The Growth of Working-Class Feminism in Brazil
Castro, Mary Garcia
Women within feminist organizations and labor unions are forging a feminist politics that incorporates class and gender perspectives. Their goal is to transform leftist parties and trade...
...spheres into its discourses about working women, demanded the inclusion of issues such as reproductive health and sexual rights in discussions about women in the workplace, instituted training courses on gender issues for both men and women within labor unions and political parties, and fought to make leadership positions as well as political education accessible to women activists...
...RSD is most prevalent in jobs that involve word processing, data entry and cash-register operation...
...The trend is in large part the result of the impoverishment of working families...
...8. Magda de Almeida Neves, "Modenizacho Industrial no Brasil: O Surgimento de Novos Paradigmas na Organizacao do Trabalho...
...Women's departments have been created in many locals, and in 1986 the National Women Workers' Commission (CNMT) was created within the Unified Workers' Federation (CUT...
...Labor organizations must confront the reorganization of work, including the implementation of technologies which make workers redundant...
...This kind of pressure often exists within the family...
...At CUT events, child care is always provided...
...to convince customers...
...It is not enough to be revolutionary during elections and to call on women to come out and participate in events," says Patricia, a member of the directorate of the Department of Women of the Union of Bank Employees in Bahia, who is also a member of the Communist Party of Brazil and the Union of Brazilian Women...
...Nonetheless, the implementation of quotas for women's leadership is a real achievement, and all feminists agree that the fight for affirmative action laws and policies that guarantee the rights of women workers must continue...
...One can't treat all customers in the same way...
...5. Eleonora Menicucci de Oliveira, "Corpos Saudaveis e Corpos Doentes na Nova Organizacao Social do Trabalho," Seminario Trabalho e Genero: Mudancas, Permanancias e Desafios, conference sponsored by the Brazilian Association for Population Studies, Campinas, April 14-15, 1998...
...Research in Sdo Paulo's largest banks has found a high degree of company identification and an acceptance of gender-based roles within the workplace...
...0 31 The Rise of Working Class Feminism 1. Cristina Bruschini, "Genero e Trabalho Feminino no Brasil...
...Trade unionists and leftist activists have recognized that strategies to confront gender- and race-based inequalities must not be limited to the institutions of the labor movement itself...
...It is provoked and aggravated by work-related stress and anxiety, and is associated with muscular stress, long work days and the lack of regular rest periods . Close to 80% of workers who suffer from RSD in Brazil are women, and it is clearly associated with the double burden of a long working day and domestic responsibilities...
...Women are still concentrated in unskilled, low-wage jobs...
...The first is the emphasis on quality production, which through quality control or discourses of 'total quality,' seeks to invest the worker with a sense of responsibility, creativity and decision-making powers...
...Close to 50% of bank employees, for example, are women...
...ver the past decade, women activists have successfully placed gender issues on the agendas of the most powerful labor organizations in Brazil...
...12 Not all feminists, of course, even class-based feminists, agree completely with Valdirene's perspective...
...also see Liliana Segnini, Mulheres no Trabalho Bancario (Sao Paulo: Edusp, 1998...
...2. Cristina Bruschini, "Genero e Trabalho Feminino no Brasil...
...There is no doubt that this class-based feminism has benefited greatly from the ideas and the gains of the larger feminist movement...
...9 "It is also not enough to include a paragraph about women's rights in all political speeches as is currently in vogue...
...It has supported antidiscrimination legislation and affirmative action policies at the same time that it has cut funding for public education and eliminated public-sector jobs in social services and local public administration--both major sources of employment for women...
...3. Confederacao dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura, Plenaria Nacional das Mulheres (Brasilia: CONTAG/mimeo, 1997...
...Feminists and political parties linked to unions must also begin to forcefully counter the neoliberal attacks on workers in the name of productivity and modernization...
...Male dominance is strong-it begins by educating children to be macho...
...Before, women stayed in the kitchen, but we are becoming more involved in everything, in land invasions, in meetings, and we also want to discuss health, rights and our relationships with men...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28REPORT ON LABOR The rate of unionization among Brazilian women has notably increased in recent years, and the growth in the rate of women's labor-force participation has been dramatic...
...Male dominance is strong, something that begins by educating boys to be macho...
...Issues like women's double workday, sexuality and affection are actively debated in the union...
...But despite the growing incorporation of women workers into the institutions of paid employment, there seems to be little change in male-female income inequality, in the sexual division of labor within the household, or in the power relations of gender hierarchies...
...We are like society," says Valdirene de Oliveira, a 24-year-old Landless Movement (MST) leader in Matto Grosso, "and society is comprised of all kinds of people...
...On the other hand, women have increasingly been able to find industrial and manufacturing jobs that in the past were almost exclusively reserved for men...
...3 Many companies have an explicit preference for women workers, particularly in the service sectors of Low-income married women with children are entering the labor force at a time when services, child care and schools are being cut back...
...In recent years, however, there has been a growing presence of women in the sale of financial services, a field allowing for somewhat greater autonomy and remuneration...
...They know if the client is sad or anxious...
