Where there’s a will, there isn’t always a way: studying the Brazilian Women’s Caucus

Larissa Peixoto V. Gomes

Ph.D candidate in Political Science,

Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil.

Prepared for PSA 67th Annual International Conference “Politics in Interesting Times”, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 10 – 12 April 2017 Abstract

A women’s caucus in a legislative chamber has the potential to increase women’s participation within that chamber by aggregating female representatives across party lines and providing them with collective tools with which to formulate policies. However, that potential depends on several factors other than the existence of the caucus, including its institutional design, the number of female representatives in the house and that effectively participate in the caucus, ideological leanings of caucus leaders, respect from other parliament members towards the caucus, the pressure exerted from parties on caucus members, and how it relates to other existing caucuses. The Brazilian Women’s Caucus, known as Bancada Feminina, is generally perceived by the international literature as a success case, but the literature has only considered its institutional design in making that assertion. The small number of women in the Chamber of Deputies, their willingness to organise around certain issues but not others, the general lack of respect towards female representatives and their caucus, the growing strength of the Cattle, Bullet, and Bible Caucus, the importance of party politics, and the government-opposition polarisation means that the Bancada Feminina is not as effective as expected. The article relies on quantitative and qualitative data collected from the Chamber of Deputies website from the years of 2014 and 2015 in order to verify the impact of these other factors on the actions on female deputies and their caucus.

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Introduction: a mid-sized critical juncture

In 1985, Brazil went from being a dictatorship to a democracy one more time. As the military stepped away and the civilians took office in a peaceful transition in which dictators and democrats negotiated terms, the country found itself once again without a Congress or a Constitution. In this drawn out critical juncture (Waylen, in Krook and Mackay, 2011), begins the story of the Brazilian Women’s Caucus.

The Constitutional Assembly was set up in 1986, with a record number of 26 women. At the time, there were two groups of women working on drafting a new constitution: the ones elected to the assembly and the ones belonging to social movements, the latter referred to as the Lipstick Lobby. Originally a derogatory term, the women appropriated themselves of it and used it to disconcert male deputies and galvanise female deputies (Rocha, 2015). The Lipstick Lobby had to approach the elected women and convince them to embrace women’s and feminist issues, resulting in some advances for women. The transition to democracy was called “slow, gradual, and safe”, which made sure that several former institutions and traditions stayed in place. It also meant that there was only so much that women were able to get done. For instance, it was only in 1999 that the Women’s Caucus began its official existence. In fact, it was only in 2016 that female senators got a bathroom inside the plenary.1

As women in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies fight for inclusion, the Women’s Caucus changes little by little. From what it was in 1986 to what it became in 2013, with complete institutionalisation, which has yet to be thoroughly analysed, it is a completely different institution. As the deputies put it together piece by piece, over the years, the Women’s Caucus went from a dispersed gathering of demobilised women to a permanent part of the Chamber of Deputies. Although, that has come with positives and negatives as the analysis will show.

The next section will discuss the presence of women within parliament, how they may or may not form alliances and how a caucus or a special commission may help or hinder their efforts in passing legislation. The following section will discuss the Brazilian Women’s Caucus. By using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from the Chamber of Deputies website and an interview with a former coordinator of the Women’s Caucus,

1 https://www12.senado.leg.br/institucional/procuradoria/comum/bancada-feminina-do-senado-conquista- direito-a-banheiro-feminino-no-plenario 2

I shall discuss its institutional arrangement, its effectiveness, opportunities for action, alliances, and backlash. The final section presents an analysis and concludes.

Critical actors and critical spaces

The increase in women’s presence in legislative spaces has not come with an acceptance of that presence. More often than not, female representatives find themselves in a constant struggle to prove that they belong, that they can do the job, that they are capable, that they are not too pretty or too ugly, too nice or too authoritarian. As an institution is made up of formal and informal rules that dictate not only procedures, but also conduct, both men and women will push boundaries in order to affirm their place and power within that institution. Political institutions are not gender-neutral and were built by on certain an ideal of masculinity. This means that some of the functioning of that institution depends on the reproduction, that is, the performance of this gendered notion of man and of the ideal legislator (Allen, 2013; Butler, 2010; Kenny, 2007; Krook and Mackay, 2011; Mackay et. al, 2010; Mansbridge and Shames, 2008; Prentice and Carranza, 2006; Waylen, 2014).

