Women went to the polls in Brazil for the 1st time 90 years ago – 02/05/2023 – Politics

In May 1890, the paraibana journalist and playwright Josefina Álvares de Azevedo took to a theater in Rio de Janeiro a staging of “O Voto Feminino”, a staging of a text signed by her. In the play, couples of friends from the then Federal District’s elite discuss, amid irony, women’s rights.

By ridiculing the chance of female advancement in the political field, men are rejected by women. “Be sure that the dominance of pants is about to end”, says Inês, the most vehement of the characters.

To the disappointment of Azevedo, one of the precursors of feminism in the country, the “pants dominance”, a reference to exclusively male suffrage in the newly installed Brazilian Republic, prevailed for another four decades.

The change only became viable in the midst of the wave of transformations resulting from the 1930 Revolution.

The Electoral Code enacted in February 1932, under the provisional government of Getúlio Vargas, determined that women could vote and be voted in elections organized by the Brazilian State. It also instituted secret suffrage and the system of proportional representation, among other changes.

A little over a year later, on May 3, 1933 (a Wednesday like today), they finally went to the polls.

“Freer elections that have taken place in the country”, registered the superior court of the newly created Electoral Justice regarding the choice of deputies for the National Constituent Assembly, whose work would begin a few months later.

Azevedo, however, neither voted nor saw the country vote. He had died two decades earlier, in 1913, in Rio de Janeiro, where he ran A Família, a newspaper devoted to women’s causes.

However, that historic May 3rd was, in large part, the result of mobilizations promoted in previous decades by the journalist and by suffragettes from different parts of the country, such as teachers Celina Guimarães Viana, from Rio Grande do Norte, and Leolinda Daltro, from Bahia; and lawyers Elvira Komel, from Minas Gerais, and Nathércia da Cunha Silveira, from Rio Grande do Sul.

Entities such as the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress (FBPF), led by São Paulo biologist Bertha Lutz, worked on several fronts to strengthen the proposal. They organized marches, lectures and manifestos, published articles in the press and associated themselves with feminist groups in other countries.

They were tough matches given the accentuated machismo of the First Republic. In the text “Voto Feminino”, which is part of the book “Electoral Authoritarianism of the 1930s and the Electoral Code of 1932”, historian Mônica Karawejczyk cites a poll carried out among parliamentarians in 1924. The theme was a project that allowed women to vote —no in its fullness, there were a number of restrictions. Of the 65 politicians consulted, 37 declared that they were against the initiative.

At the time federal deputy for Rio Grande do Sul, Getúlio commented on the project: “I believe that the national woman does not have the education of the North American and English, where this theory triumphed. there for election rallies”.

The opinion of the Gaucho leader did not turn upside down when he became president, but his political acumen spoke louder. At the right time, he knew how to submit to the will of others.

“The fact to highlight is that the female vote was neither just a concession by the men in power nor just a female achievement, but a mixture of the two, which generated debates and controversies,” wrote Karawejczyk.

On that May 3, 1933, more than 5,000 polling stations were organized across the country. In order to attract female participation, the Electoral Court reserved some of these spaces exclusively for women.

For everyone, women and men, there were the “impenetrable booths”, which did not completely prevent fraud, but were an efficient antidote against the “halter vote”, in which the choice of candidate is not made by the voter, but by a political boss or by an electoral supporter.

Amid so much news, the press prepared extensive coverage. Setbacks arose, such as the formation of queues to vote and the disorganization in the distribution of tickets, but the balance had been positive, the newspapers announced.

“The female electorate contributed to the electoral environment taking on a very interesting new aspect. The calm and order with which the elections were processed are probably the immediate consequences of women’s participation in the fight over the ballot boxes”, reported Folha da Morning on the 3rd of May in São Paulo.

“It is important to point out the quality of the electorate, made up of people of the best class, within all our social strata, emphasizing the civic collaboration of the ladies, who gave an entirely new character to yesterday’s election”, highlighted Correio da Manhã in reference to Rio de Janeiro.

Among the 1,040 candidates, only 19 were women, and only one of them was elected, Carlota Pereira de Queiroz, a candidate from a conservative side in São Paulo. The vote obtained by Bertha Lutz led her to be substituted.

Although the result was limited, the movement of the candidates at rallies and other events was relevant for them to begin to occupy spaces on the political stage, evaluates Mônica Karawejczyk, author of books such as “As Filhas de Eva Querem Votar – uma História da Conquista do Suffrage Feminine in Brazil”.

In numerical terms, female enlistment was far from an immediate success. A study carried out by political scientists Fernando Limongi, Juliana de Souza Oliveira and Stefanie Tomé Schmitt showed that “between 1932 and 1964, the average female enlistment of the total was around 34%”. “That is, in general, for two enlisted men, there was a woman in condition to exercise her right to vote.”

For these authors, historians and other scholars tend to overestimate the effectiveness of the decisions taken during this period in relation to women’s advances. “The rupture that occurred in 1932 is smaller than is usually claimed. In fact, there is more continuity than rupture, as the restriction on women’s full participation remains without being explicitly stated”, they wrote in 2018 in the Revista de Sociologia e Politics.

According to them, the key point for what they call “continuity” is the difference between the vote of men (mandatory) and that of women without their own income (optional).

“Between 1932 and 1965, women’s political rights were not equal to those of men. In different ways, the Constitutions and laws in force found ways to leave women without their own income in a kind of limbo. voting were mandatory for men, but voluntary for women who did not work”, they argue.

“In view of the stipulations of the current Civil Code, voluntariness was a disguised way of leaving the decision in the hands of the head of the family, that is, of not guaranteeing women the right to vote if their husbands did not authorize their participation in political life. .”

Karawejczyk disagrees with this conclusion of political scientists. “In general, there was an equality between women and men. The only thing that didn’t happen was that aspect of mandatory voting.”

The fact that there was not a high number of women enlisted in this election is a secondary issue, according to her. “More important is the existence at that time of Brazilian women interested in participating in the political life of the country”, says Karawejczyk, who also emphasizes the strong symbolism of the transformations of that period.

For the historian, May 3, 1933 is a date to be remembered and, yes, celebrated.

There is, as is well known, a long road towards some gender balance in politics. Last year, 91 women were elected to the Chamber of Deputies, less than a fifth of the total – Brazilian women represent 52% of the country’s population. A woman has never been chosen as president of the House or Senate.

But, as Inês, the great character in Josefina Alvares de Azevedo’s play, says, “I’ll show these little men what a woman is good for”.