Engendering Democracy in Brazil

Women's Movements in Transition Politics

Sonia E. Alvarez

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780691023250
  9780691078564
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400828425
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Brazil has the tragic distinction of having endured the longest military-authoritarian regime in South America. Yet the country is distinctive for another reason: in the 1970s and 1980s it witnessed the emergence and development of perhaps the largest, most diverse, most radical, and most successful women's movement in contemporary Latin America. This book tells the compelling story of the rise of progressive women's movements amidst the climate of political repression and economic crisis enveloping Brazil in the 1970s, and it devotes particular attention to the gender politics of the final stages of regime transition in the 1980s.

Situating Brazil in a comparative theoretical framework, the author analyzes the relationship between nonrevolutionary political change and changes in women's consciousness and mobilization. Her engaging analysis of the potentialities for promoting social justice and transforming relations of inequality for women and men in Latin America and elsewhere in the Third World makes this book essential reading for all students and teachers of Latin American politics, comparative social movements and public policy, and women's studies and feminist political theory.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Women’s Movements and the State
• Chapter Two: Women in the New Social Movements of Urban Brazil
• Chapter Three: Militant Mothers and Insurgent Daughters: Women in the Opposition to Authoritarian Rule
• Chapter Four: The Genesis of Women’s Movements in Authoritarian Brazil, 1964-1978
• Chapter Five: The Rise and Fall of a United, Mass-Based Brazilian Women’s Movement
• Chapter Six: Taking Sides: Women’s Movements and Political Parties, 1974-1982
• Chapter Seven: Dubious Allies in the Struggle for Women’s Rights: Parties and Gender Strategies in the 1982 Campaign
• Chapter Eight: Approaching the Authoritarian State: Women’s Movements and Population Policy in Transitional Brazilian Politics
• Chapter Nine: Taking Feminism into the State: Gender Policy and the PMDB’s Councils on the Status of Women
• Chapter Ten: Women’s Movements, Gender Policy, and the Politics of Democratic Consolidation (1985-1988)
• Chapter Eleven: Conclusion: Engendering Political Change
• Select Bibliography
• Index