Gendering the Urban Social Movement and Public Housing Policy in São Paulo

Collective Action and the Right to the City in São Paulo

At the beginning of the 1970s, local housing movement organizations emerged among shantytown dwellers to resolve basic material problems involving collective goods and services. These movement organizations started to gather political steam during the military period and were given a boost when leftist and Catholic Church activists began to help organize groups in popular neighborhoods. The 1980s saw two main categories of collective action: isolated struggles for water, electricity, and access to land and collective occupations and organized actions of community associations demanding participation and autonomy in state negotiations, control over public housing construction, and self-management of housing cooperatives (Doimo, 1995; Jacobi, 1989). Two important fronts of struggle developed around legal land rights and popular control over the construction of housing units, the former among established populations struggling to defend their homes and the latter involving populations dwelling in city slums, shantytowns, and precarious housing (Gohn, 1991). Both acted in terms of a right to the city (Lefebvre, 1974), ⁵ aiming at a more equitable distribution of urban public goods and services and the participation of the population in the management of these services as well as in urban planning (Kowarick and Bonduki, 1988: 126–127). The movement also denounced the state’s authoritarian decision-making practices and aimed at politically strengthening working-class communities, learning to employ nonviolent resistance and to democratize daily practices (Scherer-Warren, 1993: 60). Housing movement organizations engaged in contention (as in the occupation of private and public land), education of the public about city living conditions, the fostering of a sense of citizenship, and the encouragement of individuals to take action to claim their rights (Doimo, 1986).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the housing movement succeeded in influencing the platforms of various political parties, and by means of mass party politics and alliances it was able to help implement the mutirão method, a system of communally constructed and administered housing (Doimo, 1986). It also contributed to the inclusion of an important clause in the 1988 Constitution that allowed the expropriation of property for public use or social interest, creating a legal premise for the occupation of unproductive land or abandoned buildings (Earle, 2012; Holston, 2008). In addition, by developing a rights-based narrative the movement raised its claims to a more encompassing, universal, and systematic level, strengthening the notion of citizenship as well as the movement’s collective identity (Dagnino, 1994). Movement organizations created opportunities for themselves through dense social networks, the formation of coalitions with other social actors, and the consolidation of a legitimate political space (Alvarez and Escobar, 1992).

Although this movement made considerable progress on the outskirts of São Paulo, it never really succeeded in mobilizing the downtown slum dweller population. ⁶ In 1991 the União dos Movimentos de Moradia (Union of Housing Movements—UMM) activists founded the Unificação das Lutas de Cortiços (Unification of Slum Dwellers’ Struggles—ULC) in order to take part in the municipal government’s public housing program. Throughout the 1990s it split up into other organizations that continued to educate slum dwellers about their rights as tenants. In 1996 these organizations mobilized hundreds of slum dwellers and homeless to occupy dozens of abandoned public buildings, demanding that these buildings be renovated to accommodate them (Levy, 2005).

Several factors explain these mobilizations, the first being the deteriorating social conditions, including poor housing, tenuous incomes, and inadequate urban amenities. Neoliberal ideology and economic policy had dire consequences for the low-income population, limiting access to stable employment and attacking the conditions of immediate reproduction by restructuring the state and its redistributive policies. In addition, policy change, economic crisis, and cleavages within the political elite created political opportunities for this movement. Finally, a network of relationships and interactions among social movements ⁷ influenced its identity, repertoire, and symbolism (Levy, 2010).