The institutional design of a legislative, combined with its informal rules, may or may not guarantee the effective participation of all its members. Informal rules may be gendered or may be exclusionary in that newcomers do not know that they exist and are not able to successfully navigate them. The consequences of rules such as party proportionality in commissions may be unpredictable when there is no gender perspective (Aguiar, 2015; Folke et al., 2015). When party leaders are men, especially from larger parties, and commissions have a clear gender bias, it make sense to think of this particular rule as one that privileges certain profiles and political relationships. In many legislatives, women are relegated to commissions of less symbolic value that reproduce gender stereotypes (Heath et al., 2005; Miguel and Feitosa, 2009; Rezende, 2015; Walby, 1997). Elected women are in a double minority situation: within parliament and their own parties.

As they attempt to form their own connections and networks based on common experiences and policy interests, female friendships in politics are negatively perceived, accused of being too shallow, too emotional and, of course, lesbianism. These are all reproductions of societal stereotypes of female relationships. A woman’s individual presence is bothersome enough, given the gendered nature of the legislative space, but a

3 demonstration of loyalty and organisation threatens masculine power. Male friendships, on the other hand, are not questioned. Alliances between men are normalised within parliament as they are its first occupants. As Childs (2013) argues, there is still a gender gap in political alliances, with male alliances seen as neutral and powerful and female alliances as superficial and weak because of their gendered nature. Men do not discuss, specifically, how “to improve the lives of men” and male politicians tend to believe they are working for the good of the country. They are thinking of “issues”, not “people” (Childs, 2013).

Although, if there is evidence that women in parliament strive to work for women to some degree, and it seems that there is (Barnes, 2012; Chaney, 2006; Lausberg, 2015; Piscopo, 2014; Wängnerud, 2000), this means that male politicians are leaving something out of their political work. Their focus on “issues” is not fully contemplating women.

As the presence of women in and of itself is important, what they do also matters. As Mackay (2008) puts it, a thick conception of substantive representation “incorporates the theoretical uncertainty and [its] contested nature” (p. 131). That is, women are able to represent many perspectives, both from feminists, conservatives, and men. In fact, a fuller representation depends on diversity. Moreover, if conservative legislators, both men and women, claim to act for women as Celis and Childs (2012) argue, would they not be an avenue for lobbying?

Another aspect that stands out in many studies on the position of female legislators is the importance of party loyalty (Barnes, 2012; Htun et al., 2013; Htun, 2002; Htun and Power, 2008). Both male and female representatives will unite in party loyalty, but considering the less privileged position women have both in parliament and in the party, demonstrated by the lack of women in positions of leadership in both institutions and in commissions with higher symbolic value (Heath et al. 2005; Folke et al., 2015; Rezende, 2015), this means that they are also excluded from decision-making processes (UN, 2005). Party loyalty, therefore, has different meanings for men and for women, who might depend more on the party for their next electoral run, particularly in highly personalised contexts. As Gomes (2016) demonstrated for a subnational case in Brazil, women in left-wing parties, with party-oriented trajectories, were more likely to want to stay in the party, even after acknowledging that the party could have assisted more during the campaign. Women

4 from centre and right-wing parties, who joined because of personal alliances, were more likely to want to change parties.

This does not mean that women will not want to find allies in their own parties or that party ideology is irrelevant. It does, however, mean that even this aspect of politics is gendered and that studies such as roll call voting, while important, may not be adequate in fully demonstrating the preferences of female legislators (Barnes, 2012; Childs and Lovenduski, 2016; Htun et al., 2013; Swers, 2005; UN, 2005).

On the other hand, women, just by virtue of being women, are not necessarily a united front. Only because women may have differentiated ties to their parties does not mean that their ideology as well as their background and trajectory does not divide them (Dahlerup, 2006). It also does not mean that they do not have any common ground with men. What it means is that the nature of these relationships, their effects on the institution and the institution’s effects on them, are differentiated (Childs, 2013).

