00:00Also, as Brazil approaches General Election Day, questions over the country's political future and the role of social movements are
00:08taking center stage.
00:09To go deep into the significance of this process, we invite Tatao Godinho, a women's rights activist of the World
00:17March of Women and also former secretary of the government of President Dilma Rousseff.
00:24Tatao, welcome to From the South. Thank you very much for your time.
00:30Thank you for the invitation.
00:33Tatao, how the possible outcome of these elections can shape or can impact women's struggle and also their fight for
00:42equality in Brazil?
00:47Well, it's very important to notice that the debate we have and the opposition we have in these elections here
00:58is of President Lula, who is going for re-election, and Flávio Bolsonaro, who represents the far right in Brazil.
01:10And the far right has, we had a government of far right with Jair Bolsonaro in the past, and they
01:20do not invest either in social policies and have a very important and, I mean, aggressive ideology against the rights
01:33of women.
01:34For the period that we have the far right in Brazil, we had a growing number of violence against women,
01:46the discourse, the speech of violence against women, of male rights against women's rights in terms of a gender debate.
02:00And most important is the idea that we have recovered partial equality in terms of economic power.
02:14However, Lula has taken Brazil out of the map of hunger again, which we had come back during Jair Bolsonaro's
02:26government.
02:26So I think either for economic policies, social policies, or in terms of the intellectual debate, the values debate, human
02:41rights, it's very important for women that we have a victory of Lula again in these elections.
02:50Also, it has been said that major urban centers, women from major urban centers are going to be crucial in
03:00the outcome of these elections.
03:01How are the campaigns reaching this important, this key voting demographic?
03:11Well, we have a very interesting situation in terms of the agenda of the electorate in Brazil.
03:19Women are 53% of the electorate in the country.
03:24And since 1980, women fail less in voting than men, which means that they are more present in elections.
03:39They are more involved, I would say, and interested in the country's political development.
03:48Brazil has developed a situation in which the number of single parent families is already half of the population in
04:04Brazil.
04:05So women depend very much on social policies, fight for social policies.
04:13And they are actually the majority of the popular movements in general.
04:19So they mobilize more, they are more present, and Brazil is already a very urban country.
04:27But I wouldn't say that the decision is just for lays on the shoulders of urban women.
04:37The women in the countryside areas are also very mobilized.
04:43So we hope that the result of the elections will favor women's rights and women's debates and our position in
04:57society.
04:57That's the number of people who are already living in big cities in big towns in Brazil is already very,
05:14very large.
05:15So the decision of the elections will be more urban than rural.
05:20But what I want to point out is that women in the countryside are very mobilized too.
05:29We have in the social movements here a tradition of organizing women in the rural areas, peasant women too.
05:40For this reason, I would say it's a combination, or at least I expect it's a combination of this organization
05:51and the results of elections.
05:53But certainly, all the polls, those polls which try to see what the possibility of elections in Brazil have shown
06:05that women are more favorable to Lula than Flávio Bolsonaro.
06:13In all polls, even those which do not, that we say or think are a bit favorable to Bolsonaro, even
06:29in those in states where Lula is not the favorite, women vote more for Lula than for Bolsonaro.
06:40So that's very important for the elections.
06:45And we are mobilizing women in the streets to see that we can talk to them much more and present
06:55to them what is the importance of having Lula elected again this year.
07:04Deeper into the role of women in the Brazilian politics sphere, I wanted to ask you, despite greater representation, what
07:13else can be done to expand the participation of women in the political sphere of the nation?
07:24Well, even though women are very active in the social movements, we are very much lower represented institutionally, either for
07:36the Congress or in the governments.
07:41So we have to go and make much more effort to have not only affirmative action to grow the number
07:54of women, to put the number of women up.
07:58But also it's very important that those policies that we have decided come with a program for women, you know,
08:09women are in some positions not able to present policies favorable to women.
08:20So I think that it's very important in these elections to vote for women more, but also to organize more
08:31and more the women's movement so that we have more women participating in the left with left positions and not
08:42mobilize as the right wing has tried to do.
08:50It's very interesting in Brazil.
08:54It's very interesting in Brazil what's happening in these elections now.
08:57The right wing has a speech, has a discourse, has a narrative that women, the place of women is at
09:07home.
09:07But when it comes to elections, all of them talk about rights of women, presentation of women, having policies of
09:19violence against women, against violence against women.
09:22Even Flávio Bolsonaro, who during his, all the time in his position, has a very sexist position against women.
09:38So in these elections, the discourse of women's rights or women equality gains more space, but that does not mean
09:51exactly or necessarily commitment to women's rights.
09:56So I think we do have to make the elections a broader participation of women, but we have also to
10:07strengthen the debate in society of equality, of real equality, of an idea of economic equality, political equality, social equality
10:22between men and women.
10:23And also the idea that the participation of women has to bring or should bring all the time a program
10:35of participation, a program of rights, a program of better, better social policies for women in general.
10:50Thank you very much.
10:51Thank you very much for your time here and from the South for helping us understand, further understand what is
10:57at stake for women in Brazil during this electoral process. Thank you.
11:04You are welcome.
11:05Thanks for your time.
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