Protests for Women's Rights and against the Bolsonaro Administration

Abstract

A review of the agendas of three recent Brazilian protests in defense of women's rights—#EleNão, International Women's Day, and the March of the Margaridas—and of the Bolsonaro government’s actions regarding women’s rights shows that confrontation is manifested on both sides. In a sense, the protests followed and encouraged the confrontation strategies used by the government.

Uma revisão das agendas de três recentes protestos brasileiros em defesa dos direitos das mulheres – #EleNão, Dia Internacional da Mulher e Marcha das Margaridas – e das ações do governo Bolsonaro em relação aos direitos das mulheres mostra que o confronto se manifesta em ambos os lados. De certa forma, os protestos acompanharam e estimularam as estratégias de enfrentamento utilizadas pelo governo.

Keywords

Protests Social movements Feminist movements Bolsonaro government Political confrontation

Brazil was led by presidents from the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party—PT) for almost 14 years (from 2003 to 2010 with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and from 2011 to mid-2016 with Dilma Rousseff). In 2016, before completing her second term, Dilma Rousseff was removed from office after a controversial impeachment process. Michel Temer (of the Partido Movimento Democrático Brasileiro [Brazilian Democratic Movement Party—PMDB, later named the MDB, a party on the right end of the political spectrum), her vice president, replaced her and was president from 2016 to 2018. Before the 2018 elections, the candidate with the most votes, former President Lula, was arrested on charges of passive corruption and money laundering. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro (who does not belong to any party) was elected president by the Partido Social Liberal (Social Liberal Party—PSL), marking the rise of a government that resisted the participation and the agendas of movements for social advance such as feminism.

The rise of the political project led by Bolsonaro did not happen without resistance. Large protests, some of them led by activists and feminist social movements, among them the #EleNão (Not Him), were held in September 2018 in opposition to Bolsonaro's election. The protest of March 8, 2019, on International Women's Day, and the March of the Margaridas in August 2019 brought together thousands of working women in the federal capital. Despite the size and importance of these protests, since they were recent there is still no literature on them, but some knowledge about the cycles of the past decade has accumulated. The most emblematic ones were the June Days of 2013, when thousands of Brazilians protested with various agendas (Alonso and Mische, 2016; Purdy, 2017; Tatagiba and Galvão, 2019).

Several of these protests were marked by episodes of gender-based violence and by “attempts to focus on these violent practices at the very heart of the protests” (Sarmento, Reis, and Mendonça, 2017: 93). Although gender was not central to this cycle of protests, the defense of women's rights was a recurring issue, along with complaints addressed to the government and the political system and themes such as salary and working and living conditions (Tatagiba and Galvão, 2019). The Brazilian media called the strong defense of feminist agendas in major street protests or on social media the “Feminist Spring in Brazil” (Piscitelli, 2017). As is highlighted by Tatagiba and Galvão (2019), these protests produced changes in the political situation, generating new political opportunities that included a diverse set of actors and consolidating an environment of instability that contributed to Rousseff’s impeachment. Promoted by this cycle, protests after the June Days began to support the political project led by the current president (Almeida, 2019).

Protests did not happen only in Brazil. In mid-2010 major protests took place in other parts of the world, such as the Tahir Square Days in Egypt, Occupy Wall Street in the United States, and the Indignados protest in Spain (Glasius and Pleyers, 2013). Feminist protests also occurred elsewhere. On the Internet, several women denounced episodes of harassment, including being harassed by celebrities, in a movement called #Yotambién in Argentina in reference to the North American #MeToo. In 2016 the #Miprimeroacoso (MyFirstHarassment) campaign, inspired by the Brazilian hashtag against harassment, was launched in Mexico (Agência Patrícia Galvão, 2018). In 2015, there was a protest in Argentina calling for an end to violence against women, Ni Una Menos (Not One Woman Less), that involved more than 200,000 people and had an impact on other Latin American countries such as Chile and Brazil (Lima-Lopes and Gabardo, 2019: 803).

To understand the recent protests of women in Brazil, we adopted the theory of political confrontation. According to McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2009: 11), the exponents of this theory, "the political confrontation begins when, collectively, people make claims to other people whose interests would be affected if they were solved." They argue that the state and its leaders must be considered in these analyses, since they are targets of confrontations and create opportunities for them to occur. Social movements use shared repertoires that “are an expression of the historical and current interaction between them and their opponents” (24). In addition to acting according to those repertoires, they modify them, changing the opportunity structures “mainly by contributing to changes in the known ways of presenting claims, in the types of repression and facilitation by the authorities and established political identities" (27). Drawing on this framework of political confrontation, this paper answers the question “How have feminist movements and their agendas been changing in line with the political context?” by examining the positions of the Bolsonaro government in relation to women's rights and the agendas of protests in favor of these rights.

