WUNRN
Brazil - New President's First Steps Create
Optimism in Women's Movement
By Mario Osava
RIO DE
JANEIRO, Jan 12, 2011 (IPS) - The initial steps taken by Brazil's first woman
president, Dilma Rousseff, have confirmed that a stronger female presence will
indeed be a hallmark of her administration.
After taking
office on Jan. 1 and naming nine female ministers, a record in
To achieve
that, a gender focus will have to be adopted, because extreme poverty is
largely a phenomenon with a female face, which withstood the successful
policies against poverty and inequality implemented by her predecessor and
former boss Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The poorest
families are made up of "women on their own with children under 10,"
said Hildete Pereira, an economy professor at the
That is due
to a number of factors, such as the fact that women earn less than men for the
same work, own less property, and tend to inherit less. They also generally
assume responsibility for their children when they separate or get divorced,
With less
income, more responsibilities and extra obstacles to finding work, single
mothers often quickly fall into abject poverty.
The Extreme
Poverty Eradication Programme announced by the new administration, to be
launched in March, will require that the women beneficiaries of the programme
receive skills training, and will offer broad child care coverage,
Unless the
conditions are created to give poor women better opportunities in the labour
market and enable them to earn higher incomes, it will be very difficult to
eliminate extreme poverty, experts say.
The number
of people living in extreme poverty in this country of 191 million dropped from
32.4 million to 15.8 million between 1993 and 2008. But if only female-headed
households are taken into account, just 300,000 of the 5.5 million people in
that category in 1993 were pulled out of extreme poverty by 2008, according to
official data cited by the
The
situation is even worse in the country's 10 largest cities, where the number of
female-headed households in extreme poverty rose from 1.6 million to 1.8
million in the 15-year period in question.
"The
face of extreme poverty is that of a black single mother,"
During her
campaign Rousseff, who belongs to Lula's Workers' Party (PT) and was elected to
continue his policies, promised that her government would build 6,000 public
day care centres. Although a tiny number in a country this size, it is
nonetheless noteworthy as a goal set by the national government, which is not
in charge of that area of social policy.
The problem
is that city governments, which are in fact responsible for increasing the
number of child care centres, are not doing so, even though they have been
assigned money to that end from an early childhood education fund. Nor has the
question of preschools and child care centres been a major campaign issue in
municipal elections,
The
president's challenge is to "induce" local authorities to live up to
their end of the deal, she said.
"The
most obstinate struggle of my government will be to eradicate extreme poverty
and create opportunities for everyone," Rousseff said when she was sworn
in.
For that
task, she named Tereza Campello to head the Ministry of Social Development and
the Fight against Hunger, and Ana Fonseca as her executive secretary. Both
women have experience in designing and running social programmes, such as the
renowned Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer programme, which reaches 12.8
million poor families.
Although
Rousseff's push for an increased female presence in the government fell short
of the announced goal of 30 percent of the 37-member cabinet, nine women is
double the average number during Lula's two terms.
Since
The
appointment of nine female ministers "is an important new
development," even though the target of 11 was not met "because the
parties didn't designate women" to represent them on the cabinet, said
Jacira Melo, director of the Patricia Galvão Institute, a Brazilian women's
rights organisation.
All of the
women ministers combine "technical qualifications with a commitment"
to gender equity, she added.
And
"For the first, time, social policies will be coordinated" among
ministries that tend to have lower budgets, like the ministries of women's
policies, racial equality and human rights, whose voices will thus be
strengthened in projects aimed at reducing inequality, Melo said.
The government's
first initiatives have fuelled the optimism of the women's movement, she said.
Rousseff's decision to refer to herself as "presidenta" rather than
the gender-neutral "presidente" preferred by the media and society at
large has "extraordinary symbolic value," the activist said.
By contrast,
the presence of women in politics was not boosted by the legislative elections,
held in October along with the first round of the presidential vote.
Only 45
women were elected to the 513-member lower house of Congress, the same number
as in 2006. And in the Senate, the number of seats held by women only increased
by one, to 12 out of 81.
"We
have to question the political parties, which are the big hurdle" to
greater representation of women in Congress, because they block women's access
to positions of power within the parties and deny them campaign financing, Melo
said.
Although
Rousseff has not embraced key feminist demands like the legalisation of
abortion, if the government manages "to address the issue with serenity,
without giving in to pressure from the Catholic Church," by expanding
health and prevention services, that in itself will be a major stride forward,
she said.