There are many ways in which women may be effective legislators. Their numbers, while an important variable, are not the only thing to consider (Dahlerup, 1988; 2006). Women are excluded from decision-making, from debates, from positions of power, mainly through their exclusion from the old boys’ network. Moreover, women in parliament also face gendered violence, ranging from insensitive remarks to death threats (IPU, 2016; Krook and Sanín, 2015). In this combination of institutional constraints (Mackay, 2008), informal rules, and gendered violence, women will only have some much agency to act on their desired policies and enact change in their work environment (Dahlerup, 2006; Krook and Mackay, 2011; Mackay et al., 2010).

Given that, specially in a parliamentary context, power is “self-enforcing” and whomever has it is able to ensure that they keep it (Pierson, 2000). On the other hand, as Mackay, et al. (2010) argue, one can only hold on to a power asymmetry for so long. Institutions are not static; they exist on the dynamic of the people who shape them and are shaped by them. Power is part of that dynamic, of the constant push and pull of negotiations, discussions, alliance construction and, of course, gender performance (Kenny, 2007; Mackay et al. 2010; Franceschet, in Krook and Mackay, 2011).

A women’s caucus is part of that dynamic. Within the jargon of feminist institutionalism, depending on the institutional design, a women’s caucus may be a case of both layering

5 and conversion, in which a new rule or institution is created or an old one is adapted to suit new needs (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010). As much as any institution, women’s caucuses are products of the context in which they were created, of the people who created them, and the negotiations that had to take place for that to happen.

In this way, the creation of women’s caucuses is a way of institutionalising women themselves within the legislative space. The caucus becomes part of the institution, even if its existence is not formalised. Therefore, caucuses exist in a myriad of ways, with different objectives, prerogatives, and compositions. Studies tend to focus on their institutional design (if there is one), as well as the legislative success female legislators have as part of this collective actor. Successes and failures are derived, in part, because of this institutional design: each caucus has its rules, which were designed in a particular context, and it works within a given set of contextual factors, which affect possibilities for action. In addition, the people who are part of the caucus have to want to take action in some form. It is possible that a caucus is hindered by its leadership or its active leader is unable to rally her troops. Having an antagonising legislature may also prevent the women’s caucus from working properly, up to the point of demoralising the women in it. A good institutional design is not enough to make representatives interested in utilising it.

The data

There are two data sources in order to describe the inner workings of the Chamber of Deputies and the Women’s Caucus: an interview with deputy Jô Moraes (Communist Party of Brazil – PCdoB) and the Chamber’s website. Moraes was part of social movements during the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) and the transition to democracy. She has served 12 years as a federal representative, having been coordinator for the Women’s Caucus during 2013-2015. She belonged to the Women’s Caucus before and after its institutionalisation and one of the first things she said, even before she was asked, was that this process began in 1986, during the Constitutional Assembly, and culminated with the creation of the Women’s Secretariat, in 2013. She is still a federal deputy.

The Chamber of Deputies’ website is information-heavy and somewhat user-friendly. From that source, the following data was acquired: the Chamber’s Internal Regulations; speeches by deputies who have coordinated the Women’s Caucus; data on bills and laws

6 between 2000 and 2016. The data on bills and laws were transformed into three data sets: one of laws approved between 2000 and 2016; one of proposed bills between 2014 and 2016; and one of public hearing requests between 2014 and 2016.23

The databases only include bills and laws authored by members of the Chambers of Deputies, that is, they exclude authorship by the Senate, commissions, and other branches of government. The website provides most of the necessary information, such as year of submission, text summary, name, party, and state of the author or authors, status, and a link leading to the bill or law’s specific page with all documents associated with it and its entire process. Given the importance of adding correctly the gender of the authors, it was not done automatically – each author cell in each database was checked individually to ascertain gender, amount of co-authors, and if the co-authors were men and women. Only four types of proposals were chosen, given the amount of use, their relative importance, and the need for a plenary vote: ordinary bill, bill to supplement to an ordinary law, bill for a legislative decree, and proposal to amend the Constitution.

The unit of analysis, therefore, is the individual law, bill, or request, not the representatives. Between the period of 2000 and 2014 (last election for federal deputy), the percentage of women increased from 5,7% to 9,9% – the 10% threshold has never been broken. The percentage of women for each year was added to the laws database as well as the year in which each law was approved.

