Contest for salary of R$ 21 thousand approves more men – 06/06/2023 – Market

A survey of data with those approved in one of the most coveted public tenders in the country, that of federal auditor of the Federal Court of Accounts, which pays an initial salary of R$ 21.9 thousand, revealed that the profile of those who won the competition, in 2022, is composed of middle-class men aged 32 who managed to dedicate themselves to their studies for two or three years.

The work analyzed 153 people —the total of those approved, plus the reserve quota— and its result exemplifies the lack of plurality of opportunities for those who intend to enter a public career.

This is the first in a series of five reports that will discuss topics that link the responsibilities of governments and their servants. The special is part of the Vida Pública publishing group, a partnership between Sheet and Instituto República.org.

According to the court’s internal survey, 78.4% of those approved are men. Bruno Dantas, president of TCU, recognizes that there is a lack of gender diversity.

“Female participation in contests promoted by the TCU is still below what is desirable, but it has been growing. This year, the representation of women among nominees was 21%; in the previous contest, they occupied only 8% of the vacancies”, says the minister. .

“But I’m not satisfied with this scenario and I’ve been taking action to mitigate it. An important measure was my decision, in the last competition, that the examining board be made up equally of men and women.”

The data does not show how many of those approved were black. To compete for a vacancy as an auditor at TCU, the candidate had to be over 18 years of age and had completed a university degree in any area. About 20,000 people competed for vacancies in the 2022 contest.

Currently, the court has around 1,500 external control auditors spread across the country.

For Julia Lenzi, a professor at the USP Faculty of Law, the profile of those approved at the TCU is a reality within the public service in Brazil.

“It is interesting for us to think that the State reaches a large part of the population in the form of a white man, and this has a perspective of non-representation, of lack of knowledge about the multiple realities that people live in Brazil”, says the professor .

For more than 20 years being discussed in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, the reformulation of public tenders returned to the spotlight this year with the government’s promise to change the rules, including new instruments for the selection of public servants. For experts, the changes are more than necessary to strengthen the democratic process.

“The contests are not able to assess how much the candidate has effective aptitude for that function. It ends up excluding people who do not have the economic or social capacity to dedicate themselves to this type of knowledge. They may have practical skills that are not measured”, he says Vera Monteiro, professor of administrative law at FGV and vice-president of the Board of República.org.

For Professor Ana Cristina Juvenal da Cruz, director of the Center for Education and Human Sciences at UFSCar (Federal University of São Carlos), the public contest remains a democratic door, but there are still many ethnic and social barriers for the candidate.

“Although the public contest is more democratic, it requires a lot of preparation time and a personal structure that allows competition. The law is not being complied with, as it has benefited this profile of white men who already come from a class extract social superior”, says the professor, citing the law of quotas for entering the federal public service, which may expire in 2024.

Seeking to expand access within this preparation for entry into public service, organizations have offered free courses, such as the Popular Training Course for Public Defenders.

Founded in 2016, it is collaborative and aimed at students in socioeconomic vulnerability. It works in a hybrid model, with face-to-face and virtual classes.

“We thought about the defender’s career, because the public it serves is socially vulnerable, poor people. But it may be that our students seek other careers as well. If they do, they also make a difference and manage to have a good performance”, he says. Francisca Oliveira Souza, who is part of the academic coordination of the course.

Graduated in law, Lígia Maria Teixeira Mendonça, 31, is one of the students on the course, with the objective of seeking a vacancy in the Public Defender’s Office. For her, the preparation has challenges.

“I work all day in an office, and this already reduces my study time. I also live alone and need to take care of household chores. Reconciling all this and still having the energy to attend classes is tiring. We end up putting study aside to prioritize work, even to be able to support oneself in life. So, the study ends up not being linear, it has ups and downs.”

Another data from the TCU survey is that 88.9% of those approved already had other approvals in public tenders, and more than half —56.2%— had at least one postgraduate degree. In addition, 74.5% studied in public institutions.

According to Professor Vera Monteiro, this high number of approved civil servants also reveals the figure of the concurseiro, who is the candidate who is always looking for the best positions, with no preference based on his aptitudes for the exercise of a certain position.

“They keep jumping from career to career. This is very clear in this case at TCU, in which many of the candidates had been studying for a long time, participating in other competitions halfway through to train or have a better salary, but without a specific objective of bond, and thus gain positions in public administration.”

Chemical engineer Virgilio José Martins Ferreira Neto, 35, took a public tender for Petrobras’ process safety sector in 2021 – despite being a publicly traded company, it adopts the tender model. Before enrolling, he even got discouraged, understanding that the dispute would be unequal because of the concurseiros. He ended up changing his mind after the edict.

“Some points made me try the contest: there would be no old test, there would be no preparatory courses and they would also change the bank. of the candidates who took the TCU test.

He is married, has a two-year-old son, has a graduate degree and is able to take a period of 40 days off work to study for the exam.

“I was in a small consultancy, working as a legal entity. So, I thought I was in the same conditions [dos demais candidatos do concurso] and it took a risk. I also had a financial reserve that made it easier to study”, said Ferreira, who passed the exam.

quotas against disparities

In 2014, Law 12,990 was enacted, which reserves 20% of the vacancies offered in federal public administration contests for blacks. As it is an affirmative action, it must be reviewed after ten years, that is, in 2024. There are movements in Congress for a new law to be voted, with extensions.

“Despite the growth in the flow, more than half of the federal Executive’s public servants are white. It is necessary that the validity of the quota law be extended. Thus, the racial diversification of federal careers may gain scale”, says Ana Paula Karruz, coordinating professor of the graduation course in public management at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais).