INTRODUCTION:
Brazilian public universities are shaped by gender, race, and class inequalities that affect women’s health and permanence. In this context, women’s collectives emerge as spaces of care, resistance, and social participation. This study mapped and characterized such collectives in Brazilian federal universities, analyzing their distribution, organization, agendas, and motivations for emergence.

METHODS:
This exploratory study, conducted between September 2021 and June 2022, combined a literature review with a mixed quantitative–qualitative approach and thematic analysis. The research included identifying Brazilian federal universities and mapping women’s collectives using institutional websites, media reports, and social networks, guided by feminist studies in dialogue with decolonial epistemologies.

RESULTS:
Sixty-three women’s collectives were identified in 43 of the 69 Brazilian federal universities, with unequal regional distribution and greater concentration in the Southeast and South regions.⁶ Regarding their emergence, 19% were created in response to the lack of collective representation, and 17.5% following experiences of violence within the university.⁷ The collectives are characterized by self-management, predominantly horizontal organization, and intermittent mobilization triggered by institutional events.⁸ Dissemination occurs mainly through social media, while institutional recognition on official university websites remains uncommon. Recurrent agendas include empowerment, violence, intersectionality, sexuality, gender, work, and rights.⁹ As a technical-political outcome, the website Trama Delas was developed as an open cartography that systematizes information on mapped collectives and enables the continuous inclusion of new groups.¹⁰

CONCLUSIONS:
Women’s collectives in brazilian federal universities constitute relevant spaces of resistance to coloniality and health production by expanding representation, making inequalities visible, and sustaining collective practices of care and social participation.¹,² This national mapping contributes to strengthening debates on institutional policies attentive to inequalities in public health.