Feminist Workplace in Brazil, Essay Example

Even in the context of South America, Brazil and Brazilians stand apart in terms of cultural, ethnic and linguistic history. To be Brazilian is to be ‘different’ and so to, interpretations of difference within socio-political understandings of equitable distribution and equality in legal rights. A former Portuguese colony Brazil’s extensive infrastructure including its legal system are decisively ‘Western.’ If not exceptional in its high profile response to a history of dictatorship and human rights activism, Brazil’s impact on the international human rights scene is the direct result of a distinctly Brazilian confluence of democratic forms and legislative policies. For instance, post the era of bureaucratic authoritarianism in South America, Brazil, saw institutional incorporation of feminist agendas and women’s rights into contributory protocol toward a new international human rights convention, the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).[i]

Co-terminus to post-authoritarian politics in Brazil in the 1980s, CEDAW as well as other UN conventions on women’s rights have been influence by the experiences of Brazilians in confrontation with state sponsored violence by that nation’s government in the 1970s and early 1980s. The outgrowth of this history is a well-established culture of grassroots responses to discriminatory actions and in many cases, quasi-official NGO network collaboration, and even official governmental offices have emerged from the energetic and seriousness of Brazil’s social movements toward agendas pertinent to children’s rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights and a host of others.[ii]

Amidst such progressive thought, and a general social culture that is prescriptive of almost libertine approaches to equality in gendered responses to self-representation, it is difficult to believe that deeply rooted Sexism in the traditional sense finds fecund ground. After all, one only has to think of the hyper-sexualized Carnival, to be reminded that for Brazil and Brazilians the excessive use of sex is nothing more than a luminal inversion of all things traditionally reified as powerful (i.e. masculine). Feminists agree: Carnival’s feminized ritual is anything but a spectacle of conservative male dominance.

It is here that we see the paradox of Brazil’s potency and its radical difference in a world that typically does not honor such complexity within exhibition of patriotic spectacle. However, what is readily visible when the bright lights and festival atmosphere of Carnival disappear, a rather normative state of affairs is present in everyday life. In spite of Brazil’s potential for evolution toward what could be the first truly democratic society that includes whisper: women’s sexual positions, old models of ‘doing business’ in mass media advertising, and elsewhere, are at all times reminding Brazilians that a women’s place is objectification. This is not to say that association with scantily clad supermodels such as Gisele does not empower women, quite the opposite. It is in the interstices between such imagery, and the history of suffrage within Brazil that concurrent models of women-hood have been solidified, yet men are still struggling.

Brazilians have a different concept of what constitutes sexual harassment. Brazilian society is patriarchal and hierarchical, in which woman are subordinate to men and males are entitled to make sexual advances. As a result, women in Brazil may perceive Brazilian men’s sexual advances to be entirely normal. Few laws against ‘sexual harassment’ exist in many parts of South America – or at least as the legal protections are understood in the North. Public awareness is far less pronounced than in the United States, and this has material effects. Furthermore, laws that do prevail in Brazil regarding discrimination, are not always enforced in Brazil, as worker’s forced to negotiate a high unemployment rate do not want to take risks.

Those that do file complaint find themselves dismissed from jobs for reporting the harassment, and it becomes more and more difficult to prove, since certain behaviors are still widely accept by Brazilian women. Those who do come forward often find themselves with onerous burden of proof, and it becomes nearly impossible to establish in court. A common form of harassment is situated in the hierarchy between male bosses and female staff. If the boss likes the woman sexually, he will use manipulations to force everything from compensatory discrimination to sexual relations. The typical threat is substantiated in the following terms, ‘if you don’t go out with me, your future in this job will be very difficult’, or the oft used ‘If you avoid going out with me, I will make your job miserable, I would never promote you.’ Anecdotes, derogatory comments, and threats of dismissal for no reason other than the injustice associated with a refusal of a superior over sexual demands permeates the world of labor for many women.

