2025/07/15 by Haphisa Souza Mugnaini, Inês Salvador · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Cinema and Media Studies #Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies #Media Studies and Communication
paper · pdf · doi:10.3390/journalmedia6030106
openalex publication_date 2025/07/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Brazil and Portugal are undeniably united because they share the same language, ocean, and, to a considerable extent, history. There has also been a profound rapprochement between the two countries at the media level, particularly in telenovelas. Brazil developed the “telenovela” genre in the 1950s and inspired Portuguese serial television fiction the most. First, Portugal saw a commitment to plots of Brazilian origin (1977—“Gabriela, Cravo e Canela”), a reality still observed today, albeit somewhat. Portuguese producers then studied and recruited Brazilian professionals when the first Portuguese narratives were created to absorb their knowledge and expertise. This research aims to measure how many telenovelas have been written by women since their broadcasting in the Portuguese–Brazilian market. This question unfolds into other questions, such as the following: What is the ratio of telenovelas written by men to women from 1951 to March 2025 in Portugal and Brazil? Is there a trend towards equilibrium, an increase or decrease in telenovelas written by men or women in the market being analyzed? To answer these questions, data was collected manually through information repositories such as “Observatório de TV” and “SP Televisão” and by watching generic telenovelas available on YouTube or the broadcasters’ channels. Portuguese and Brazilian television channels with national coverage were considered for this research. The data shows that 926 telenovelas were broadcast in the Portuguese–Brazilian market, of which 27.7 per cent were written by women, 64.1 per cent by men, 7.4 per cent were written in partnership between men and women, and 0.8 per cent have no information available. This study reveals a better balance between the number of male and female authors in Portugal than in Brazil and a downward trend in the number of female telenovela authors in Brazil after the military dictatorship.