Women's movement actors' (WMAs) domestic and international activism has been one of the critical factors behind the worldwide diffusion of electoral (and party) quotas for women. Yet there is a set of countries in which this institutional innovation has underperformed for decades. How do WMAs gauge and react to this situation of underachievement? More importantly, do they mobilize a critical state actor - their country's gender equality machinery (GEM), if one exists - to address the deficiencies of the quota policy? Using primarily qualitative evidence (interviews, participatory observation, and document analysis) from a puzzling case, Brazil, the analysis uncovers underexplored aspects of quota underperformance. In keeping with the social movement literature, as WMAs perceive the introduction of this institutional change as a policy success, they turn their attention to other demands. However, since the policy outcomes of implementing electoral quotas for women might take several election cycles to materialize, there is a delay in understanding the innovation's shortcomings and formulating responses to address its increasingly evident weaknesses. As a result, even in countries with a robust women's movement, as in the case at hand, the decline in issue prioritization can obfuscate the pursuit of implementable, effective alternatives in subsequent rounds of quota policy reform.

This piece underscores the necessity of “enhanced” gender-centric data—official, intersectional data with new batteries of questions, based on situational knowledge, and disaggregated at the city level. Those data are crucial for gender equality machineries (GEM) in their pursuit of gender equity, particularly in societies with a colonial past of enslavement. However, issues of state capacity, GEM’s overstretching, and elected officials’ political will may pose significant challenges to the production of enhanced gender data. Furthermore, in some polities, unofficial data might be more credible. While the dissemination of anonymized data that comply with existing privacy laws might trigger the formation and action of counter-groups, enhanced gender data enable GEMs to devise evidence-based public policies and equity-seeking gender groups to press for the implementation of those policy initiatives.

The women’s movement in Brazil is known for its longevity, vibrancy and heterogeneity. In fact, reflecting the uneven and combined development of a post-colonial and post-slavery society, the Brazilian women’s movement (BWM) is highly intersectional, but its usual historical description does not fully capture this feature. Considering this gap, this chapter discusses the origins of the movement, its composition and changes over time. By focusing on Brazil’s colonial roots and its dependent capitalist industrialization, the text brings to light the contributions of Indigenous women, women of African descent and factory women workers to the movement’s creation. The text also examines the movement’s changes over time, as well as its relationship with the state and its activities to mount a resistance to, and survive, a conservative and markedly anti-feminist president.

Despite its illiberal tendencies, the Bolsonaro presidency, particularly the Christian Evangelical head of its women's policy agency, does have a specific agenda to advance substantive gender claims. The current government's rejects strongly feminist public policy claims, equating feminism to a radical leftist subversion of the Brazilian family and the country's societal values. Feminine-centric public policy, in contrast, is portrayed as one of the key paths to restore a nation in which, as Bolsonaro's campaign slogan epitomizes, "Brazil is above all things, and God is above all".

Following intense pressure from the women’s movement, Brazil approved a ground-breaking legislation to curb violence against women in 2006. Passed at the federal level, the law mandates the creation of a comprehensive network of services at the subnational level, partially funded by federal grants. More than a decade later, it is visible that, despite very positive results, several groups of highly marginalized women remain essentially ‘uncovered’ by the law. Interestingly, this gap exposes the implementation dilemmas of gender-friendly policies in uneven federations of the global south, marked by highly fragmented class structures and developmental imbalances, especially when it comes to state capacity. Using extensive interviews in eight cities and quantitative data, we show that some subnational state actors are very resistant to adopting women-friendly policies, particularly in areas where the women’s groups themselves have difficulty to organize, mobilize, or lack powerful political allies.

