Women's groups in slums take center stage
THE FOLLOWING interview with Tatau Godinho was given to
Jacqueline Heinen in Brussels in December 1985. It has been translated from an edited text in French. Godinho is a member of the
BRAZIL
It would be wrong, therefore, to say that this movement is an outgrowth of the feminist groups that existed in the past. There is no tradition, no memory of the autonomous movement that existed five years ago, even though the latter has exerted a diffuse influence.
The women's groups in the shantytowns arose entirely spontaneously in most of the urban conglomerations and around various questions, the most important of which in 1985 was the problem of milk. In view of their families urgent needs the women in shantytowns in four different regions got involved in a campaign to demand that the government distribute cheap milk in the most disadvantaged areas. These women's groups demanded that the government deliver the milk into their own hands, because they wanted to take the responsibility for setting up a distribution system based on the organization of women themselves (nearly 7,000 women took part in this action). Where this proved possible, the campaign led to important organizational results, with the setting up of permanent women's groups determined to overcome the problems of distribution of food.
One of the limitations of this sort of movement, however, is the lack of coordination. The nature of the demands raised means that women turn directly to the state, and when they get satisfaction, the structures set up during the campaigns generally disappear. That works against any continuity of the organizational forms created at specific moments. This is what has happened on many occasions to groups that mobilized, for example, to demand day-care centers. Once the authorities have met their demands, because they have had no longer-term perspectives, they have ceased to exist.
It should be stressed, however, that a mass campaign such as the one for milk was able to grow up only because groups existed before that had a project of using such a mobilization to give impetus to organizing a larger number of women, and they did not intend to confine themselves to a single theme. Such groups may be able in the future to serve as the springboard for developing permanent forms of organization among the most oppressed women.
Q. What has been the reaction of the unions to the birth of the feminist movement, and what are they doing today to defend the specific interests of working women?
A. The organization of women in the unions has lagged far behind what has been happening in the people's movement. There was a wave
25
Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and
Question. What is the position of working women in Brazil?
Answer. Over the last two decades, the proportion of working women has grown very rapidly. Today, they represent about 30 per cent of the workforce. The number of women working in agriculture has declined, paralleling the more general decline in this sector. But more women than men have been moving to the cities.
The main thing to be highlighted is the entry of women en masse into industry, in particular those where women have not traditionally worked. In textiles and other industries, they continue to make up a major part of the workforce (in the services especially); their numbers have hardly changed. Of course, in industry as a whole, they continue to fill the least skilled jobs.
But contrary to what we have seen in other countries, where women working in industry are most often employed in the services or administration, in Brazil, in particular in the more developed areas such as Sao Paulo, three out of four women working in industry are employed in production. That involves a qualitative change in their position in the workforce as a whole.
However, in view of the crisis that has been accelerating since the end of the phase of growth that Brazil went through up till 1974, the number of women working in the informal sector of the economy has grown steadily (more than the number of men). In this sector, they are obliged to take little jobs corresponding to their traditional tasks in the family (cooking, sewing, etc.) in order to supplement the family income.
I don't think that a higher proportion of women than men have been laid off, although we lack precise data on that. But the fact remains that the crisis is hitting women in a different way, inasmuch as they are the ones who have to manage the family budget, who have to put food on the table every day. This explains
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986 an active feminist. the fact that a great many of them are participating actively in the poor neighborhoods in women's movement groups that are seeking ways of solving the day-to-day problems of feeding people.
Q. From what you have just said, it seems that the women's movement in Brazil has quite a different profile than the one we are familiar with in the developed countries?
A. Yes, it has to be said that the women's movement as it developed after 1975, with the formation of a myriad of feminist groups, is rather dispersed today. These groups are very disorganized, and a lot of them have disappeared. The feminist movement properly speaking has no national coordinating body. There are still groups on the local level that have some sort of links with each other, but nothing comparable to what existed at the end of the 1970s.
At that time, the movement was capable of mobilizing women, of organizing very broad rallies and mass conferences that helped a great deal to make the woman question an important theme for the society as a whole. Today, many of those who have remained active are seeking new perspectives, because the present dispersion and the difficulty of putting forward axes for unifying these forces are becoming an obstacle to the growth of the movement.
The major development that we are seeing today in Brazil is the emergence of women's groups in the shantytowns, which in general are organizing around immediate economic demands for improving living conditions. They are closely linked to the mass movements in general but are organized autonomously, as women's groups. It could not be said that they have a clear awareness of the problem of the specific oppression of women, and that is normal, since they are made up primarily of proletarian women, housewives who are trying to solve the everyday problems facing them in the poor neighborhoods of the big cities.
of radicalization, under the influence of the feminist movement at the end of the 1970s, which was expressed in women's meetings and the creation of specific women's structures in the unions.