...The employment of women in many highly modernized industries like banks and packing plants, as well as the increase in the number of women working in the informal sector, suggests the existence of a combination of traditional and modem forms of work...
...Neves points out that this "new rationality" appeals to workers on two levels...
...They tend to be assigned simple and repetitive administrative duties, and despite the fact that they average more years of schooling than their male counterparts, close to 70% of them have low-level filing jobs, are much more closely supervised than the predominantly male tellers, and have VOL XXXII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1999 0 a 29REPORT ON LABOR fewer opportunities of career advancement...
...In the 1970s, the percentage of adult women in the labor force was 20%, but by 1990, the figure surpassed 40%.1 Many women workers have gained employment in service-sector jobs, often in major multinational corporations...
...CONTAG, one of the biggest union confederations of Latin America, made a significant symbolic gesture by referring to its big March 1998 policy meeting as the "Seventh National Congress of Men and Women Rural Workers," formally recognizing that labor is not only the domain of men...
...A woman branch manager told an interviewer that "women are better at sales because people often repress their emotions, and women are more sensitive...
...es flip-flops in a workshop in Recife, Brazil...
...Within this model, union organization and collective bargaining are replaced by direct and individual negotiation...
...6. Liliana Segnini, Mulheres no Trabalho Bancario (Sho Paulo: Edusp, 1998...
...Far from instilling any sort of worker solidarity, however, this new language of production is intended to encourage competition among employees in order to increase productivity, and to discourage anything which might disrupt the relationship with management...
...According to CONTAG, women now compose 22% of the nine million union members in rural areas, more than half of whom became involved after 1985.11 And women's centers have sprouted within the organizations of landless workers in various states, particularly in the context of leadership training...
...The combination of a socialized sense of responsibility and the desperation for employment seems, in fact, to have bonded many women workers with their employers...
...Not only are they constructing a feminist politics which actively draws from perspectives of class, gender and increasingly of race, but they are exerting a powerful influence on the broader feminist movement...
...In addition, women's employment is highly susceptible to national and international economic fluctuations...
...She is the co-author, with Elsa Chaney, of Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean (Temple, 1989...
...It has links to some feminist organizations, labor unions and parties on the left, and insists on the importance of the feminist transformation of leftist political parties and labor unions from the inside...
...The issue of the ownership of land," she says, "attracts women's attention within the Movement, and we are fighting to recognize women's land ownership rights, along with legal rights to benefit from land...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON LABOR Feminist labor organizers have made gender relations among their male comrades a focal point of their efforts...
...Beyond this, the positive trends have developed alongside rising unemployment rates, growing job insecurity within increasingly flexible labor markets, attacks on the gains of the labor movement and a dramatic rise in job-related illness...
...Low-income married women with children are entering the labor force at a time when services, child care and schools are suffering cutbacks...
...Novas Conquistas ou Persistencias da Discriminacao...
...In addition, the CUT has approved a quota system to assure women leadership positions within union structures and has recognized domestic workers' organizations...
...Confederacao dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura, Plenaria Nacional das Mulheres (Brasilia: CONTAG/mimeo, 1997...
...Women are better able to communicate...
...Meanwhile, Brazil's class-based feminism can be found in unions, in leftist political groups and in struggles that are armed when necessary, such as the landless movement...
...It is critical of the free market, and does not reject the use of multiple forms of struggle...
...In many states, as is the case in Bahia, domestic-worker organizers are also active militants in black social movements...
...8 The bitter irony is that these values, now at the service of profit-making firms, have historically been part of the emancipatory discourse of movements like socialism and feminism...
...In other words, while there have been substantial political gains, this has not mitigated the adverse effects of a neoliberal and increasingly globalized economy on the lives of working-class Brazilian women...
...Autonomous transnational feminist networks now address many of the issues of concern to the laborbased feminists, though without any concern for working-class organization...
...On the other hand, we have to work harder to equalize relationships within the family, because many times a woman signs a land deed because her husband insists...
...We must educate men and women to achieve equality...
...The goal is to change the traditional union attitudes which reward standard male behavior, such as speaking loudly at meetings, and which fail to recognize how women's domestic obligations limit the extent of their union participation...
...Older girls within these families are then forced to bear the brunt of child care in the absence of their mothers...
...Women in CONTAG and in the Rural Women's Movement (MMTR), for example, while strongly supporting the struggle for land, consider that not all issues are class issues, and that there are conflicts between women and men that go beyond class-based identities...
...The experience of recent years suggests that the left must incorporate the unemployed and the informal sector as well as those groups organizing around issues like local, ethnic or sexual identity into the classic frameworks of class analysis...
...VOL XXXII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1999 Valdirene, who followed her parents into the movement at age 15, sees the struggle for women's rights as "part of the class struggle," and this is a growing sentiment within the MST...
...4. Mary Garcia Castro, "Genero e Poder no Espaco Sindical," Estudos Feministas, Vol 3. No 1 (1995), pp...
...These women are generally expected to work longer hours, which has led to an increase in stress-related illnesses.4 Recent investigation has documented a dramatic rise in repetitive stress disorder (RSD) among women in many fields of both paid and unpaid labor...