Kristin N. Wylie, Party Institutionalization and Women’s Representation in Democratic Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 290 pp.; hardcover 80. - Volume 61 Issue 4

Certain segments of the Brazilian Women’s Movement (BWM) developed important strategic partnerships with the state under the PT federal government. This article demonstrates how these partnerships had both inclusionary and exclusionary effects on gender-centric policy outcomes. Using a mix-method approach which includes extensive in-depth interviews with BMW activists and archival data from governmental sources, the Brazilian experience illustrates that “entering the state” headed by a women-ally president facilitates funnelling some of the women’s movement’s demands into the state. However, hierarchies within the movement itself, the congressional strength of the head of executive and the activism of some of its socially-conservative legislative allies can severely temper that effect. Resumen: El movimiento de mujeres brasileñas y el Estado durante los gobiernos nacionales de PT Ciertos segmentos del Movimiento de Mujeres Brasileñas (BWM) desarrollaron importantes alianzas estratégicas con el estado bajo el gobierno federal del PT. Este artículo demuestra cómo estas asociaciones tuvieron efectos tanto inclusivos como excluyentes en los resultados de las políticas de género. Utilizando un método mixto que incluye extensas entrevistas en profundidad con activistas de BMW y archivos de fuentes gubernamentales, la experiencia brasileña ilustra que “entrar en el Estado” encabezado por un presidente aliado de las mujeres facilita canalizar algunas de las demandas del movimiento de mujeres hacia el Estado. Sin embargo, las jerarquías dentro del movimiento, la fuerza congresional del jefe ejecutivo y el activismo de algunos de sus aliados legislativos socialmente conservadores pueden moderar severamente ese efecto.

Quilombola communities in Brazil date back to colonial times, as they were created by runaway slaves of African descent seeking a “refuge” (a quilombo) where they could have freedom and better living conditions. Given their isolation, several of these communities survived over time. In some cases, ever-growing cities decreased substantially their relative seclusion, and nowadays there are quilombos in urban areas as well. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with members of quilombola communities in rural and urban areas of Greater Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, this research will discuss how the quilombo still remains quintessentially a refuge: It is essential for the solidarity economy in which quilombolas engage as well as for providing the physical space where a sense of community and its shared identity is both nurtured and perpetuated over time.

Reviewed by: Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil by K. Y. Perry Simone Bohn Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil. K. Y. Perry. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2013. 224 pp., photos, maps. US$25.00 paper (ISBN 978-0-8166-8324-6) In this work, Keisha-Khan Perry focuses on the long-term struggle of a disadvantaged Black community residing in a neighborhood known as Gamboa de Baixo, in the city of Salvador, in northeast Brazil. The book describes the community as a traditional fishing village, occupying the same location for several decades. Fortunately or unfortunately, Gamboa de Baixo, despite its poor housing conditions and lack of very basic infrastructure, occupies prime real estate: it overlooks the coveted Bay of All Saints. As such, the community has been under the threat of (violent) mass eviction and relocation amidst urban renewal projects. The women from the community’s association are said to lead the anti-eviction and anti-relocation fight, which, according to the author, makes them one essential cog in the wheel of the global struggle of the Black diaspora for land rights. [End Page 247] This piece is laudable for many reasons. The book is the by-product of intense and carefully executed participatory observation. The narrative is tantalizing, and beautifully weaves together fragments of the life experiences of real individuals with broader reflections on the macro-societal ailments in which they are embroiled. The inclusion of pictures of the subjects with whom the author interacted makes their personal histories even more compelling and their plight more poignant. Finally, the author’s long-term involvement with the subjects of analysis – the author makes references to events that took place from 2000 to 2012 – allows readers to have a longitudinal perspective on the evolution of this community’s multifarious struggles, including contestation of land rights. On the negative side, some shortcomings are noticeable. First, the book is clearly under-theorized, and the brief theoretical markers mentioned in Chapter 1 are never re-discussed later, in the light of the evidence provided. Second, the miscegenation in Brazil – which this country is worldly renowned for–is not well incorporated into the analysis. The word “Brown” (which itself is problematic) is first mentioned on page 65 (towards the middle of chapter 3). As a consequence, Brazil seems to be seen through the foreign-colored lenses of a duality between Blacks and Whites, which is more applicable to other social contexts. According to the last Brazilian census (from 2010), for instance, 47.7 percent of Brazilians define themselves as whites, 7.6 percent as blacks, and a whopping 43.1 percent as pardos (“browns”) – which is evidence of Brazil’s intricate racial panorama. Third, the intersectionality between class and race – extremely complex in the case of Brazil – is underexplored in the book. Pardos in Brazil also suffer from the negative consequences of similar urban renewal projects, which involve the expulsion from certain urban areas of residents who, despite occupying their current dwellings for a long period of time, lack official land titles. In other words, one could question the argument (made in Chapter 2) that these city revitalization initiatives are essentially part of a deliberate anti-Black plan. They target the most marginalized social segments, of which unquestionably Afro-Brazilians are, in disproportionate numbers, representatives of, but by no means the only members. The predicament of the Gamboa de Baixo’s residents is strikingly similar to the tribulations experienced by other pauperized communities elsewhere in Brazil, such as, among others, the Native Brazilians’ struggle for demarcation and titling of their lands, and the caiçaras’ fight for the transformation of the areas where they reside into world heritage sites. Fourth, the author did not convincingly dispel the doubts regarding the Gamboa de Baixo’s dwellers being squatters. No evidence of their land ownership–at least from the part of the three or four original families, not the more recent settlers – has been provided. Segments of the book state that parts of Gamboa de Baixo sit on Navy land and on former Catholic Church real estate. Other segments refer to...