Initially, key words were used in order to identify the cases. Then, the entire laws data set was looked over in order to make sure nothing was missed. However, the bills database is much larger, so the key words had to suffice in identifying the cases, but each was checked so no wrong inclusions were made. The key words were: woman, girl, pregnant woman (one word, in Portuguese), maternity, paternity, mother, father, domestic violence, sexual (as in “sexual violence” and “sexual health”), violence against women,

2 There are several types of “requests” that can be made by the deputies, some requiring a vote and some just the agreement of the Chair. Public hearing requests are usually made in commissions, which is where most of the Chamber work is done. Any deputy can request a public hearing on the plenary floor and that must go through a vote; or a deputy who is part of the commission may request it is usually decided symbolically. In either case, the request becomes, technically, a law. 3 When speaking to legislative aid for a subnational house on another matter, she pointed out how female deputies use public hearings to “back up” their initiatives and find civil society support in order to gain leverage with the male deputies. An old database seemed to confirm this for the Chamber of Deputies, so this was constructed in order verify this claim. 7 gender violence, sexual harassment, rape, feminine4, national hero5, breast (as in “breast cancer), abortion, reproductive (as in “reproductive health”), and gender6.

As Celis and Childs (2012) and Childs and Lovenduski (2016) demonstrate, defining what women’s “issues” are can be quite difficult to say the least. As both papers argue against essentialising women and their claims, they also indicate different approaches, ranging from accepting the claims of conservative women of acting on behalf of women and being transparent about the criteria chosen. Rather than debate what are “women’s issues”, I preferred to narrow the focus on women only – so, for instance, rather than mark all cases that concerned children, I only noted the ones that concerned mothers, specifically.

However, it was impossible not to categorise cases as either “positive” or “negative”. That decision was made on the basis of whether the measure increased women’s freedoms and autonomy or diminished them. Anything that could be argued as neutral was checked as positive. For instance, one bill was regarding how many transvaginal ultrasounds the public health system should provide a pregnant woman – that was marked as a matter regarding women and as a positive. This bill means that pregnant women who rely on the public health system have this examination guaranteed by the state, increasing their rights. Another, on the other hand, by a female deputy from a centre-left party,7 would compel poor women to get a transvaginal ultrasound in order to receive welfare. This was marked

4 The same word in Portuguese means “feminine” and “female”. 5 Brazil has a record of national heroes and for one to be entered into it a law must be passed. Not only are marked here bills attempting to include women in this record, one bill suggests that the record be named “Heroes and Heroines of Brazil”. 6 In Portuguese, the word for “gender” may take different meanings and it is often used when discussing food products. 7 Party ideology in Brazil is subject that is hard to tackle. There are, at present, 35 official parties, with 18 represented in the Chamber of Deputies. There too many incentives, from the electoral and political financing systems as well as from the formal and informal rules of the Chamber, to create new parties. This results in several small non-programmatic parties, but that usually lean towards the right given that they are usually linked to only one (male) leader in a highly personalistic manner. For more details, see Power, Timothy and Zucco, Cesar. Estimating Ideology of Brazilian Legislative Parties, 1990-2005: A Research Communication. Latin American Research Review, Volume 44, n° 1, 2009. For the case at hand, however, because there are no recent measures of ideology and only a measure for “left” was needed, first I thought of using the parties that voted against the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. However, there were no official party directives, even though party leaders used their leadership speaking time to state the party’s preference. Therefore, I used the parties’ position on Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 287/2016, also known as Spending Ceiling PEC, which has been quite controversial as it halts investments in education, health, and other key areas for 20 years and does so through the Constitution, rather than an ordinary law. The parties were clearly divided in left-right lines and, as it turns out, the same parties against the PEC voted against the impeachment. 8 as negative, given that it would force women to get an invasive procedure against their will in order to receive financial aid from the state.

Another, by a man from a right-wing party, would remove the obligatory amount that parties have to dedicate to women’s campaigns, that was marked as a negative also.8 One bill discussed unfair practices of private schools demanding that children bring their own supplies – that was not marked as a women’s issue. One law (12.737/2012) that the key words could not see was designed to protect women against hacking. It was created after a famous female actor was hacked and had nude photos leaked and it is named after that actor, but does not have any of the key words.

