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.