This article examines whether the state, through conditional cash transfer programs (CCT), can reduce the poverty and extremely poverty in societies marred by high levels of income concentration. We focus on one of the most unequal countries in the globe, Brazil, and analyze the extent to which this country's CCT program - Bolsa Família (BF, Family Grant) program - is able to improve the life chances of extremely poor beneficiaries, through the three major goals of PBF: First, to immediately end hunger; second, to create basic social rights related to healthcare and education; finally, considering also complementary policies, to integrate adults into the job market. The analysis relies on a quantitative survey with 4,000 beneficiaries and a qualitative survey comprised of in-depth interviews with 38 program's participants from all the regions of the country in 2008, it means that this study is about the five first years of the PBF. In order to answer the research questions, we ran four probit analyses related: a) the determinants of the realization of prenatal care; b) the determinants of food security among BF beneficiaries, c) the determinants that adult BF recipients will return to school, d) the determinants that a BF beneficiary will obtain a job. Important results from the study are: First, those who before their participation on PBF were at the margins have now been able to access healthcare services on a more regular basis. Thus, the women at the margins who were systematically excluded - black women, poorly educated and from the North - now, after their participation in the CCT program, have more access to prenatal care and can now count with more availability of public healthcare network. Second, before entering the Bolsa Família program, 50.3% of the participants faced severe food insecurity. This number went down to 36.8% in very five years. Men are more likely than women; non-blacks more likely than blacks; and South and Centre-West residents more likely than Brazilians from other regions; to become food secure while participating in BF. Third, instead, that moment in 2008, a small proportion of the adult participants indeed were able to return to school and to increase their educational qualifications. The lack of technical skills and the huge predominance of informal employment are central social problems in Brazil and that the PBF has failed to address such issues. This study confirms what other previous studies have reported on: BF has had a positive impact in reducing poverty in the country. Hence the main contribution of the present study is in identifying the main determinants of unequal results among individuals participating in the BF program: why some, but not others, are more easily able to access the healthcare or to overcome food insecurity while in the program?

Institutionalist views emphasize that identical institutional rules should function in similar ways across nations, thus making electoral engineering possible. This article utilizes the case of Brazil (eight elections in 27 states) to show that there is considerable cross-sectional variation in party system size under indistinguishable institutional rules. Confirming previous works, we find that the interaction between institutions and societal complexity plays a key role in determining party system size. In addition, we show that the educational profile of voters and subnational economic conditions also contribute to the phenomenon. Overall, our results call for caution on electoral engineering projects at home or abroad.

Bulletin of Latin American ResearchVolume 32, Issue 1 p. 95-97 Gender and Populism in Latin America. Passionate Politics - edited by Kampwirth, Karen Simone Bohn, Simone Bohn York University, TorontoSearch for more papers by this author Simone Bohn, Simone Bohn York University, TorontoSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 December 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-9856.2012.00771.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume32, Issue1Special Issue: Gender, Institutions and Rural Transformation in Latin AmericaGuest Editor: Kathrin Forstner January 2013Pages 95-97 RelatedInformation