Brazil

Citation:

Nelson, Sara. 1996. “Constructing and Negotiating Gender in Women’s Police Stations in Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives 23 (1): 131–48.

Author: Sara Nelson

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Security, Security Sector Reform, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Brazil

Year: 1996

Citation:

Santos, Cecília MacDowell. 2004. “En-Gendering the Police: Women’s Police Stations and Feminism in São Paulo.” Latin American Research Review 39 (3): 29–55. 

Author: Cecília Macdowell Santos

Abstract:

This article contributes to feminist state theory and studies of women's police stations in Latin America by examining the processes shaping the multiple and changing positions of explicit alliance, opposition, and ambiguous alliance assumed by policewomen regarding feminists since the creation of the world's first women's police station in 1985 in São Paulo. While studies of women's police stations tend to overlook the political conjuncture, much of the literature on the state and gender explains the relationship between the state and women's movements as a function of the political regime. I argue for a more grounded feminist state theory, taking into account interactive macro and micro, local and international forces. As this case study demonstrates, policewoman-feminist relations evolve due to interactions between the political conjuncture, the hegemonic masculinist police culture, developments in the feminist discourse on violence against women, and the impact of the contact policewomen sustain with women clients.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Security, Security Sector Reform Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Brazil

Year: 2004

Citation:

Deere, Carmen Diana. 2003. “Women’s Land Rights and Rural Social Movements in the Brazilian Agrarian Reform.” Journal of Agrarian Change 3 (1-2): 257-88.

Author: Carmen Diana Deere

Abstract:

This article examines the evolution of the demand for women's land rights in the Brazilian agrarian reform through the prism of the three main rural social movements: the landless movement, the rural unions and the autonomous rural women's movement. Most of the credit for raising the issue of women's land rights rests with women within the rural unions. That women's formal land rights were attained in the constitutional reform of 1988 was largely a by–product of the effort to end discrimination against women in all its dimensions. The achievement of formal equality in land rights, nonetheless, did not lead to increases in the share of female beneficiaries of the reform, which remained low in the mid–1990s. This was largely because securing women's land rights in practice was not a top priority of any of the rural social movements. Moreover, the main social movement determining the pace of the agrarian reform, the landless movement, considered class and gender issues to be incompatible. By the late 1990s, nonetheless, there was growing awareness that failure to recognize women's land rights was prejudicial to the development and consolidation of the agrarian reform settlements and thus the movement. The growing consensus among all the rural social movements of the importance of securing women's land rights, coupled with effective lobbying, encouraged the State in 2001 to adopt specific mechanisms for the inclusion of women in the agrarian reform.

Keywords: social movements, women's land rights, agrarian reform, Brazil

Topics: Gender, Women, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Brazil

Year: 2003