The downtown housing movement organizations used a specific repertoire involving long-term and symbolic occupations. The former lasted months and sometimes years until the occupants were physically removed by legal order or negotiated a housing project with government authorities. The latter lasted hours or days and attempted to pressure the government into negotiations and maintain their visibility in the media. The process of occupation would begin with the strategic choice of an abandoned building that was in an irregular situation and ultimately might be expropriated by the state. Once it was chosen, the movement leaders would hire buses, choose a date of occupation, and coordinate with grassroots leaders to mobilize slum dwellers. This was all done in secrecy so as to ensure the element of surprise and avoid the precipitate arrival of the police. The occupation would take place in the early hours of the morning. Movement members would occupy the building as quickly as possible and then barricade themselves in it so that the police could not enter. Once the building was occupied, movement leaders would organize the people and allot them “apartments.” On each floor or section of the building, coordinators were appointed among the occupiers by movement leaders to organize daily life and discuss the rules to be adopted. Coordinators would organize weekly meetings to guarantee peaceful living arrangements and keep the families up to date on the negotiations with the state. Members of each family were encouraged to take on responsibilities and participate in the more political aspects of the occupation.

The power of these occupations resided in the visibility of the downtown core and their unexpected character, which surprised government officials because this movement had never used downtown building occupations as a political act of contention. Its leaders thus recognized an opportunity to persuade slum dwellers in difficulty to join building occupations and then use these occupations to influence public opinion and pressure the government. One leader urged slum dwellers to “open your doors, come out into the streets to get something, since you all have the right to live downtown and there is no other way out.” Leaders knew how to frame the housing problem as a contradiction between scarce housing for the poor and the existence of numerous abandoned public buildings and turn it into an issue not only of economic but also of ethical social justice. It was strategic thinking, planning, and action that created the strong impact of the occupations of the late 1990s, along with the capacity to challenge authorities, foster solidarity, and identify consensual issues (Tarrow, 1996).

Women in Urban Popular Movement Organizations

Women have always been present in social movements (West and Blumberg, 1990), but there is a limited amount of literature on women in mixed social movements in general (Bhattacharjya et al., 2013; Kuumba, 2001; Robnett, 1997) and even less in Brazil (Corcoran-Nantes, 1990; Perry, 2013; Verschuur, 2011). This is a paradox, since women often make up at least half of the members but only a small percentage of the leaders. Furthermore, the issue of women and gender has rarely been taken into consideration in research on the Brazilian housing movement. Even in the feminist literature on social movements, most studies focus on women’s and feminist movements, sidelining the participation of women and gender dynamics in mixed movements. For these reasons, a feminist analysis of the participation and role of women in the housing movement is important.

In Brazil, women have been very present numerically at the grassroots of class-based social movements since the 1970s (Alvarez, 1990). Many of them began their activism in the Christian base communities. According to Macedo (2002), the possibility of eventually owning a home mobilized women, who in Brazilian society are responsible for the domestic realm. They joined community organizations in far greater numbers than men because of social norms and patriarchal ideologies holding women responsible for articulating kinship, friendship, and community networks and organizing family survival strategies (Alvarez, 1990: 44; Castells, 1983). Thus the fact that they acted in the public sphere did not break with their gendered traditional roles of mother and spouse (Molyneux, 1998; Souza-Lobo, 1991: 76).

The participation of women in the slum dwellers’ and homeless organizations during the 2000s placed them in an environment of personal and collective growth and development. This occurred through their participation in public debates and meetings to organize building occupations, confrontations with the police during occupations, and negotiations with government authorities. For example, one leader described herself before and after her activism in the movement: “When I started I was completely ignorant of everything—no awareness whatsoever of my rights or anything. Today I am aware of everything that I can and cannot do.” During these activities, they learned to collaborate and assert their individual and collective needs. Together they learned about their rights, the state’s responsibility, and what it meant to be citizens. Interviews with women who had participated in this movement since the mid-1990s demonstrate that their responsibility for the survival and maintenance of their families often strengthened their self-esteem, and this made them able to assume leadership roles. One leader described this change: “I grew a lot. When I entered the movement I didn’t talk, I was ashamed. Today I am not ashamed to talk properly or incorrectly. Today I am talking. I am struggling for what I know is my right. I am here, and I will fight for my right.”

This is a good example of the gendered process of empowerment of working-class women. They associate their new leadership roles with contributing to the well-being of the community and, on a higher level, to a more inclusive society. They recognize their own economic marginalization in the city and exclusion from the housing market but express the will to change social, economic, and political structures through collective action. Through their participation in movement organizations they turn their personal problems into collective and public claims. Bisillat (1997: 102–103) speaks of an internal mobility in which these women acquire self-confidence, a new identity, and more autonomy as active citizens. This happens through movement activities such as organizing, defending their rights publicly, negotiating collective claims, and absorbing new knowledge. Bisillat (1997: 96) and Souza-Lobo (1991: 82) characterize this process as one of emerging citizenship.

Even though for the past 40 years women have participated actively in the housing movement, their organizations have reproduced a gender division of labor in which women are responsible for organizational and logistic tasks often associated with taking care of others while men engage in political activities in the public sphere. Although women often made up the majority of members, their legitimacy in representing the grassroots as leaders was always a problem (Souza-Lobo, 1991), Although it is commonplace for women to be at the grassroots of social movements, there is a tendency not to see them in leadership positions (Perry, 2013; Perry and Caminha, 2008: 135).

Until the 2000s, when women in the São Paulo downtown slum dwellers’ organizations began occupying abandoned public buildings, the majority of leaders at all levels of this social movement were men. Using a feminist and intersectional perspective, we have identified two key class- and gender-related factors that contributed to the increase in numbers of women leaders in this movement and consequently to the shaping of movement demands. The first of these was the growing number of low-income female heads of households and their strong presence in social movement organizations. Several demographic studies confirm the substantial growth in the number of women household heads, pointing out that this population has gone from 29 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2010 (Prefeitura de São Paulo, 2014). According to the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE, 2010), in the center of the city of São Paulo women represent up to 48 percent (compared with 23.7 percent men) of household heads and of that number more than half (53 percent) are in the low-income bracket (IBGE, 2012; Prefeitura de São Paulo, 2012). Single women heads of low-income households often experience more precarious financial situations than men and earn less (Macedo, 2008). ⁸ In addition, nonwhite low-income women-headed households experience an intersectional oppression. Color in Brazil is synonymous with social status, with whiteness representing nobility and superiority. Nonwhite women are traditionally responsible for the extended household and experience discrimination in the workforce and in procuring housing (Da Silva, 2006). They earn less than white women and are confined to certain professions such as domestic service. For example, 62 percent of nonwhite domestics work informally while 64 percent of white domestics have formal jobs. Moreover, nonwhite women also have less access to education and professional training. Not surprisingly, nonwhite women earn on average half of what white women make (SOF, 2015).

Abramo (2006) stresses the triple gender segmentation endured by Brazilian women because they tend to be concentrated in the lowest links of production chains, where working conditions and job stability are most precarious. Mothers or caregivers who live without partners and provide for their families alone often live in poverty (Sorj and Fontes, 2009: 4). These factors partially explain the overrepresentation of single women heads in low-income households and their differentiated needs. The instability of the often informal work of low-income women makes it especially difficult for them to pay rent regularly, and their wages are frequently insufficient to cover the basic needs of their families. In addition, the lack of access to property contributes strongly to their economic dependency on men, thus reproducing gendered family roles (UN Habitat, 2007). Given this situation, occupations spearheaded by the housing movement organizations in the late 1990s became a viable option for them to find immediate shelter and entertain the possibility of owning a home in the foreseeable future. These occupations represented not only an immediate though temporary solution to the essential problem of shelter but a ray of hope for the future that inspired hundreds of women to participate in the São Paulo downtown slum dwellers’ movement. ⁹ Despite the taboo that occupying private property represented and the dangers associated with it, the prospect of owning a home and having economic security strongly motivated these women. One leader said, “If buying a house were easy, nobody would opt for the struggle, and this struggle is hard and scary.” Women’s agency is often found in the ways in which they make choices within the constraints imposed on them (Walby, 1997: 7).