Volitional participation is also very common in Brazil, however, and there is a lot of flirting in the office, and throughout business networks in the country. Much like the nationalist soap operas that evolved from the foundational fictions of romance from the independence ear in the nineteenth century, there is pervasive subscription to the ideology that nothing that can separate two people, who work together from falling in love. In Brazil we say ‘dar uma cantada’ which means trying to conquer someone. There is only one answer for that, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If you said yes, there’s no crime committed, but if the woman says no, and the admirer attempts to enforce his demands on her, harassment is then recognized. In most of these cases, the perpetrators are men, and the victims are almost always women.[iii] Men often cite personal confrontation with the idea that women are not inherent equals, and therefore, should not have license for complaint given the structural priorities of the workday, and their subordinate position in general. Imposition of sexual interest, then, is transposed as a boss merely making executive decisions. Rejection often results in a moral violence; thus causing professional insecurity and ultimately the poorest outcome for both the employee and the corporation. Many women negotiate these situations by seeking transfer to lesser roles or undesirable departments in strategies of avoidance. In all cases, there is a substantial loss of rights, and psychological and prestige losses are certain to follow.

Psychologically, women whom are traumatized may find relationships within professional networks, at home and in the community may also be damaged as a result of harm to reputation.  The universal ‘nurturer’ role awarded women upon birth seems to never be mitigated effectively enough prior to entrance into the workplace. Feelings of ‘guilt’ toward a job done wrong, might lead to self-blame. In fact, in Brazil more often than not, when sexual harassment is instigated in the workplace, the victim is often considered the one to be blamed. The comments are as follows, ‘why didn’t she accept the men’s sexual insinuations, since she wears provocative clothes?’ Many times they accuse women of dressing provocatively to illicit the sexual desire of men.

Contradictory pressures to be sexy for the workplace, and to not be sexualized into victimization in the workplace, are at the core of the contemporary Brazilian feminine experience. According to Lisa Waldner, rape, sexual coercion, and sexual harassment, all have in common the use or abuse of power.[iv] As she argues, ‘Imposing one’s own will, even against opposition is a classic sociological definition of power and an example of what feminist’s term “power over.’ Sexual coercion, which encompasses rape as well as a continuum of milder behavior, is a type of interpersonal power grab similar to sexual harassment. What differentiates harassment from coercion, then, maintains the author is labeling of an incident as harassment neither requires evidence of forced sexual behavior, nor a sexual interest in the victim. Sexual harassment is considered as something done by persons with power to their subordinates. As Waldner puts it, pressuring or forcing a subordinate into sexual interaction in exchange for promotion, more favorable work assignments, or keeping a job, is inappropriate, and is an example of ‘quid pro quo’ sexual harassment.

In South America, this form of harassment is not considered as offensive as it is in the United States. If the person is forced into a sexual intercourse, then it becomes a form of harassment. Women in general from Brazil, have different boundaries compared to North American women. We are more tolerant to the sexualized pressures instigated by men, as long as we are not forced to do anything we don’t want. The same example argued in regard to marriage in Brazil, where in many cases, the husband attempts force on the wife to engage in any sexual behavior; physically forcing sexual intercourse through verbal and/or emotional manipulation.

Sexual Harassment and Masculinity, according to Beth A. Quinn, focus on the subjectivities of the perpetrators whom engage in a disputable form of sexual harassment ‘girl watching.’[v] The term refers to the act of sexuality evaluating women, by men in the company of other men. Diminution is present in the lexicon describing both the act and the object of desire in this phrase: they are merely watching girls.

As Aiwa Ong (1987) argues in her ethnographic work on young, female free trade zone factory workers, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline ‘authoritative languages and the ideas they construct do not merely ‘reflect’ material relationships but constitute our very experience of reality.’[vi] In the case of her subjects, neophyte recruits from the countryside, there is an inherent struggle against not only their embodiment as ‘capitalist’ instruments of labor, but are also ‘non-capitalist’ moralist discourses directed at constituting them as sexualized subjects at every phase of experience as subordinate workers. At present, there is an urgent response by feminists in Brazil and around the globe, to articulate new agendas for more effective approaches to sexual harassment. Is it possible for all societies to incorporate a culturally specific form of equity liberties, and simultaneously adequately face of the increasingly globalized forces of fin-de-siecle capitalist forms of flexible accumulation on the same terms? One only has to look to look at the trickle-down effect of discriminatory distribution amongst nations to understand the everyday projections of instability through the very relations we depend upon. With some effort, Brazilian women like Malaysian women may work toward convergence of our everyday practices of resistance with policies and protections that work.

[i] UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Web. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#article5

[ii] Enloe, Cynthia (1990). Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Sense of Feminist International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[iii] Jaquette, Jane S., ed. (2009). Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press.

[iv] Waldner, Linda,  —  “Introducing the New sexuality Studies”

[v] Quinn, Beth A.  –­ an article written, on the Kaleidoscope of gender book,

[vi] Ong, Aiwa (1987). Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline. Albany: SUNY Press.