering people with
disabilities.
17
The policies of UNB, UFPR, UFSB, UFF, UFSC, UFRPE and UFRJ listed by the author were not considered
in this research.
18
The research did not consider vacancy reserves created through notices, nor did it include the instruments found
on the websites of federal universities as a research limitation.