Engendering Democracy in Brazil

"This is one of the earlier books that really shaped my thinking about the importance of having a dual-pronged strategy to promote women’s empowerment and reduce gender inequalities. It underscores the importance of both working through women’s movements which are outside the state and also encouraging and supporting women to work within the state and within political parties in order to achieve real change for women – and men. What is so fascinating about this book by Sonia Alvarez is that it is an analysis of what happened during one of the most repressive political regimes in Latin America in the 60s, 70s and 80s but a period where you have the paradox of the emergence of a very progressive women’s movement that mobilised tens of thousands of women and really transformed the agenda of all the major political parties. The critical thing was the disappointment that many women felt about the authoritarian regime and its promises of modernisation. Even though the regime had been welcomed by many conservative women in the beginning they soon realised that women’s demands for better social services, such as adequate schools, health centres and transport, were not being met. While there was a lot of lip service given to supporting women in their roles as mothers, in reality they were not given the resources they needed. So one factor was the exposure of the hypocrisies of the military regime. Another key contributor was the political activists who had gone into exile in Europe and who returned in the late 1970s radicalised by having joined women’s movements in Western Europe. These women had a very profound effect on mobilising women to take action against the authoritarian regime. One important example is the women who came back from Italy. They were able to make a convincing that it was possible to have a feminist movement in a predominately Catholic culture, because previously there had been quite a lot of scepticism about the extent to which Western feminism could be translated to and adapted within an environment like Brazil. The women’s movement in Brazil has contributed to the development of much more progressive legislation and policy frameworks on gender equality – eg, around employment rights, domestic violence, childcare. There has also been the development of social policies and programmes that are trying to reach the poorest women. You might have heard about Bolsa Família, which is a very large cash transfer programme that is reaching about 16 million people in Brazil. These transfers are targeted primarily at women out of recognition of the care work responsibilities, towards children, the sick, disabled and elderly, that they have, and evaluations have shown that they have contributed significantly to women’s empowerment within the household. So I think Brazil is a good example of where women have fought successfully to ensure that the state is supporting women in their culturally subscribed roles and responsibilities, even if transformations in gender power relations between men and women has been slower. And at the state level there has been improved representation of women both within political parties and also in governmental structures such as the bureaucracy and legislation."