Because the website is so thorough, some special cases were analysed in more detail, demonstrating the efficacy (or lack there of) of the Women’s Caucus in turning their actions into the substantive representation of women.

The Brazilian Women’s Caucus

The Brazilian Women’s Caucus is considered by the international literature as a success case (Htun, 2002; International IDEA and NDP, 2010; Piscopo, 2014; Lausberg, 2015). The actions of the Lipstick Lobby, its current institutional arrangement, the support of the largest women’s policy agency in Brazil (Feminist Centre for Research and Consultancy – CFEMEA), and the assumed collective action are the mains aspects mentioned. In fact, no studies corroborate the systematic existence of this collective action or its effects. As the data will show, there is some collective action strategy, but the women still depend on male allies and/or favourable contexts. Any Brazilian politician has to tread carefully between credit claiming, given the personalised nature of elections, and forming alliances, which comes with an added pressure for the women who find themselves in between party, electorate, and the caucus. In addition, the caucus has come under a lot of strain lately, which has made their relationships more difficult.

Institutional arrangement

In 2009, ten years after the Caucus was made official along with other thematic caucus within the Chamber, the deputies succeeded in creating a Women’s Attorneyship,

8 In Brazil, part of a party’s resources comes from the state, proportionally to the party’s size in the Chamber of Deputies. Since the political reform of 2015, for three years at least five percent and up to 15% of the part of those resources dedicated to campaign financing must go to women candidates. 9 dedicated to assisting the deputies in their day-to-day and special activities, promoting the deputies’ image and work, follow-up on the executive’s programmes and policies, receiving complaints of discrimination and violence, developing research on women’s rights, gender violence, and women’s participation in politics, representing the Chamber in related events, and coordinating with national and international organisations for women’s rights (Brasil, 2016, pp. 19-20). Four deputies, one chief and three adjuncts, which are elected within the Women’s Caucus every two years, lead the Attorneyship.

Finally, in 2013, the Women’s Caucus succeeded in creating the Women’s Secretariat, which houses both the Attorneyship and the Women’s Rights Bureau, the official name for the Women’s Caucus. Given all the caucuses that exist in the Chamber of Deputies, some of a very conservative nature,9 it was important that the Women’s Caucus had a different name, so the other caucuses do not attempt to seek the same rights (Rocha, 2015).

The Women’s Caucus or Women’s Rights Bureau10 has, as its prerogatives: participation in the College of Leaders11, use of the leadership slot12 during plenary discussions, call and preside Bureau’s meetings, elaborate the agenda to be approved by a majority of the female deputies, organise and coordinate their activities, formulate work groups, represent the Chamber in solemn events, examine studies that may help the Bureau’s activities, among others (Brasil, 2016, p. 20).

9 There are three particular caucuses, the Bullet, the Bull, and the Bible caucuses, representing respectively, law and order, agribusiness, and Christian conservatives. They tend to support each other in votes and together have more members than any single party caucus or coalition, just shy of the number needed for a constitutional amendment to pass. Christian Conservative refers to some Catholics and mostly Evangelicals who are very dogmatic in their views of society and how religion should be a part of it. 10 Other than this paragraph, I will continue to use “caucus” to denominate the group of female deputies in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. Despite the existence of their official name, they are known as Bancada Feminina, any paper in English refers to them as a “caucus”, and the Chamber has not assigned them an official translation. 11 The College of Leaders is an official body within the Chamber of Deputies made up of party leaders and majority and minority leaders (appointed by their parties and blocs). The College of Leaders sets the agenda, makes decisions on commission and other appointments, and asks for hearings and solemn events, among several other prerogatives. All of these are spread out in the Internal Regulations, not in one specific chapter. Presently, there are no other women in leadership positions that are allowed in the College of Leaders, making the representative from the Women’s Caucus the only woman present. This is, arguably, one of the most important bodies within the Chamber, along with the Directing Board and the Constitution, Citizenship, and Justice Commission. 12 The leadership slot is a specific time allotted to party leaders during plenary debates, which is proportional to the size of their caucus. 10

Being an official part of the Chamber, the Women’s Secretariat is part of the Internal Regulations. The Attorneyship and the Caucus exist on equal footing, that is, one is not subordinate to the other. Their roles, as Rocha (2015) describes, is external, towards the public, for the Attorneyship, and internal and political for the Caucus.