Our research is qualitative and descriptive. Data pertinent to the guidelines and position of the Bolsonaro government were collected from the main Brazilian press, especially Folha de São Paulo, from August to October 2019. To determine the agendas of the protests that responded to Bolsonaro's provocations, three protests in favor of women's rights organized in a political context of the current president's rise were chosen: #EleNão, on September 29, 2018, between the first and the second round of the presidential elections in Brazil; the protests on March 8, 2019, International Women's Day; and the March of the Margaridas in August 2019 in Brasília. The agendas of these protests were collected between August and October 2019 from documents and interviews produced by their organizers.¹

The analysis of protest events generally produces a catalog commonly extracted from newspapers, although more recently other sources are being used (Tatagiba and Galvão, 2019). This analysis allows capturing the significance of recent phenomena in a comparative way, but it has its limitations. One is the selectivity of the sources consulted. In this work, for example, the protests' agendas were studied in terms of the information provided by the social movements and feminist activists themselves, but the speeches of activists are produced precisely to reproduce and provoke even more revolt against the government. At the same time, it is important to analyze the speeches that guide the protests, even if they are not sources of truth, because they reflect and constitute social practices.

In addition to interacting with the literature on social movements and protests, the work contributes to feminist studies. The writings of so-called black feminists such as Angela Davis and Kimberlé Crenshaw demonstrate the need for black women to have a voice, both to expose their difficulties and to propose actions to combat them. Davis (2016), for example, teaches about the legacies of colonization and the possibility of self-determination for black women. Latin American feminists (Bidaseca, 2011; Segato, 2013) have also drawn attention to the need for thought and action that go beyond the colonial legacy. From this perspective, gender inequalities are also related to the colonial past and the imposition of a type of feminism that is detached from the realities of Latin American and indigenous peoples. One of the aims of this work is to describe Brazilian feminist struggles in their own terms.

Changes in Government Guidelines on Women's Rights

Under the Bolsonaro government, Brazil is facing a different political cycle from the previous one. Luís Inácio Lula da Silva of the PT was elected president in 2002 and reelected in 2006. The PT remained in power with the election of Dilma Rousseff in 2010, who was also reelected in 2014. The PT administrations brought social movements closer to the state in at least two ways. The first was the expansion of participatory bodies in which members of civil society developed public policy guidelines with the government. In the area of policies for women, these conferences legitimized demands for gender equity, especially in transforming into “government issues” topics that had traditionally been seen as intimate and private matters (Santos, Perez, and Szwako, 2017). The second was choosing leaders of social movements for central positions in the federal bureaucracy, a phenomenon called “state activism” (Cayres, 2017; Pires and Vaz, 2014) or, when it involved the appointment of feminists, “state feminism” (Bohn, 2010; Matos and Paradis, 2014). The increase in state activism was related to the fact that the PT had social movement activists on its staff in addition to providing for participation as one of its management guidelines. The interactions between social movements and the state in PT administrations resulted in important legislative advances for women's rights, such as the approval of the Maria da Penha Law against domestic gender violence and the Feminicide Law that made the murder of women a crime. Another result was the formulation of public policies more in tune with the demands of social movements (Santos, Perez, and Szwako, 2017).

The direction of the Brazilian government has changed substantially in recent years. Starting with the government of Michel Temer, a new right has emerged in Brazil whose administrative results have produced an “armored democracy.” According to Goldstein (2019: 245), this involves

the construction of a “leftist” enemy to justify the repression of activists and social movements, preserving a loyal base and manipulating anger if no economic gains are obtained; a political partisan role for judicial powers with strong interference from lobbying and military advisers; a weak democracy without political participation; the establishment of an order favorable to the market against the platform voted by the majority of Brazilians in the 2014 elections; right-wing advances in public discourse that have restructured culture and political analyses; and the accession of a far-right candidate to the Presidency for the first time since the re-democratization began in 1985.

This candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected in 2018 and assumed “the guidelines of traditions . . . by pleasing the Christian forces of the National Congress” (Almeida, 2019: 200). Again according to Goldstein (2019: 257), this new right-wing order cannot be called a dictatorship, but it is a democracy whose potential has been mutilated.