Leaders of the UMM confirmed that 80 percent of the members of movement organizations were women. The mobilization and participation of low-income urban women in movement organizations claiming housing and occupying abandoned downtown buildings was directly tied to their need for housing. However, their motivation gradually widened to include acquiring decent housing for all of the members of their movement organization and an understanding of housing as a constitutional element of citizenship rights. One leader explained how she became more engaged in the movement: “From my need of a home was born my need to understand, deepen my knowledge, become more politicized, because until then I was worried about my living conditions and then I saw that there were others and we really needed to organize them and make them aware that they were not alone.”

This large grassroots constituency of women and single female household heads created what Agarwal (2010) calls a “critical-mass effect”—a large pool of participants in the occupations of the late 1990s who became occupation coordinators and then grassroots movement leaders in the 2000s. Many of these women were not married, and this offered them a degree of liberty to participate in movement activities that many married women did not have. ¹⁰ Finally, the gender coordinator of the UMM said that women were more willing than men to commit themselves to organizing the occupations, meetings, and protests. The occupation coordinators had to attend to daily problems involving mental illness, domestic violence, drug trafficking, and serious accidents, and many of them drew upon their skills as heads of households for this work. ¹¹ It was these grassroots coordinators that the movement turned to for leadership in negotiating with government officials and speaking to the media.

The second factor that helps explain the increasing number of women in leadership positions in the housing movement is the institutionalization of the movement and the place men occupy within it. Although there have always been a few female leaders, men have dominated the leadership (Zemlinskaya, 2010). Since the early 1990s the movement has become institutionalized and professionalized. It has increasingly engaged in the proposal of specific housing programs to government officials rather than in grassroots mobilization and popular education. The PT’s rise to executive office, first at the local level in the 1990s and then at the national level in 2003, drew many social movements closer to the state (Samuels, 2004: 1013) as many PT governments were staffed with social movement leaders. This permitted leaders to work on issues from inside government but also led social movements to curtail their more contentious protests and subject their own interests to the government’s agenda (Levy, 2012; Tatagiba, 2010). Although they are closer to the center of power, they still find themselves limited by budgetary and bureaucratic constraints (Hochstetler, 2004: 11).

During the 1990s, the movement experienced a displacement of older male leaders to the national level of the movement, to government at different levels, and to political parties. As movement leaders became movement professionals working in political society, a leadership vacuum was created at the grassroots, and the vacant leadership positions were taken mostly by women and young people recruited to revitalize the movement. In a 2006 interview, one senior male leader pointed to the importance of new leaders with new agendas to “force us to recognize and integrate new struggles into the housing movement. . . . We don’t simply work on one specific struggle anymore, but on different issues, which is something that was difficult to imagine a few years ago.” This illustrates the enormous effect gender can have on social movement dynamics (Zemlinskaya, 2010).

A vital change took place in the mid-2000s when certain leaders assumed gender identities and began to question power relations (Verschuur, 2011: 187). Before then, grassroots and national leaders either rejected “women’s” issues or simply ignored them. For example, when Levy ¹² met with grassroots leaders of the movement organization Forum dos Cortiços (Slum Dwellers’ Forum) in 1998, the leaders present (both male and female) rejected a differentiated approach to housing issues, which they considered more a class issue. Their reaction revealed a lack of awareness of gender issues at that time, demonstrating the male bias that can underlie a social movement and until questioned, determine how people think and act and ultimately frame the movement’s priorities and actions (Bhattacharjya et al., 2013).

Finally, despite the fact that a majority of leaders at the grassroots were women, most leaders at the regional and national level were men. This implies that the movement was still organized around a gender division of labor in which men occupied the most visible and important positions associated with power (Kuumba, 2001: 15–16; Zemlinskaya, 2010) and influenced the goals and demands of the movement.