But discussion did not get much further than what was a central ques tion at the time - the problem of night work. The government was trying to pass a law permitting nightshift work for women, and the unions were against it. Several unions, in particular the metalworkers' union in San Bernardo [a suburb of Sao Paulo] organized women-only meetings and conferences. But in general this was something exceptional, and for almost five years there have been no more meetings of this type. These meetings did not lead to either the question of the oppression of women or that of the specific organization of women becoming central themes in the unions.
It should be said that the union leaderships - even the most militant — failed to understand the problem posed. They rejected any idea of special forms for organizing women. After the meetings I referred to, they said explicitly that in the future they were never going to organize any more women-only meetings and that the only way to deal with the woman question was to include women's demands in the union's general platform of demands, to raise the problem in union congresses, and so on.
Unfortunately this was never done, and despite the large number of women working in industry and the fact that they are far from dead weight in the unions, their specific demands were systematically "overlooked" or downplayed, both in contract negotiations and in the day-to-day life of the unions. To justify this state of affairs, some have argued that women have joined the unions mainly to get the social benefits that accrue from union membership. But this is also true for men; and, moreover, more women than men joined the union organizations during the wave of strikes that hit Brazil from 1978-79.
Thus, for women, joining the workers' movement did not reflect a passive or purely self-interested attitude. The truth is that the union leaderships refused to give women the place they deserved, even though their increasing numbers led some of the union publications to deal rather regularly with the problems of discrimination against women workers in industry.
It was only in 1984 that the need for including demands of particular concern to women and for envisaging specific forms of organization for women began to be discussed again.
It should be stressed, however, that 26 it has not been the more militant currents in the unions but the more conservative sectors of the bureaucracy that have been taking the initiative so far. The election of the new government that was put in office in 1982, when the bourgeois opposition won in several of the major states in Brazil, certainly had something to do with this. In Sao Paulo, for example, the authorities set up a Women's Council as an integral part of the government. It established links with certain unions for undertaking common work, even helping them organize women's conferences or meetings. This could not help but push the more militant sectors to react, even if they did not do so as quickly or as strongly as one might have wished.
For example, the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores [CUT - United Workers Confederation] already took two important initiatives in 1985, with the conferences that were held in Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais to relaunch women's activity and the organization of women as such. Even if the terms of the discussion started up in 1978-79 on the situation of women in industry have scarcely advanced since then, this represents a real step forward toward a conscious policy for women. These two conferences fell far short of producing clear organizational perspectives, and t : CUT leadership has even oppose the setting up of a permanent boo for women's work. But it is quite likely that this proposal will arise again in the next congress of the CUT, and it may be adopted.
Another thing should be said. What has happened recently in agriculture has certainly had an influence on the unions in industry. In the cities, the specific demands of women have almost never been taken into consideration in negotiating contracts. But one of the three central demands in the main agricultural workers' strike in 1985 - the strike on the sugar-cane plantations near Sao Paulo - had to do with equal pay for women. This has never happened before, and the fact that women in the countryside have taken up the fight for this has had an unquestionable impact on the urban unions.
Q. What has been the role of the Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT -
Porkers Party with regard to th adicalization and organization o women?
A. As I said, one of the essential problems of women has been the absence of any kind of coordination among the various groups. This has both limited their ability to intervene and been an obstacle to any perspective of unity in action on one or another theme. Of course, there is no question of wanting to force in an artificial way the setting up of a structure that would not reflect a certain minimum activity or mobilization.
Feminists have always been haunted by the fear that such coordination would force the tempo of development of the movement and reproduce certain authoritarian modes of functioning that prevail in the political parties. But that is not the problem. The problem today is that many women's groups in the people's movement are looking for political leadership and direction and they have a need for coordination. But the very spontaneist conception held by many feminists about the autonomy of the movement represents a real obstacle to its growth.
The fact is that it would be perfectly possible to unite our efforts to wage certain battles in common. This is why the PT, which exercises a strong attraction for the popular strata, has been led to play a role neglected by the women's movement. In several states, in fact, PT women's commissions have gone far beyond their initial brief and intentions. Instead of limiting themselves to organizing party activities and leading the intervention in the autonomous women's movement, these structures have represented a pole of attraction for all women who see in them a place to discuss their problems and their action projects.
This is attested by what happens regularly on March 8. It has become traditional that the PT organizes a whole section of women's groups for these demonstrations, because if it did not do it, no one would take the initiative. This situation is a problem both for the autonomy of the movement and because some women join the PT's women's commissions before even joining the party. This is something that must be resolved.
In the meantime, there is no doubt that the PT is a lever for bringing a lot of women into action, for which it has helped to give the impetus. The campaigns around problems of living conditions in the pockets of poverty in the urban centers will certainly continue to have a decisive character for the growth and organization of the women's movement for a whole period, even if they do not start out from the specific oppression of women. This is not just because of the depth of the economic crisis but also because of the nature of the women's groups that have arisen among the most disadvantaged layers and the role that they have to play in building a mass women's movement. International Viewpoint 10 March 1986