Bolsonaro's administration is very different from those of the PT, especially with regard to women's rights. The National Secretariat for the Rights of Women, which in most PT governments had the status of a ministry with its own staff and budget, was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights. The name given to the new ministry reveals the direction of Bolsonaro’s government: women appear next to the family. The educator, lawyer, and evangelical pastor Damares Alves, appointed to lead the ministry, caused controversy by posting a video on the Internet shortly after Bolsonaro’s victory claiming that “the new era has begun” and that from then on “boys would wear blue and girls pink” (Pains, 2019). The minister's statement went against the basic guidelines of feminist movements: equal rights for men and women.

Even before the election, Bolsonaro had argued that women should not receive the same salaries as men even if they performed the same function (Bragon, 2018). He also showed contempt for women when he said in 2017 that he had five children, “four boys, and for the fifth one I was weak and a girl was born” (Folha de São Paulo, April 6, 2017). In 2018, Bolsonaro's vice president, Hamilton Mourão, told Folha de São Paulo that families without "father and grandfather" and with "mother and grandmother" were "factories of misfits" who entered the drug trade, reaffirming an alleged advantage of having men in Brazilian homes (Gielow, 2018). These positions reveal that the governors of Brazil consider women inferior to men.

This agenda was central to Bolsonaro's candidacy. In particular, Alves was a pioneer in denouncing, in a sermon at the First Baptist Church in 2013, the supposed existence of textbooks “teaching homosexuality.” Bolsonaro took the story to Jornal Nacional in 2018, accusing the PT of “promoting homosexuality” through booklets distributed in schools (Mesquita, 2019). The fight against so-called gender ideology has become one of the main concerns of the president and his supporters. For them, there is a movement orchestrated by teachers, universities, and schools dedicated especially to "teaching" and "encouraging" boys and girls to be homosexuals rather than playing their supposedly natural gender roles. Therefore, the discussion of gender must be prohibited in schools and other educational spaces. In this the Bolsonaro administration defends bills that follow the guidelines of the Escola Sem Partido (School Without Party) movement, which emerged as a reaction to a supposed instrumentalization of teaching for ideological, partisan, and electoral purposes. To end the expression of teachers’ opinions in the classroom, Bolsonaro supporters advocated the supposed impartiality and neutrality of teachers and argued that if teachers could not express opinions on politics, they could not discuss gender and feminism.

Combating the discussion of gender issues is one of the central charges of the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights. In this connection, it dissolved six committees in 2019, including those on gender and diversity and inclusion, which had acted to curb gender-based violence and promote sexual equality and diversity within the ministry. Decree 10.112 of November 12, 2019, on the Safe and Protected Woman program eliminated the word “gender” that occurred in previous regulations. Specifically, the section “gender mainstreaming in public policies” was changed to “mainstreaming women's rights in public policies.” By failing to mention gender-based violence, the decree ended up restricting rights for cis women (women who identify with their biological gender). The decree also did not regulate the prevention policies that are fundamental in combating the various forms of violence against women.

Even in other areas of the government, censorship concerning gender has been taking place. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose minister is Ernesto Araújo, is guiding Brazilian diplomats to emphasize only the “traditional definition” of biological sex in multilateral international organizations (Folha de São Paulo, July 26, 2019). Law 13.931, of December 10, 2019, which provided for compulsory notification of the police by the health services in cases of suspected violence against women, was vetoed by the president as not in the public interest, but the veto was rejected by the Congress. Initiatives like this demonstrate the focus on combating physical violence against women, but, as Segato (2013) points out, violence plays a fundamental role in maintaining the gender order and is not a problem in a society that intends to remain sexist. Thus the focus of the Bolsonaro government on fighting gender-based violence loses significance because the government opposes the discussion on gender-related inequalities. As long as there are such inequalities, violence in its various forms will continue to exist.

Other Bolsonaro government decisions do not directly address gender issues but implicitly produce a loss of rights for women. One of the most important decisions was the 2019 pension reform, which required women to be at least 62 years old rather than only 60 to retire. The Bolsonaro government has also been fighting with the social movements on the issue of rights. Decree 9.759 of April 11, 2019, terminates the existence of all federal collegiate bodies (councils, committees, commissions, groups, boards, teams, tables, forums, halls) that are not regulated by law. It eliminates at least 34 councils, including the one for promoting LGBT rights.

The attempts of the Bolsonaro administration to limit women's rights and its costly discussions with feminist movements reveal the conservative reaction against advances in women's rights. According to Jacira Melo, the executive director of the Agência Patrícia Galvão (2015), the suppression of gender debate represents “a great risk that might bring about an immense setback. To face violence against women, it is necessary to work on a relationship of mutual respect and show that gender inequality is unfair.” The fight against discussion of gender issues occurs in a context of increasing violence against women and indexes that place Brazil as one of the worst countries for women to live in, given the various forms of violence to which they are subjected. According to data from the 2015 violence map (Waiselfisz, 2015: 11), “between 1980 and 2013, at an increasing rate over time both in number and in rates, a total of 106,093 women died victims of homicide,” and "only El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala (three Latin American countries) and the Russian Federation show rates higher than those of Brazil" (27).

One of the emblematic recent cases of violence against women in Brazil was the murder of the Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018. Franco was a sociologist affiliated with the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Freedom Party—PSOL) and defended feminism and human rights. She also criticized the federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro and the military police and reported several cases of abuse of authority by the police against residents of poor communities. Two policemen were arrested on charges of having killed her in 2019, but it is not yet known who ordered her death. Her death was more than murder; it was an attempt to annihilate the ideals she espoused.

Women's Protests against the Bolsonaro Government

Civil society has reacted to the project led by Bolsonaro, especially in its relation to women's rights, in several ways. One of them is protests. The first of these is known for its hashtag on the social media, #EleNão (Not Him). It took place on September 29, 2018, and its main objective was to defeat Bolsonaro's candidacy for the presidency. Dozens of Brazilian cities held protests against Bolsonaro, bringing more than 100,000 women onto the streets. There were also events in cities such as New York, Lisbon, Paris, and London.

The protests were impressive in their number of participants. Céli Regina Jardim Pinto, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, told the BBC (Rossi, Carneiro, and Gragnani, 2018) that the #EleNão protest was the largest demonstration of women in the history of the country. The group of women that called for the protests published the manifesto Democracia Sim (Democracy Yes), a detailed list of the reasons Brazilian women resisted Bolsonaro. Among the main reasons were his support for labor reform, his defense of a security model that would encourage the extermination of black youth, his prejudice against LGBTs, his misogyny, and the fear of a return to military dictatorship.

The difference of these protests from others was in their form of organization; they arose from an initiative of digital media activists. The hashtag #EleNão was created by the publicist Ludimilla Teixeira after conversations with her friends about what could be done in the face of the increasing support for Bolsonaro. In an interview with El País (Oliveira, 2018) she said: "I noticed in my own networks many friends commenting and criticizing these positions [of Bolsonaro], so we decided to unite all these women and create a political event to show that a large part of the population was not in favor of this candidacy." With the increasing use of the hashtag #EleNão as a form of virtual protest, the activists created a group on Facebook called Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro (Women United Against Bolsonaro) that managed to bring together 3.8 million women (Cafardo, 2018). The planning of the protests against Bolsonaro's candidacy took place on its page. Another difference was the organizers' refusal to be linked to political parties. The group's creator herself declared that she had never participated actively in the feminist movement or joined any political party (Cafardo, 2018). The group’s manifesto highlights its diversity: “We vote for different people and parties. We defend distinct causes, ideas, and projects.” This rejection of political parties was expressed in the June Days (Tatagiba, 2014; Tatagiba and Galvão, 2019) and can be traced to the autonomous repertoire described by Alonso and Mische (2016).

The second set of protests took place on March 8, 2019, International Women's Day. Because they were organized locally, these demonstrations were varied. In addition to the protests, especially in big state capitals, there were public classes, ceremonies, and other forms of protest. A march with the slogan “Women against Bolsonaro! Cheers for Marielle, in Defense of Welfare, Democracy and Rights” brought together more than 80,000 people on the Avenida Paulista in São Paulo and 30,000 in Rio de Janeiro. Women also organized demonstrations in other parts of Brazil.

The protests' varied agendas were generally opposed to the “Social Security reform proposal, to the increase of militarization, to the criminalization of social movements, to the policy of 'surrendering' natural resources that affects national sovereignty, . . . sexism, gender violence, inequality, racism, and prejudice against LGBT people” (CUT, 2019). The death of Marielle Franco was remembered in several events, and the demonstrations also exposed the advance of the conservative wave, the attacks on democracy, and the escalation of violence against women (World March of Women, 2019a). The agendas of these protests include opposition to physical violence against women and point to the perception that violence and oppression are linked to social class, race/color/ethnicity, and sexual orientation—what is known as “intersectionality” (Rios, Perez, and Ricoldi, 2018). Considered by the World March of Women as responsible for opening “the calendar of mass protests against the reforms and the withdrawal of rights proposed by the government of Jair Bolsonaro,” the protests held on dates close to March 8 included, in addition to the traditional defense of women's rights, criticisms of the current government.

Criticism of the new project in Brazil had been expressed in previous protests on International Women's Day. In 2017 they called for the forcing out of the interim president Michel Temer, but the central agenda was opposition to pension reform (World March of Women, 2017). In 2018, the March 8 protests were marked by demonstrations in favor of democracy and retirement (World March of Women, 2018), and in the protests of 2019 the criticism against Bolsonaro stood out. Sônia Coelho of the national leadership of the World March of Women declared that “the meaning of this March 8 [2019] was to show that women continue to resist Bolsonaro, against conservatism and fundamentally against the pension reform that will penalize poor black women more. In this sense, the protests fulfilled their objective, even bringing back the people who participated in #EleNão” (World March of Women, 2019a). In other words, the protests of 2017 and 2018 were mainly against projects considered negative for the working class, especially women, but in 2019 the target was Bolsonaro and the entire political project that he represented.

Every year social movements participate in the organization of the March 8 protests in several cities in Brazil and elsewhere in the world, and some events are convened by feminist activists via the social media, as was the event created on Facebook in São Paulo called the Movimento 8 de Março (Eighth of March Movement). According to Morgans (2018), radical social movements face problems when they try to get involved in cyberspace, which is dominated by hegemonic actors, but this protest showed that the social media, despite their limitations, can strengthen protests organized by social movements in a synergy between virtual space and the movement's militancy.

A third protest was the March of the Margaridas in Brasília in August 2019, which involved more than 100,000 women from all over Brazil (World March of Women, 2019b). Its organization was carried out by the Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture—CONTAG) in partnership with feminist and working women’s movements, unions, and international organizations such as the World March of Women, the Articulação de Mulheres Brasileiras (Brazilian Women’s Network—AMB), and the União de Mulheres Brasileiras (Brazilian Women’s Union—UBM). In 2019, the First March of Indigenous Women joined the March of the Margaridas, bringing together 3,000 women who camped in Brasília starting on August 9. The protest has taken place every four years since 2000 and is considered by its organizers the largest action by women in Latin America.

The March of the Margaridas first took place in August 2000 and had as its slogan "2,000 Reasons to March: Against Hunger, Poverty, and Sexist Violence." With Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the government, the march focused on the shortcomings of the country's rural development model and the impact of neoliberalism on the lives of rural workers. This was the first time in history that the Brazilian government had spent time on the negotiation of a specific agenda for rural workers (Observatório Marcha das Margaridas, 2019). In August 2003, at the beginning of the first Lula administration, rural women workers conducted the second March of the Margaridas with a similar agenda (“2,003 Reasons to March against Hunger, Poverty, and Sexist Violence”). The march in 2007 maintained the sense of the slogan of the previous one but also, because of the close relationship between social movements and the PT, focused on rights and the reduction of social inequalities. In 2011 the slogan was “2,011 Reasons to March for Sustainable Development with Justice, Autonomy, Equality, and Freedom,” and in 2015 it was “The Margaridas Are Still Marching for Sustainable Development with Democracy, Justice, Autonomy, Equality, and Freedom,” the addition of “Democracy” being a clear response to the threat of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. In 2019, under the Bolsonaro government, the sixth March of the Margaridas was labeled "Margaridas in the Struggle for a Brazil with Popular Sovereignty, Democracy, Justice, Equality, and Freedom from Violence." The sovereignty of the people faced with a government resistant to conversation with the social movements that defend the expansion of rights became one of the motives of the protests.

Between 2000 and 2015, the march leadership had prepared guidelines addressed to the state with a view to their negotiation that included demands for access to land by women, credit, and social policies for the countryside such as health, education, and quality housing. In 2019 it chose not to draw up a political agenda for the state, understanding that the current government would not negotiate with it. As an alternative, it launched a political platform in which the March’s agenda was presented. According to Mazé Morais of the CONTAG, “You cannot negotiate with a government that takes away rights. For this reason, this year we presented an agenda with the model of society defended by women” (Peres, 2019).

In 2019 the March “became a kind of exposure, a demarcation of positions, and, above all, a resistance” (Morais, 2019). In other words, in the PT governments before Bolsonaro, “the March presented a negotiating agenda that was able to contribute to the conquest of rights and public policies” (World March of Women, 2019b). In 2019, in its political platform, it denounced “the violence we are suffering, the increase in social inequalities, based on class, gender, and race relations, the deconstructions and violations of rights, the cut in the budget for social assistance, health, education, housing, and bonuses for food production . . . and the dismantling of the democratic rule of law.” The agenda of the protest was also against Bolsonaro and some of his projects, such as pension reform (considered an attack on the rights of workers, especially women), flexibilization policies for pesticides, and the opening up for exploitation of the land of indigenous peoples and protected areas. More than the defense of women, the March of the Margaridas called for the return of rights for all workers. At the end of the event, Sônia Coelho declared: “That's what we're fighting for. Let's go back to every corner of this country, to each community, each union, each group of women, and say, 'We want you to leave, Bolsonaro, leave!'” (World March of Women, 2019b). The protest quickly turned into a criticism of the Bolsonaro government.

It is clear from the consideration of the protests' guidelines that various social movements and activists favoring women's rights chose their repertoires from among the possibilities for reconstructing public policies of a social nature and that confrontation was one of those repertoires. As explained by Tarrow (2012), repertoires are chosen according to the group's expectations based on a systematic analysis of possible paths and shared experiences. In this sense, they are part of a broader system of conflict and cooperation: while groups may cooperate with the state, they may also participate in conflictive processes in order to guide their demands in the political arena. In the case of the protests analyzed, the criticism of Bolsonaro’s government for the reduction of women's rights made their guidelines different from those of the protests under PT governments. The difference reflects changes both in the political situation and in the confrontation engendered by social movements. In a government that now resists democratic ideals, protests began to defend the application of laws, including the right to speak out.

In short, the Brazilian political cycle and with it the repertoires and strategies of social movements and their manifestations have changed. The strategy of women's struggles is currently based on confrontation, just as confrontation is the strategy of the Bolsonaro government. For Tarrow (2009), the political confrontation emerges in a socio-historical context related to its opportunity structure. Thus repertoires are chosen as processes occur in the political, economic, cultural, and social fields. In the protests analyzed here, when governments become more vulnerable to social participation it is possible to present demands to the bureaucratic apparatus, either by the inclusion of militants in the government structure or via institutional channels of social participation. In the PT’s governments, “social movements and state actors creatively experienced . . . historical patterns of state-society interaction and reinterpreted communication and negotiation processes in innovative ways” (Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba, 2014: 326). Since 2016, however, feminist movements have no longer relied on closeness to the state, considerably reducing their chances of influencing public policies. They have had to recreate repertoires to because they have faced “disrespect with triggered gender biases” (Sarmento, Reis, and Mendonca, 2017: 109) in the institutional arena.

This study shows how social movements respond to and follow changes in the political cycle. This is not a novelty—the theory of political confrontation has already demonstrated the interactions between social movements and the state—but that theory has been used in Brazil mainly to explain the interactions between social movements and the state under the PT. Our work shows how these relations are being applied under the current government. In Bolsonaro's Brazil, the confrontation is both between social movements and within the government.

This study also shows the strength of feminist movements in large protests that oppose the conservative agenda of the Bolsonaro government. This is significant for understanding the role of women in contemporary societies. Even in different systems of domination (colonialism, sexism, racism, etc.), some of them have favored a democratic agenda, thus assuming feminist ideals such as that women should not have a subordinate role—that they should be key actors of historical change.

Final Considerations

After a certain advance (although with restrictions) in the feminist agenda of the PT’s governments, there is now a conservative reaction. In response, one of the strategies of the feminist social movements has been street protests criticizing Bolsonaro and the elimination of rights due to his leadership. To reflect on this context, this study has analyzed the guidelines for protests in favor of women's rights and against the Bolsonaro administration. It has shown the emphasis of the confrontation in protests and in statements and guidelines of the Bolsonaro government in relation to feminist ideals. In this sense, the protests followed and encouraged the confrontation strategies used by the government, and therefore to understand the social movements and protests it is necessary to analyze the strategies of the state, because they are interrelated.

The study also describes how the agendas of protests have changed according to the political context, assuming, in addition to their confrontational nature, the very defense of democracy. What is at stake is no longer the expansion of rights but the preservation of a regime in which discussing rights is feasible. However, it is necessary to express some reservations. First, the protests existed even before Bolsonaro. Second, the stakes in the conflicts that are part of the agendas of the protest do not mean the abandonment of institutional channels. The strategies of social movements are multiple, and therefore researchers should focus on the forms that have become the most prominent, such as protests, without disregarding strategies such as participation and representation. It is by adopting a broader perspective that we will be able to understand and foster the different types of resistance of civil society.

Footnotes

Notes

Olivia Cristina Perez is an adjunct professor in the Master’s program in political science and the doctoral program in public policy of the Universidade Federal de Piauí. Joana Tereza Vaz de Moura is an associate professor in the graduate program in urban and regional studies at the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Norte. Caroline Bandeira de Brito Melo is an assistant professor of law at the Facultade Differencial Integral Wyden. Patricia Fierro is an American Translators Association–certified translator living in Quito, Ecuador.

References

Abers

Rebecca

Serafim

Lizandra

Tatagiba

Luciana

2014. “Repertórios de interação Estado-sociedade em um Estado heterogêneo: a experiência na Era Lula.” Dados 57: 325–357.

Agência Patrícia Galvão 2015 “Feministas criticam ameaça de extinção da SPM, SEPPIR e SDH.” September 22. https://agenciapatriciagalvao.org.br/mulheres-de-olho/feministas-criticam-ameaca-de-extincao-da-spm-seppir-e-sdh/ (accessed October 17, 2019)

Agência Patrícia Galvão 2018 “No Brasil, agenda feminista começou antes do #METOO.” October 7. https://agenciapatriciagalvao.org.br/violencia/no-brasil-agenda-feminista-comecou-antes-do-metoo/ (accessed October 27, 2019).

Almeida

Ronaldo

2019 “Bolsonaro presidente: conservadorismo, evangelismo e a crise brasileira.” Novos Estudos CEBRAP 38 (May): 185–213.

Alonso

Angela

Mische

Ann

2016 “Changing repertoires and partisan ambivalence in the new Brazilian protests.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 36 (April): 144–159.

Bidaseca

Karina

2011 “Mujeres blancas buscando salvar a mujeres color café: desigualdad, colonialismo jurídico y feminismo postcolonial.” Andamios: Revista de Investigación Social 17: 61–89.

Bohn

Simone

2010 “Feminismo estatal sob a presidência Lula: o caso da Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres.” Revista Debates 4 (2) : 81–106.

Bragon

Ranier

2018 “Bolsonaro se diz vítima de notícias falsas, mas recorre a 'fakes' sobre seu próprio passado.” July 31. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/07/bolsonaro-se-diz-vitima-de-noticias-falsas-mas-recorre-a-fakes-sobre-seu-proprio-passado.shtml (accessed August 21, 2019).

Cafardo

Renata

2018 “‘Só acendi o fósforo no barril de pólvora,’ diz criadora de grupo contra Bolsonaro.” September 29. https://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/eleicoes,so-acendi-o-fosforo-no-barril-de-polvora-diz-criadora-de-grupo,70002524582. (accessed August 21, 2019).

10.

Cayres

Domitila

2017 “Ativismo institucional e interações Estado-movimentos sociais.” BIB 82 (September): 81–104.

11.

CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) 2019 “Mulheres saem às ruas no 8 de Março contra os retrocessos do governo Bolsonaro.” March 7. https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/8-de-marco-confira-lista-dos-atos-confirmados-em-todo-o-brasil-626e. (accessed August 21, 2019).

12.

Davis

Angela

2016 Mulheres, raça e classe. São Paulo: Boitempo.

13.

Gielow

Igor

2018 “Casa só com ‘mãe e avó’ é ‘fábrica de desajustados’ para tráfico, diz Mourão.” September 17. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/09/casa-so-com-mae-e-avo-e-fabrica-de-desajustados-para-trafico-diz-mourao.shtml (accessed August 21, 2019).

14.

Glasius

Marlies

Pleyers

Geoffrey

2013 “The global moment of 2011: democracy, social justice and dignity.” Development and Change 44: 547–567.

15.

Goldstein

Ariel

2019 “The new far-right in Brazil and the construction of a right-wing order.” Latin American Perspectives 46 (1): 245–262.

16.

Lima-Lopes

Rodrigo

Gabardo

Maristella

2019 “Ni una menos: a luta pelos direitos das mulheres na Argentina e suas representações no Facebook.” Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada 19: 801–824.

17.

Matos

Marlise

Paradis

Clarisse

2014 “Desafios à despatriarcalização do Estado brasileiro.” Cadernos Pagu 43 (July–December): 57–118.

18.

McAdam

Douglas

Tarrow

Sidney

Tilly

Charles

2009 “Para mapear o confronto político.” Lua Nova 76: 11–48.

19.

Mesquita

Sônia

2019 “Gênero e sexualidade (13): a bola está com Damares.” January 25. http://editoramanifesto.com.br/site/2019/01/25/genero-e-sexualidade-13-a-bola-esta-com-damares/ (accessed November 17, 2019).

20.

Morais

Karina

2019 “Marcha das Margaridas: resposta coletiva ao ódio e ao retrocesso.” August 19. https://marchamulheres.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/marcha-das-margaridas-resposta-coletiva-ao-odio-e-ao-retrocesso/ (accessed November 10, 2019).

