I. Introduction In Brazil, extreme wealth inequality has persisted since the arrival of Portuguese colonizers and the highly stratified race and class-based society they created. The nation’s role as an exporter of natural resources and agricultural goods – such as sugar, coffee, rubber, and diamonds – in the international economy has only exacerbated inequality by preventing economic diversification and failing to absorb a large labor force. Its transitions between different economic structures, from export-import growth, to import-substitution industrialization, to the “economic miracle” of the triple alliance, all represent initiatives to alleviate poverty and spur growth. However, not until the Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfers
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These transfers are specifically designated to female heads of household, and they work on two levels: first, they provide a form of immediate wealth redistribution and poverty reduction, and second, they contribute to long-term economic growth by developing human capital through improved education and healthcare access among the Brazilian poor. In this paper, I will make two arguments about working women and their connection with Bolsa Familia and the income inequality it addressed. First, I will analyze how the working class women’s movement, which developed under the bureaucratic authoritarianism of the 1960s-80s, contributed to the shift toward leftist politics and governmental concern with women’s issues that allowed Bolsa Familia to be implemented. Second, I also argue that the Bolsa Familia progam has been successful because it empowered women to take direct action toward their own …show more content…
This is a defining feature of their movement: instead of seeking equality regardless of gender, they highly regarded women’s status as wives and mothers (Baldez, 2003). Thus, poverty, income inequality, and the poor access to social services that resulted from them became women’s issues, because they prevented women from being able to successfully carry out their gendered roles. Lower-class Brazilian women were and are more “concerned with practical issues such as the cost of living or urban services rather than [the] strategic gender issues” of middle and upper-class feminists (Lovell, 2000). Many working women could not afford to share the same intellectual concerns as the better-off feminists of the time – the “economic miracle” that led to national economic growth created far fewer opportunities for female workers than for men, which meant that many women were unemployed or underpaid in jobs as domestic servants (Hahner, 1982). Under bureaucratic-authoritarianism, lower-class women united around the dire nature of their economic concerns for themselves and for their families – many came together as “militant mothers,” fighting for basic needs, schools, health centers, and other family necessities in some of the first organized public demonstrations against the regime
These transfers are specifically designated to female heads of household, and they work on two levels: first, they provide a form of immediate wealth redistribution and poverty reduction, and second, they contribute to long-term economic growth by developing human capital through improved education and healthcare access among the Brazilian poor. In this paper, I will make two arguments about working women and their connection with Bolsa Familia and the income inequality it addressed. First, I will analyze how the working class women’s movement, which developed under the bureaucratic authoritarianism of the 1960s-80s, contributed to the shift toward leftist politics and governmental concern with women’s issues that allowed Bolsa Familia to be implemented. Second, I also argue that the Bolsa Familia progam has been successful because it empowered women to take direct action toward their own …show more content…
This is a defining feature of their movement: instead of seeking equality regardless of gender, they highly regarded women’s status as wives and mothers (Baldez, 2003). Thus, poverty, income inequality, and the poor access to social services that resulted from them became women’s issues, because they prevented women from being able to successfully carry out their gendered roles. Lower-class Brazilian women were and are more “concerned with practical issues such as the cost of living or urban services rather than [the] strategic gender issues” of middle and upper-class feminists (Lovell, 2000). Many working women could not afford to share the same intellectual concerns as the better-off feminists of the time – the “economic miracle” that led to national economic growth created far fewer opportunities for female workers than for men, which meant that many women were unemployed or underpaid in jobs as domestic servants (Hahner, 1982). Under bureaucratic-authoritarianism, lower-class women united around the dire nature of their economic concerns for themselves and for their families – many came together as “militant mothers,” fighting for basic needs, schools, health centers, and other family necessities in some of the first organized public demonstrations against the regime