login


Transforming Politics: Brazil's Feminist Schools


What does it take to bring about policies that promote greater gender justice? This is a central question for the Pathways research programme, and one to which Ana Alice Costa of NEIM and Andrea Cornwall will be seeking answers in a study of the Brazilian initiative Mulher e Democracia (Women and Democracy) (www.cmn.mulheredemocracia.org.br), which is working in states across the north east of the country to enhance women’s voice and influence in politics.

It is hard enough for women to be elected or appointed, not least in Brazil where less than 15% of seats in the legislature are occupied by women. Those who survive and thrive are likely to do so because of their connections with powerful men, or because they come to act like the men who surround them. Women who are perceived as ‘feminists’ stand little chance of garnering votes; and if they find their way inside political institutions, they may find themselves isolated, side-lined and ostracised.

Brazil has a vibrant women’s movement, who are not short of ideas for what needs to be done to address the inequalities and violence against women that plagues Brazilian society. But all too often, these good ideas get lost in the political process. Few legislators are willing to back them. And even when they are taken up in public policies, fewer still in the executive have any idea of how to implement them.

According to Cristina Buarque, founder of the initiative and State Secretary for Women’s Policies for the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, the traditional strategy - to get more women to stand for political office and work to get them elected - is only part of the solution. What’s needed, Buarque believes, is a new approach. Recognising that many women lack avenues for political apprenticeship that will enable them to be effective advocates for women’s rights, Mulher e Democracia runs ‘feminist schools’ (escolas feministas). What makes this initiative different is not only what is taught in these schools - sociology, philosophy, political science and economics, as well as the arts of politics - but who they are for.

Breaking with old patterns of class and race privilege, rural workers, domestic workers and leaders of neighbourhood associations join these schools in the barrios where they live and emerge as candidates for political office. But Mulher e Democracia is not just for the women politicians of tomorrow. It is also for those of today. Building on the tradition of cross-party women’s caucuses, Mulher e Democracia runs feminist schools for women who are already in political office. And, according to Beth Severien of Casa da Mulher Nordeste, one of the feminist NGOs that is a key partner in the project - along with the Centro das Mulheres do Cabo, the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation and the Pernambuco Movement of Rural Women’s Workers - what these women are able to do with the new knowledge, networks and alliances they acquire is making a difference.

In the three years since it began, the work of Mulher e Democracia is beginning to show results. Buarque admits that one of the greatest surprises at the outset was how limited a view she and her colleagues had of those women who had become elected representatives. Assuming that they were adjuncts of powerful men in their families, they were forced to re-evaluate their impressions. It became clear that those few women who had made it into political office felt very isolated, not only from each other but from the women’s movement; they felt themselves to be lacking not only skills in the political arena, but the knowledge of issues facing women that would help them frame and claim demands on behalf of other women.

What made a particular impression on Buarque was their thirst for information - and the uses to which they were able to put the resources that Mulher e Democracia provided them with, from data on levels of representation of women across the region to insights from the academy that would have remained otherwise inaccessible. She and her colleagues have seen how many of those who had previously had no commitment to the women’s movement have became ardent feminists in the process. ‘What we tried to do’, she explained, ‘was to break the association that people have with the word “feminism”, to show that it wasn’t about trying to get rid of men but about working for society as a whole’.

Few of the women in politics who have passed through Mulher e Democracia’s feminist schools have remained untouched by the world of possibilities that has opened up for them. Not least has been an end to feeling isolated. New connections have been made between women politicians and the women’s movement. These are finding fruit in the efforts that will begin next year to increase the number of women who put themselves forward for the upcoming municipal elections and in campaigns to get them elected. As graduates of Mulher e Democracia’s feminist schools, they represent a whole new approach to politics. Buarque argues, ‘if we’re really going to have a democracy here, we need a transformatory politics - and we need to think about political action from a different perspective’. With their plans to scale their schools up to the national level, Mulher e Democracia hopes to make that happen.