21.

Morgans

Catherine

2018 “New media and the disillusion of Brazil’s radical left.” Latin American Perspectives 45 (1): 250–265.

22.

Observatório Marcha das Margaridas 2019 “Pautas das marchas.” http://transformatoriomargaridas.org.br/?page_id=243l (accessed August 21, 2019).

23.

Oliveira

Joana

2018 “Um milhão de mulheres contra Bolsonaro: a rejeição toma forma nas redes.” September 12. https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2018/09/12/actualidad/1536768048_321164.html (accessed November 15, 2019).

24.

Pains

Clarissa

2019 “‘Menino veste azul e menina veste rosa', diz Damares Alves em vídeo.” January 3. https://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/menino-veste-azul-menina-veste-rosa-diz-damares-alves-em-video-23343024 (accessed April 3, 2019).

25.

Peres

Christiane

2019 “Mais 100 mil na Marcha das Margaridas por direitos e contra Bolsonaro.” August 14. http://www.vermelho.org.br/noticia/322761-1 (accessed August 21, 2019).

26.

Pires

Roberto

Vaz

Alexandre

2014 “Para além da participação: interfaces socioestatais no governo federal.” Lua Nova 93: 61–91.

27.

Piscitelli

Adriana

2017 “ ‘#queroviajarsozinhasemmedo’: novos registros das articulações entre gênero, sexualidade e violência no Brasil.” Cadernos Pagu 50 (July).

28.

Purdy

Sean

2017 “Brazil’s June Days of 2013: mass protest, class, and the left.” Latin American Perspectives 46 (2): 15–36.

29.

Rios

Flávia

Perez

Olivia

Ricoldi

Arlene

2018 “Interseccionalidade nas mobilizações do Brasil contemporâneo.” Lutas Sociais 22: 36–51.

30.

Rossi

Amanda

Perez

Olivia

Ricoldi

Arlene

2018 “#EleNão: a manifestação histórica liderada por mulheres no Brasil vista por quatro ângulos.” September 30. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-45700013. (accessed November 13, 2019).

31.

Santos

Gustavo

Perez

Olivia Cristina

Szwako

José

2017 “Gêneros da participação: refletindo sobre limites e possibilidades da participação social na promoção da equidade de gênero e da diversidade sexual em âmbito estatal.” Estudos de Sociologia (UFPE) 23: 19–74.

32.

Sarmento

Rayza

Reis

Stephanie

Mendonça

Ricardo

2017 “As jornadas de junho no Brasil e a questão de gênero: as idas e vindas da luta por justiça.” Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política 22 (January–April): 93–128.

33.

Segato

Rita Laura

2013 La escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.

34.

Tarrow

Sidney

2009 O poder em movimento: Movimentos sociais e confronto político. Petrópolis: Vozes.

35.

Tarrow

Sidney

2012 Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

36.

Tatagiba

Luciana

2014 “1984, 1992 e 2013: sobre ciclos de protestos e democracia no Brasil.” Política & Sociedade 28 (September–December): 35–62.

37.

Tatagiba, Luciana and Andrea Galvão 2019 “Os protestos no Brasil em tempos de crise (2011–2016).” Opinião Pública 25 (1): 63–96.

38.

Waiselfisz

Julio

2015 Mapa da violência 2015: Homicídio de mulheres no Brasil. Brasília.

39.

World March of Women 2017 “8 de março mobilizou milhares de mulheres contra a Reforma da Previdência em todo o país.” March 9. http://www.marchamundialdasmulheres.org.br/8-de-marco-mobilizou-milhares-de-mulheres-contra-a-reforma-da-previdencia-em-todo-o-pais/(accessed August 21, 2019).

40.

World March of Women 2018 “8 de março é marcado por manifestações, intervenções e ocupações por democracia e aposentadoria.” March 20. https://www.marchamundialdasmulheres.org.br/8-de-marco-e-marcado-por-intervencoes-ocupacoes-e-atos-por-democracia-e-aposentadoria/ (accessed August 21, 2019).

41.

World March of Women 2019a “8 de março inicia jornada de atos contra governo Bolsonaro.” March 19. http://www.marchamundialdasmulheres.org.br/8-de-marco-inicia-jornada-de-atos-contra-governo-bolsonaro/ (accessed August 21, 2019).

42.

World March of Women 2019b “Cem mil margaridas marcham em Brasília por terra, igualdade e democracia.” August 15. http://www.marchamundialdasmulheres.org.br/cem-mil-margaridas-marcham-em-brasilia-por-terra-igualdade-e-democracia/ (accessed August 21, 2019).