Listing white men to the STF is an insult, says professor – 05/03/2023 – Politics

The predominance of white men on the list of nominees for the STF (Federal Supreme Court) and for other higher courts reflects the male legal logic in force in Brazil, in which women are disregarded, as if there was no notorious knowledge among them, analyzes professor Fabiana Severi, from the Faculty of Law of USP in Ribeirão Preto.

She calls it an insult that the left reproduces such a logic.

Last week, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) said that “everyone would understand” if he nominated his lawyer, Cristiano Zanin, for the vacancy that will open with the retirement of Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, in May, when he will turn 75. years old.

For Severi, those who consider themselves democrats must fight for plurality in the STF and guide the debate so that the court has a black minister for the first time.

A specialist in law and gender, Severi is on a fellowship at the University of Münster, in Germany, and coordinates a project to rewrite judicial decisions from a feminist perspective.

Author of research on women and the Judiciary, she says that although there are more women in the first instance, professional ascension continues to be barred by male rules that disregard the reality of women.

The STF has only two female ministers, but the list of candidates for Ricardo Lewandowski’s vacancy is, for the most part, made up of white men. What prevents women from entering the dispute? We have 53% of women in the population and this is more or less the percentage of women in law courses. We had an increase in women in public tenders, if we look at the base of the judiciary, mainly, state, in the first degree. Then you say: ‘Well, then, in a little while we will arrive at the positions’. That’s where we hit the bottleneck. Studies both in Brazil and in other countries show that no. It is at this moment that the barriers begin to be stronger.

In state courts, female judges earn roughly 8% less than their male counterparts. This has to do with some disputes and rules for career advancement that are quite masculine and that prevent women, especially those with domestic care responsibilities, or who are unable to move within the state, from advancing in the career.

It is very difficult to deal with the Brazilian legal culture in which impartiality or the ideal of professionalism is very much associated with a typical male reasoning.

Is this vision of man on the right as impartial also present on the left? In this culture that associates professionalism, impartiality, notorious knowledge, there is a masculine performance. all names [cotados] they are young whites even among progressive groups. This is horrible because it shows that, even after what we’ve been through in these four years, the Brazilian democratic field still doesn’t seem to be taking seriously what democratization really is.

You are not considering that it was the women who took to the streets back there, in the Bolsonaro election, because they already perceived the risk to their rights and human rights. It is not possible that 53% of the electorate does not have women with notorious knowledge. Ministers are usually chosen within a small circle of power and people in that circle today are white men, even within the left.

Having a list of white men coming from the democratic camp is almost an insult, because we know it’s not a matter of lack of legal knowledge, capacity and names. We need to pluralize the profiles that are in power. To imagine that there are no women is to disregard the professionals who have been demonstrating legal knowledge for years.

The STF has never had a black minister, and only three black ministers have served on the court since 1891, the last being Joaquim Barbosa. At the STJ, there is only Minister Benedito. What does this say about justice in Brazil? This is a number that is reproduced in all professions linked to law. It reveals our difficulty in building a legal imagination to deal with the issues that are most central in the country today, which is to associate the fight for democracy, fight against hunger and any of these agendas with the fight against discrimination and against institutional racism.

This involves increasing the parity of black people in the circle of power. Our democracy is at risk and we have to move forward more competently.

That image that moved everyone at Lula’s inauguration of a black woman, a waste picker, putting on the presidential sash, was very strong because it represents the bet that most voters made for the government. To imagine that now we are not going to have a black woman nominated for the STF, the image is just rhetorical and it is not what we need right now.

The STF is one of the last spaces, from the point of view of the country’s political structure, in which it would be essential to have a black woman with a repertoire linked to human rights and anti-discrimination.

What names of women and blacks could have already been nominated? Black women jurists have been organized for some years in the country to try to advance their presence in the courts. At the beginning of the year, when we received the first list of nominees with about ten white men, we asked this group to make a list of black women, but they did not want to, because their experience in the previous moments was very bad. They were slaughtered.

What we need today is a clear indication from Lula, from the entities and from the democratic field that this person must be a black woman. You have to flag this if you’re a Democrat. Now is the time to defend the diversification of the composition of the STF. If this debate grows, there is a huge list of names and many people who are in the circle of power know these names.

Considering that Lula is not putting a woman in the central message, under the justification that he already appointed a black minister and a woman back there, is even painful. We are talking about a position in Brazil in relation to the rest of the world that is vexatious. We have generally less than 20% women and almost non-existent black women in superior courts. This is a problem for any democracy.

There is criticism about the non-application of quotas effectively by the Judiciary. What does it take to move forward? There is still resistance to the quota policy. You don’t see the courts committed to this and to reviewing their internal rules so that we can actually have egalitarian progressions.

A stronger commitment is needed. It is also necessary to diagnose the format of contests that had racial quotas to understand why they did not work to change this pattern.

Her studies show that wage inequality also impacts women in their careers. What is the reflection of this? The way the profession is organized means that women occupy ordinary functions and do not reach positions that are within the career, because this is often associated with a load beyond work or a type of action that involves territorial mobility. This professional does the math in relation to family commitments and says that it is not for her.

If the profession were egalitarian, it makes no sense to demand activities beyond the workload. What this difference reveals is the parking of female judges in an early career position. Men who don’t have domestic responsibilities find it easier to be in those places closer to the circle of power and jump to other positions.

The lack of diversity is also present in the profile of women who reach the Judiciary, the majority white, from the middle and upper classes. How does this impact court decisions? There is a study by the CNJ that made an average calculation of the investment for a person to pass the judiciary exam, and it is very high. In the end, apart from those vacancies that are filled by quotas, generally, those who pass are elite women and men.

When these people are faced with, for example, a lawsuit involving a domestic worker, what is the most frequent experience they will have? It is to be employers. The lack of other repertoires and life experience makes the judges reproduce their own elite experience.

What my studies have also shown is that there is an internal awkwardness when a judge makes a decision outside of what is most associated with the idea of ​​an unbiased perspective.

For example, a judge guaranteeing the right to domestic workers, without reproducing harmful stereotypes, seems to be harming impartiality, not the other way around. For a judge to support this is difficult, because she has the embarrassment of her peers.

During the pandemic, there was a plea by the magistrates for the continuity of remote work to reconcile journeys. Can this demand impact the rights of other women? Are virtual audiences worse for them? There is a study I participated in that heard more than 50 community leaders who are called popular legal prosecutors about the situation of women in situations of violence during the pandemic. They say that for many [o atendimento remoto] it was the same thing as closing the door of the Judiciary, because they don’t have a computer at home and a cell phone of their own.

For this group of women, which is not small in terms of population percentage, this response was insufficient. Going back to the face-to-face format helps a little, but it is also necessary to rethink the protection network for coping with violence.

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X-ray | Fabiana Severi, 45

She is a professor in the public law department at the Faculty of Law of Ribeirão Preto at USP and in the master’s program. She is a doctor, master and professor in human rights at FDRP-USP. She leads the Research Group on Human Rights, Democracy and Inequalities at USP. She participates in the Lei Maria da Penha Consortium to end gender-based violence against women. She coordinates the rewriting project of judicial decisions in a feminist perspective. She is on a stint at the University of Münster in Germany as a visiting professor.