The Women’s Secretariat has its own dedicated physical space within the Chamber, as well as employees. It also has a dedicated website, within the Chamber’s website. However, there is a lot of information missing about the activities both about the Caucus and the Attorneyship; the “news” section lists anything concerning the deputies; there is a section on bills concerning women, but nothing dedicated to bills written by the women in the Caucus; also missing are approved laws that are about women’s issues. The website is also not used to express the deputies’ collective opinions or display the coordinator’s speeches as leader.

Regarding the institutional rules that govern the Women’s Caucus, Moraes stated that they work relatively well, but came under scrutiny when Eduardo Cunha13 became president of the Chamber of Deputies. It is clear that, by becoming members of the College of Leaders, the Women’s Caucus was seen as place of power, and a place that excluded men. That made it a desirable position and a bargaining opportunity as it will be demonstrated further on.

The College of Leaders and the leadership slot

The two most important tools that came with institutionalisation were the presence with voting privilege in the College of Leaders and the leadership slot. Moraes referred to them as “visibility in places of power”. These are, however, mostly visible to their colleagues. The College of Leaders meetings are not conducted publicly, although membership is public knowledge. According to the Internal Regulations, they must strive for consensus, but are allowed to decide by majority.

13 Eduardo Cunha (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party – PMDB) was elected in a contested election which saw official allies, PMDB and the Workers’ Party (PT), go against each other. Cunha was an integral part of the plot to oust President Dilma Rousseff. After the PT did not support him during an ethics commission looking into breaches of parliamentary conduct, specifically, having offshore accounts and lying about them to a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI), Cunha accepted one of the impeachment requests against President Rousseff. That request was the basis on which president Rousseff was removed from office, despite the fact that there are no evidences of wrongdoing on her part. Cunha is also a religious conservative and during his time as speaker was a rival of the Women’s Caucus many times. 11

It is unclear if the representative from the Women’s Caucus is respected as well as any leader. However, given Moraes’ account of how female leaders are treated, it is safe to assume that any woman will be treated as a second-class citizen, regardless of what or whom they represent. She mentioned that on one occasion she and another female party leader were left standing during the meeting, along with deputies who were not leaders but were watching the meeting, civil servants, and advisors. One male deputy from her state and the same religious denomination offered to share his seat with them, by “taking turns”. In another situation, this time in a joint meeting with the Senate’s College of Leaders, the women present were, by an act of chance, the last ones on the speaking roster. Once they were the only ones left to speak, the Senate president ended the round of discussions, despite their protests. She also recalled that in the same meeting, the waiter served all the men first, avoiding the women to do so. When telling these stories, she stressed how this is the “day-to-day”, indicating that treating women as less-than is a daily practice even in the smallest things. She went on to say that, “we have to be vigilant, because at the same time that Eduardo Cunha interfered in the caucus’ election, in the deals he made, there were three women who were commission chairs, which hadn’t happened before”. This showed that Cunha’s power was not absolute and that he was willing to make concessions with the parties within his coalition.

The leadership slot, on the other hand, is a more visible place of power, as it gives deputies not only a larger platform for credit claiming and to speak to their issues, but also displays the fact that they are leaders to a larger audience.14 According to Moraes, the coordinator uses the time as she sees fit; although, on very rare occasions, the women belonging to the caucus may ask her to give the time to another Caucus member. The website displays small summaries of the speeches, but only by clicking on each of them individually can one know if the speech was done as leader or deputy. In addition, a coordinator may use her leadership slot without mentioning the Caucus at all or her regular time as deputy, but speak as leader, which means the transcription will not identify the speech properly. Another problem is distinguishing when the deputy is a party leader as well as coordinator. Since she is using the leadership slot, in both cases she will simply be identified as “leader”.