External Influences on the Housing Movement

Even when women are a majority in a social movement in both the leadership and membership, this does not necessarily guarantee that women’s rights and gender justice will be priorities (Bhattacharjya et al., 2013), and external intervention is therefore required. By far the most important external influence on the housing movement’s adoption of a “gender and cities” paradigm was the women’s movement represented by the World Women’s March. ¹³ The feminist movement in Brazil is an expression of a broader women’s social movement composed of three major currents: middle-class and mostly white feminists working in NGOs and academia, women in political parties, unions, and federations, and working-class women, in their roles as mothers, expressing their citizenship and becoming aware of their gender subordination (Vargas, 1992: 199). Given the inequitable social, gendered, and racial history of this country, Brazilian feminism associates the struggle over identity with the struggle against social inequality (Macaulay, 2000: 354; Maluf, 2011). During the 1990s, it was mainly influenced by feminist NGOs working with women leaders in popular movements (urban, rural, trade union, health, education, Afro-Brazilian, etc.) through projects financed by international agencies. Along with the women’s movement in the North, this movement struggles to create a united front to challenge patriarchal attitudes, institutions, and practices while representing a wide variety of interests of women from different class, racial, ethnic, and territorial backgrounds. Although most of the NGOs are led by upper-middle-class white women, since the 1990s there has been an effort to rethink the diversity of voices and claims within the movement and make it more representative of the Brazilian population. Some feminists have decided to return to the grassroots and promote “popular feminism.”

Beginning in the 2000s, the World Women’s March reestablished ties among the women’s movement and other social movements. A few of the São Paulo housing movement’s middle-level leaders sought out feminists from the World Women’s March to explore how to respond to the needs of low-income women and especially those who were heads of households. Together they developed claims and proposals to take into account their socioeconomic situation and to ensure them access to housing programs, which until then were aimed at households headed by men. One of the most important demands was that both husband and wife or a woman alone be allowed to become owners of public housing units. This was achieved through training sessions about gender practices organized by the World Women’s March first for the UMM gender coordinator and then by her for grassroots leaders, covering such topics as domestic violence in movement occupations, gender-specific housing claims, property titles, sexual diversity, and family types. This alliance and its joint activities were crucial to creating gender awareness among activists and ownership of intersectional struggles based on gender and class.

In addition, several urban NGOs, social movements, international cooperation agencies, and the networks they formed around urban reform ¹⁴ began to question the absence of public policies for addressing the interests and needs of low-income urban women in the area of housing. This new awareness of the differentiated needs that these women presented through their participation in the movement organizations was tied to the sensitivity of certain women leaders in movements and NGOs. For example, the Dutch agency Novib organized a seminar on gender, housing, and their relations in the urban context in 2001, and the British agency Oxfam organized a seminar on the feminist agenda for the city in 2005. In 2003 the Urban Reform Forum published a bulletin on gender, urban reform, and the national conference on cities, and the Brazilian NGO Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional (Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance—FASE) organized a workshop on urban policies and gender. All of these initiatives, which involved dozens of civil society actors, led to the construction of a new paradigm called “gender and cities” that recognized that women made up the majority of the low-income population in need of housing and that public policy addressing this differential need was lacking. This alliance also demonstrated the influence of global forces such as the international cooperation agencies funding Brazilian NGOs and the World Women’s March, which originated in Montreal.

Gendered Practices and Actions within the Movement

In movement discourse, the concepts of “women” and “gender” are often interchangeable. Members speak of “gender” even though in practice they often mean primarily “women.” In some instances, they speak of “women and housing,” while in others they talk about a “differentiated perspective” that invokes gender. In 2008 the UMM created a gender sector with the goal of analyzing the participation of women and men in the movement’s governance structures and developing proposals that took into account the differentiated situation of women in terms of housing. The activist responsible for this sector also participated in the World Women’s March and had the dual responsibility of creating gender awareness within the movement and mobilizing low-income women for the WWM’s activities. She took the initiative to affiliate the organization with the international network Women and Habitat in 2010. She also organized training for grassroots women leaders of the movement and adopted a gender-analysis perspective so that women leaders could recognize their collective interests and acquire the tools to turn them into gendered claims. After years of training sessions for movement leaders and for activists participating in city councils and conferences (in collaboration with the Urban Reform Forum), several activists systematically identified different forms of discrimination against women, such as inequalities in the sexual division of labor within the movement, domestic violence, and the difficulty of including women in decision making in both the private and the public sphere. The gender sector understands gender equality as a genuine priority rather than a response to momentary issues (Bhattacharjya et al., 2013).

Important progress was made in 2011 when the UMM elected 48 percent of women to its state coordinating committee, a great improvement over the 30 percent previously achieved. The organization is still working to increase the number of women leaders at the national level and has achieved parity in the city conferences. At certain moments, movement leaders managed to express the issue of housing as a gendered claim through intersectional struggles based on gender and class. One good example occurred on March 8, 2012, when several social movement organizations organized building occupations involving multiple overlapping motivations and identities.

These proposals and activities around gender and housing were not always welcome within the movement. The subject was not considered as important as others, and it was difficult for the gender-sector coordinator to get the other activists to take it seriously. It was placed last on the agenda of weekly meetings and did not receive the same investment of resources as other issues. An interview with an important female movement leader exposed her doubts about including gender in meeting agendas. “There is so much to discuss and decide on, so many urgent issues, that I think the women’s stuff should be talked about elsewhere.” There is still tension with regard to issues of gender inequality and class-based material struggle (Bhattacharjya et al., 2013). In addition, when our field research took place the term “feminist” remained contentious and stigmatized (Walby, 2011: 3), and there were significant difficulties in talking about feminism. Despite gender awareness and empowerment, gendered identity claims are not used as the basis for the movement. Although the common thread is the politicization of their lived experience as poor urban women (Alvarez, 1990: 53), leaders and members do not identify themselves as feminists or adopt a feminist agenda.

Gendering Housing Policies

In the context of a democratic transition and the decentralization of the state during the late 1980s, the housing movement negotiated and actively participated in the development and implementation of housing programs. Various municipal and state governments recognized the legitimacy of this movement and its organizations, allocating public resources to activities involving state–civil-society collaboration. ¹⁵ Along with other civil society actors, it began introducing its gendered claims at the municipal level. Through the São Paulo municipal council member Nabil Bonduki in 2003, the movement demanded that municipal public housing programs prioritize women. As a result, Municipal Law 13.770/2004 included measures favoring the training of women in community housing projects and stipulating that these programs give preference to women and that contracts and financial arrangements be made in the name of women notwithstanding their contribution to family income or their marital status. It also stipulated that the municipality pay special attention to women victims of violence and older and disabled women (Calió and Mendes, 2005: 180). During the same period, the UMM negotiated new criteria for defining a family unit with the state government of São Paulo and its agency responsible for low-cost housing. These new criteria reflected different types of families (single-parent, recomposed) and the right of women to have housing units in their own names. Since then, this agency has assigned public housing in the names of both married and single women.

The national housing movement of which the São Paulo movement is a member was able to influence public policy on housing at a national level through governance structures implemented during the first two terms of the PT government (2003–2010). In 2003 the federal government executive, in addition to creating both a Ministry of Cities and a Special Secretariat of Public Policy for Women, held national public policy conferences on women’s and urban issues in which social movements and civil society networks created a greater awareness of gender-specific problems, proposed public policies to address them, and questioned the absence of gender equity in participatory democracy. This happened gradually as housing movement activists began reflecting on the issue of gender and urban public housing in 2005. Through their participation, they managed to place the issue of affordable urban housing on the agenda of the second Conference on Women’s Policies in 2008.

