Women's societal roles in Brazil have been heavily impacted by the patriarchal traditions of Iberian culture, which holds women subordinate to men in familial and community relationships. The Iberian Peninsula, which is made up of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, has traditionally been the cultural and military frontier between Christianity and Islam, developing a strong tradition for military conquest and male dominance. Patriarchal traditions were readily transferred from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America through the encomienda system that fostered economic dependence among women and indigenous peoples in Brazil. As the largest Roman Catholic nation in the world, religion has also had a significant impact on the perception of women in Brazil, though over the past century the Brazilian government has increasingly broken with the Catholic Church in regard to issues related to reproductive rights.
Brazil is considered to possess the most organized and effective women's movement in Latin America, with visible gains having been made over the past century to promote and protect the legal and political rights of women. Despite the gains made in women's rights over the past century, women in Brazil still face significant gender inequality, which is most pronounced in the rural areas of Northeastern Brazil.Caipora (Organization). Women in Brazil. London: Latin American Bureau, 1993. Consideration of reports submitted by states parties under article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: combined initial, second, third, fourth and fifth periodic reports of states parties : Brazil. New York: United Nations, 2002 In 2010, the United Nations ranked Brazil 73rd out of 169 nations based on the Gender Inequality Index, which measure women's disadvantages in the areas of reproductive rights, empowerment and labour force participation.
Women's movements in Brazil have traditionally been led and supported by upper middle class women, and tend to be reformist rather than revolutionary in nature, though clear exceptions exist, most notably with regard to agrarian land reform movements. Though suffrage was granted to women in Brazil in the 1930s, it was not until the 1970s and onwards that a broader, more potent women's movement took hold in Brazil. In 1979, the year of its publishing, Brazil signed and ratified CEDAW, a convention by the United Nations that aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women. Women in Brazil enjoy the same legal rights and duties as men, which is clearly expressed in the 5th article of Brazil's 1988 Constitution.
The World Economic Forum released a study indicating that Brazil had virtually eradicated gender differences in education and health treatment, but that women lagged behind in salaries and political influence. According to the Labor and Employment Ministry, women were paid 30 percent less than men. In 2005, UN Special Rapporteur Despouy noted a strikingly low level of women's representation in the judicial system, where women occupied "only 5 percent of the top posts in the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office."Report on Human Rights Practices 2006: Brazil. United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (March 6, 2007). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Many women have been elected mayors and many women have been federal judges. The first female assumed office in the Senate in 1979. Women became candidates for president for the first time in 1989. As of 2009, 9% of the seats in the national parliament were held by women.
Suffrage movement
Women in Brazil were granted the right to vote in 1932. Though a feminist movement had existed in Brazil since the mid-nineteenth century and women did petition for suffrage to be included in the 1891 Republican Constitution, the drive towards enfranchisement only began in earnest under the leadership of feminist, biologist and lawyer, Bertha Lutz. Following the publication of an article in leading Brazilian newspaper Revista da Semana, which called upon women to prove their worthiness to men through their achievements and organize in order to demand the right to vote, various women's organizations appeared.
Lutz founded her own organization in conjunction with American suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt in 1922, the Brazilian Federation for the Advancement of Women, which would become the leading suffrage organization of Brazil and was affiliated with the International Women's Suffrage Alliance. Brazilian suffragettes were literate, professional women who made up only a small percentage of the female population in Brazil, the latter which remained largely illiterate. Hence, the campaign for suffrage was by no means a mass movement, and was decidedly moderate in nature. The conservative character of the suffrage movement provoked little resistance from government, and suffrage was declared by Getúlio Vargas in 1932 and later confirmed in the 1934 Constitution.
Two years after women's suffrage was declared in the 5th Constitution of Brazil, two women were elected to Congress, ten females were elected mayors and assemblywomen, and thirty women were made councilwomen in Brazil. Though government jobs had been available to women in the past, women had not held electoral positions until after suffrage was won and the number of women in government continued to grow throughout the twentieth century.
Constitutional rights
5th Constitution of 1934 Appointed by the Provisional Government in 1933 to draft the first page of the new Constitution, Bertha Lutz included various provisions to promote equal rights between men and women. Not only were women granted the equal right to hold government office and earn equal pay for equal work, but also were given preference over men in all government jobs dealing with the home, motherhood, children, and working conditions for women. The preferential treatment afforded to women in regard to certain government positions was controversial at the time.
Citizens' Constitution of 1988 The Citizens' Constitution declared women equal to men in all legal respects, explicitly stating in Article 5 of Title II that "men and women have equal rights and duties under the terms of this Constitution." The National Council on Women's Rights, formed in 1975, advocated successfully on behalf of including gender conscious legislation in the new constitution.Deere, Carmen Diana. Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. At the suggestion of the Council, a clause was added to the document announcing that land distributed by agrarian reform could be assigned and titled "in the name of the man, woman, or both, independent of civil status."
This was the first time in Brazilian history that women could legally be named beneficiaries of agrarian reform measures. The 1988 constitution also declared for the first time that urban and rural women and men had the same rights to social security benefits.Dore, Elizabeth. Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997. Despite the declaration of such rights, as of 2000, institutions had not been established to enable or enforce gender equality in land reform. Furthermore, the Constitution promised "....protection of the labour market for women through specific incentives, as provided by law", and established a minimum required maternity leave of one hundred and twenty days and the introduction of paternity leave.
Economic rights Export agriculture and largely feminized labor forces in Latin America has expanded significantly in the last three decades. Research has illustrated how farms in northeast Brazil purposefully construct gendered divisions of labor and how women often experience worse pay and conditions than men.
According to The World Bank, 42% of people employed in the non-agricultural sector were women.
The law provides 120 days of paid maternity leave to women and seven days to men. The law also prohibits employers from requiring applicants or employees to take pregnancy tests or present sterilization certificates, but some employers sought sterilization certificates from female job applicants or tried to avoid hiring women of childbearing age. Violations of the law are punishable by jail terms for employers of up to two years, while the company may be fined 10 times the salary of its highest-paid employee.
Sexual harassment is a criminal offense, punishable by up to two years in jail. The law encompasses sexual advances in the workplace or in educational institutions and between service providers or clients. In the workplace it applies only in hierarchical situations, where the harasser is of higher rank or position than the victim. Although the legislation exists and was enforced, accusations remained rare, and the extent of the problem was not documented.
Property rights Though women possess significant property rights under the current Brazilian Constitution, de facto inheritance and land reform regimes undermine women's ability to acquire and retain property in Brazil. Under the Civil Code of Brazil, married women could not lawfully acquire or possess their own property until 1962.Crake, Nikki, and Maxine Molyneux. Gender and the Politics of Rights and Democracy in Latin America. New York: Palgrave, 2002. The inheritance law differs based on matrimonial regimes, of which there are four: Partial Property Ruling (Comunhão Parcial), Community Property Ruling (Comunhão de Bens), Separate Property Ruling (Separação de Bens), Final Partition of Acquisitions (Participação Final dos Aquestos).