Women now represent 35.5% of Brazil’s docu- mented labor force-up from 20.8% in
1970-the largest proportion of employed women
in Latin America. Women continue to enter the
formal economy at a more accelerated rate than
men, and their participation in industry has tripled
since 1970.1 But formal employment has not
improved women’s conditions. Women’s jobs tend
to be badly paid and menial. Women are also dis-
proportionately represented among part-time and
temporary workers. The limited formal-employ- ment options along with persistent cultural biases
against women working outside the home, the
lack of daycare, and the short school day have
resulted in the great majority of Brazilian women
working in the informal sector. With the introduc-
tion of new decentralized industrial processes in
the textile and electronics industries, many urban
women are subcontracted as homeworkers with
no labor benefits at all. These changes have also
tended to reinforce the sexual division of labor in
those industries, weakening women’s claims to
equal wages. Brazilian women consistently earn less than
their male peers. In SAo Paulo, Latin America’s
most advanced industrial metropolis, gaps in earn-
ings between equally qualified men and women
at all income levels are greater than anywhere
else in the Americas. In 1985, for example, the
average male income was at least double the
average female income at the same level of edu-
cation. The differences were greatest at the high-
est education levels. 2
In a nation with an income gap separating the
rich and poor second in the world only to Uganda,
economic crisis and migration have contributed to
increasing numbers of female heads of household
whose families suffer acute poverty. African
Brazilian mothers are hardest hit: they make do
with one-third the income of households headed
by women of primarily European descent. 3 Over
the past few decades, women’s overall status has
improved, but white women have disproportion-
ately benefited. Women in the urban labor force
in 1960, for example, mainly had unskilled manual
and domestic service jobs; 88% of African Brazil-
ian working women were in this category, com- pared to 52% of white women. By 1980, 37% of
white women remained in these lower-paying
occupations, compared with 66% of African
Brazilian women. 4
Given their exploited status, women’s participa-
tion in the labor movement has grown at an even
greater rate than their entry into the workforce,
and they are beginning to rise within the ranks. A
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON BRAZIL
1988 survey of 5,500 urban and rural trade
unions found that 8.4% of union leaders
were women, the majority of them urban.
Three of Brazil’s most important union fed-
erations, the Unified Workers Central
(CUT), the Confederation of Agricultural
Workers (CONTAG) and For;a Sindical, have
established women’s departments to pro-
mote their equality with men, and the for-
mer two run national training programs for
women leaders. The CUT voted in 1992 to
mandate that 30% of all leadership posts
be filled by women. It has yet to attain that
goal, though, as the policy is still controver-
sial within the labor federation’s ranks. 5
Inspired by the UN Women’s Decade
beginning in 1975, and the return of exiled
Brazilian women from Europe and North
America who had participated in the femi-
nist movement; the Brazilian women’s Femalej
movement asserted its political presence by the
early 1980s. The young movement denounced sex-
ual inequality, particularly the clauses in civil law
treating women as subordinate to their husbands
and considering domestic violence to be a private
issue. The Brazilian women’s movement is now
considered the largest and strongest in Latin Amer- ica. Feminists mobilize women nationally and
engage in policy negotiations on violence against women, working conditions and labor rights, day- care, health and reproductive rights, housing, and the environment.
As a result of intensive organized feminist lobby- ing, Brazil’s 1988 Constitution reflects women’s demands for official mechanisms to combat vio- lence in the home, female rural workers’ rights to welfare benefits, employees’ rights to employer-
provided daycare facilities, four-month maternity
leave and five-day paternity leave, equal pay for
equal work, social security for domestic workers, family planning as a constitutional right, and land
rights for women, irrespective of their marital sta-
tus. 6 The gains remain largely symbolic, however, due to lawmakers’ failure to establish legal- enforcement mechanisms. 7
There are points of contention among the many currents within the Brazilian women’s movement.
Women from popular sectors may primarily-at
least initially-struggle to improve conditions in
their communities, while middle-class feminists may
think more in terms of transforming women’s status. Even within the middle-class feminist movement, there are differences of emphasis, such as valuing
women’s unique critique of mainstream develop- ment policies over promoting equal rights. The sec-
police officers are given flowers on International Women’s Day
tor of the women’s movement that has prioritized
policy reform, at times negotiated from within the
ranks of public service, has met with objections from those in the movement still faithful to its founding
principle of autonomy from government. But informing and mobilizing women to defend their rights is a common aim of all women’s groups. Toward that end, their national and inter- national networking capacity has taken women to the cutting edge of Brazil’s social movements. The National Feminist Network on Health and Repro- ductive Rights, composed of 41 organizations, was founded in 1991; a National Network on Violence Against Women was founded in 1992; and the National Forum of Presidents of the Women’s Rights Councils has been the voice of the official women’s rights agencies since 1992. These nation- al networks coordinate policy strategies, and pro- vide technical or training assistance to women’s groups throughout the country. The Brazilian women’s movement has also begun to develop
international legal strategies to defend women’s rights. Ever since their successful mobilization around the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, women from all regions and sectors of Brazil have become a powerful lobbying force at inter- national UN conferences. Citizenship rights won by Brazil’s social move- ments through many years of strategic organizing and political struggle now must be legally enforced. For democracy to have meaning, all Brazilians- men and women-must know and defend their rights in their everyday lives and hold the govern-
ment accountable for applying the law equitably.
Women Organize
Rebecca Reichmann thanks Candida Blaker for her collaboration on
this article.
1. See Candida Blaker and Rebecca Reichmann, Oxfam U.K Gen-
der Evaluation: 1990-1993 (Recife, Brazil: Oxfam, U.K.) 1994.
2. I. Arriaguda, “Latin American Women and the Crisis,” Women
Organizing for Change (Santiago: ISIS International/DAWN),
1988. See also Peggy Lovell, “Race, Gender, and Development
in Brazil,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 29, No. 3
(1994), pp. 7-35.
3. 37% of all black women and 12% of white women are the
main providers of their family’s income. See IBASE, Negros no
Brasil: Dados da Realidade (Petropolis: Vozes, 1989).
4. See Peggy A. Lovell, “Race, Gender, and Development in
Brazil,” p. 22.
5. Some unionists still hold to the position that women’s concerns
are divisive. Marta Vanelli, a member of the Executive Board of
the CUT in the state of Santa Catarina, observed that feminists
“may be working-class women, but they are part of the domi-
nant classes’ institutions. They are used by the dominant classes
to produce the type of [unequal] society that we have today.”
[Interview with author in Florianopolis, November, 1992] See
also Sonia Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s
Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992), p. 107.
6. As a concession for the gains, the women’s movement backed
away from efforts to decriminalize abortion. The 1988 Constitu-
tion included neither a liberalized abortion law nor a fetal-pro-
tection clause (which the Church had promoted).
7. A few municipal governments have respected the spirit of many
of the gains. A 1993 survey carried out by the Brazilian Institute
of Municipal Administration (IBAM) identified 27 towns (among
the 551 studied) that administer programs to promote women’s
rights, including legal, educational and psychological services,
special police stations for women (DEAMS), and shelters for vic-
tims of violence.
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