The housing movement and the Urban Reform Forum network of which it is a member began pressuring the National Secretariat of Housing in 2004 to develop a gender analysis of federally sponsored housing programs. It also pressured the Ministry of Cities to rethink the composition of its National Council on Housing, ¹⁶ which was predominantly male, and recognize the need for gender parity. As a result, during the second National Conference on Cities in 2005, the principle of gender parity was adopted and the issue of women and cities was added to the agenda. In 2006 the Ministry of Cities adopted Resolution 004/06, of which Article 3 gives priority to low-income families with women heads of household in its public housing programs. In 2007, during the third National Conference on Cities, movement activists proposed that joint property titles be given when distributing public housing to low-income families so that women would be protected against losing their homes in the case of separation and divorce and that in this event they would continue to have access to credit (Verschuur, 2011: 197). In 2008, the construction of housing units for low-income families was included in the ambitious federal housing program Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House, My Life). The same year, the National Council on Housing organized a seminar on gender and racial issues that proposed the adoption of specific measures incorporating gender and race into the urban public policy agenda. Movement leaders also pressured the National Council of Cities to create a policy that allocates 10 percent of public housing to women victims of domestic violence.

Although the housing movement and its civil society partners managed to influence certain aspects of governments’ public programs on housing, they failed to transform government policy. The blockage occurred when the movement failed to mobilize against the policies of PT governments at both the federal level (2003–present) and the municipal level (2001–2004). Movement leaders were participating directly or indirectly in these governments, and these governments had in fact attended to some of the movement’s claims. In addition, they wanted to avoid weakening their political allies, who were facing opponents that in the past had used violence to repress social movements (Levy, 2012). Although the movement’s proximity to the PT helped it advance some programs, the PT governments and the right-wing parties with which they were allied still openly favored market-based urban policies that stimulated economic growth. ¹⁷

The biggest challenge to the movement when facing a right-wing government is that the government does not see social housing as a necessity and therefore does not invest in it. There is a historical tendency for governments to look to the market to regulate supply and demand in housing, explicitly employing a neoliberal urban model. PT governments give lip service to social housing but hand over important ministries such as the Ministry of Cities and the city of São Paulo’s Secretariat of Housing to their right-wing party allies, who do not share the housing movement’s idea of a “right to the city.” The housing movement will have to be bolder in its actions and more strategic in coordinating massive occupations like those of the late 1990s to pressure various levels of government. As it stands, this movement declines to take contention to a more transgressive level in order not to destabilize its allies. Although it does organize occupations and public demonstrations, they are restrained and limited in duration.

Conclusion

Women’s participation in mixed social movements has been understudied. In Brazil as elsewhere, women have always participated in social movements but not often as leaders. As in the São Paulo housing movement, their participation often began with issues tied to the responsibilities of their social roles as mothers, caregivers, and spouses (Hainard and Verschuur, 2001). This changed with the São Paulo housing movement as women grassroots leaders transitioned from organizational tasks to more public decision-making roles. However, having a majority of women in leadership positions and at the grassroots does not guarantee a feminist identity or the adoption of a feminist agenda. Feminists still need to provide training to both male and female activists in order to identify inequalities and gender-related discrimination and develop strategies to reduce disparities. Horizontal intersectional alliances between mixed movements and the women’s movement are also required to identify gender-specific situations and develop public policy proposals (Beckwith, 2007: 325).These linkages must transcend sectorial interests and explore new forms of collaboration that can help social movements transform themselves and contribute to political institutional changes and public policies. ¹⁸ Democratic participatory spaces engineered by the PT federal government facilitated the institutionalization of policies that address long-standing urban and gender inequalities.

When possible, collaboration between different social movements and between state and civil society actors helps to push forward innovative public policy. In this case, gender awareness in the movement and in civil society networks coupled with spaces of democratic participation led to the possibility of a gender analysis of the needs of the population and the adaptation of public policies to correct discrimination. These alliances among social and political actors proved important for policy makers to understand that women do not experience the city the same way as men.

Finally, although the progress made by this social movement is important to advancing gender equality, social justice, and democracy through policy change involving access to housing, it has not led to more structural changes involving power relations with different state and market actors, nor has it provoked broad and durable systemic changes. ¹⁹ The case of the São Paulo housing movement demonstrates this movement’s real but limited influence within the asymmetrical power relations of Brazilian political society.