...But these are small, initial steps...
...29-51...
...The second seeks to shape the attitudes of workers by appealing to values of cooperation, integration and self-esteem...
...Their goal is to transform leftist parties and trade unions from within...
...Miriam Abramovay and Mary Garcia Castro, Engendrando um Novo Feminismo: Mulheres Lideres de Bases (Sao Paulo: UNESCO/ Ed...
...Women who work in stressful service jobs, however, are not always critical of their working conditions...
...Through its rhetoric and a series of less-than-effective social programs, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso has situated itself as the champion of women and blacks...
...Novas Conquistas ou Persistencias da Discriminacao...
...In an essay about industrial development in Brazil, sociologist Magda Neves docu- A girl mak ments the implementation of Japanese models of workplace organization through which "a controlled and coercive form of participation is imposed which seeks to achieve the maximum level of consensus through a complete partnership between management and the workers...
...It has incorporated feminist understandings of the public and private Mary Garcia Castro teaches sociology at the Universidade Federal da Bahia and is an associate researcher at the International Migration Studies Center of the University of Campinas in Brazil...
...Cortez, 1998...
...In recent years a political practice that is embedded firmly in both class politics and the feminist movement has emerged in Brazil...
...We have opened up a discussion about gender among men and women, and we are sponsoring several debates about sexual harassment, even within labor unions...
...All this suggests that the "issue" of women is not just about granting "citizenship" or "human rights" to women, but also about the need to rethink leftist ideologies and practices...
...Conference sponsored by the Brazilian Association for Population Studies, Campinas, April 14-15, 1998...
...29-51...
...6 New models of workplace organization implemented by business elites are meant to appeal to this sensibility by emphasizing participation, "moral satisfaction," the analogy between the factory and the family, communication, cooperation and leadership based on professional authority rather than hierarchical control...
...This women's movement challenges the contention that women should abandon the revolutionary project of creating a classless society...
...The traditional sources of women's jobs such as retail commerce and the service sector were disproportionately affected by the high levels of unemployment between 1990 and 1997...
...According to a report published by the National Commission of Rural Working Women of the Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) in 1997, women account for 40% of rural labor, working for an average of 15 hours per day...
...Mary Garcia Castro, "Genero e Poder no Espaco Sindical," Estudos Feministas, Vol 3. No 1 (1995), pp...
...The engagement of labor-movement and community-based feminists in these activities suggests that they have not abandoned the class-based perspectives embedded in the revolutionary politics of years past...
...It is urgent that Brazilian i women workers themselves begin to participate in 2 class-based transnational feminist networks...
...There are domestic workers' unions throughout Brazil...
...9. Author's interview, Bahia, Brazil, August 1998...
...1 0 In the 1990s, women's organizations within unions even spread to other political arenas, including some which have long been considered difficult to organize...
...They are also employed in large numbers as household workers...
...In the Union of Bank Employees in Bahia, as a result of a 1993 initiative of its Women's Department, members have openly debated a number of controversial issues such as homophobia among workers...
...The hiring of women in manufacturing is intensified during economic downturns, when companies try to save on labor costs...
...to reel them in...
...Paid housework remains one of the major source of jobs for poor women, particularly black women...
...learly, the increasing labor-force participation of women cannot be seen only as a gain...
...By beginning with issues like land, we can address others, like domestic violence, AIDS prevention, and the relationships between men and women...
...In spite of the gains made by feminists within labor organizations and the increase of women's labor organizing, however, union members recognize that a daunting problem still faced by women workers is the lack of job stability in an increasingly insecure and flexible labor market...
...The federation has also worked to change the male-oriented nature of traditional labor organizing...
...2 There remain great income disparities between men and women as well as between social groups in Brazil, much of which is accounted for by the distribution of occupations...
...7. Magda de Almeida Neves, "Modenizacho Industrial no Brasil: 0 Surgimento de Novos Paradigmas na Organizacao do Trabalho," paper presented at Congreso Latinoamericano de Sociologia del Trabajo, Mexico City, 1993...
...Instead, it advances a radical feminist project to eliminate a multitude of oppressions...
...Translated from the Spanish by Marcial Godoy-Anativia...
...The case of Brazil is particularly significant to this project because in addition to its firm insertion into the neoliberal process of globalization, it is one of the few countries in Latin America where women's issues are accorded a prominent place in political life and official discourse...
...Seminario Trabalho e G4nero: Mudancas, Permanancias e Desafios...
...In rural areas, the numbers of women engaged in unpaid labor remains disproportionately high...
...This commission has approved measures to force employers to recognize maternity rights, and has implemented campaigns against genderbased discrimination, violence and sexual harassment in the workplace...
...7 Jobs in this sector are relatively stable and offer benefits which are attractive to many workers...
...In 1995, 41% of working women in rural areas were not being paid wages for their labor, in contrast to 21% of men...
...Public health advocates have warned that RSD is assuming epidemic proportions in Brazil, accounting for almost 70% of disabilities due to occupational illness...
...the economy...
...We will achieve equality by educating men and women within the Movement...
Vol. 32 • January 1999 • No. 4