14 The Chamber of Deputies has their own dedicated television channel and speeches may be played on the public news hour, played on every radio station from Monday through Friday, at 7 p.m., since 1935. 12

Deputy Moraes spoke 144 times during her time as coordinator and after the change in the Internal Regulations which made her part of the College of Leaders. There were 47 speeches (32,64%) on women’s issues or in which she specifically states that she is speaking for the Women’s Caucus. On multiple occasions she spoke on how to include more women in politics, including speaking about Constitutional Amendment 590/2006 which determines that women be proportionally present on the Directing Board and on commissions; on specific aggressions suffered by female deputies; on legislation proposed by the Women’s Caucus regarding the arrest of men who owe alimony; on the goings-on during Women’s Caucus meetings.

Deputy Dâmina Pereira (Social Liberal Party – PSL)15 has made 23 speeches since becoming coordinator, which coincides with her time as deputy – since March 2015. Eighteen of those were regarding women’s issues and she either used her leadership time or specifically mentioned that she was speaking on behalf of the Caucus. Two issues stand out: women’s presence in politics and two specific cases of violence against women. She was, for a time, party leader, for the National Mobilisation Party. However, as member of PSL, she has used the leadership slot belonging to the Women’s Caucus to speak about the anniversary of her city’s founding.

In one of her speeches, she mentions bill 2.265/2015, presented collectively by the Women’s Caucus, with the goal to increase punishment for rape and gang rape. It is currently waiting the assignment of a rapporteur, in the Constitution, Justice, and Citizenship Commission. The author and co-authors are the eight deputies who are currently serving on the Women’s Secretariat, but they are also from ally parties, which brings the question on smaller blocs within the Caucus.

Legislation

General information

All data sets demonstrate that productivity and efficacy are relatively stable in the Chamber of Deputies, although this is more noticeable for bill proposals than approvals, given the sheer amount. Over the years, production of legislation has increased steadily.

15 Originally, Pereira belonged to the National Mobilisation Party (PMN). She then moved to the Brazilian Woman Party (PMB). Now, she resides in the right-wing Social Liberal Party. She is in her fist term and is married to the former mayor of Lavras, a mid-sized city, where she worked as Social Work Secretary, donating her salary. 13

For the years proposed here, 2015 stands out as a highly productive year. It is, indeed, an outlier – in the 18 years before (1995-2013), 2011 had been the most productive year with 3235 bills proposed. As it is expected, 2014 and 2016 are less productive because they are election years (national and local elections, respectively), but the 2016 coup did not seem to affect the workings of the house.

Table 1: Bills and public hearings proposed by year 2014-2016 Year Bills proposed % Public hearings % 2014* 1361 15,7 822 17,8 2015 4544 52,5 2364 51,1 2016** 2757 31,8 1440 31,1 Total 8662 100,0 4626 100,0 Source: the author. * Federal elections. ** Municipal elections.

Women (and men) in numbers

Between 2000 and 2016, there were 27 laws approved concerning women, out of 580 (4,7%). None of the laws in the 2000-2016 database was classified as negative. Eight of the laws were symbolic in nature, such as naming a bridge after revolutionary Anita Garibaldi, determining 2004 as the Year of Woman, or creating the National Day against Breast Cancer. Forty-five laws written had a left-wing female author (46,9%), which means there is not much to say on ideological leanings from this data. Only two laws were co-authored: one was mixed-gendered (the afore-mentioned law on hacking) and one was solely authored by men (although it was the political reform of 2013 and it was only the basis for a larger movement, with dozens of amendments).

Women were responsible for 40,7% of the 27 women’s interests laws. They wrote, in total, 96 laws (16,6%), meaning that out of all the laws women passed, 11,5% were women’s interest laws. That is not to say that they did not write many more - 9,2% of bills written by women were about women, between 2014 and 2016. Out of all the laws that men passed, 3,3% were women’s interest laws. Men wrote 7855 bills in the years of interest, 149 about women (1,9%). Women wrote 807 bills between 2014 and 2016.

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Table 3: Summary results for 2000-2016 laws database Women’s interests as the central First author's gender Laws on women’s interests by target of the law first author’s gender

Frequency % Frequency % Frequency % No 553 95,3 Male 484 83,4 Male 16 59,3% Yes 27 4,7 Female 96 16,6 Female 11 40,7% Total 580 100,0 Total 580 100,0 Total 27 100,0 Source: the author

There were 29 bills classified as negative in the bills database (0,3%) – one was written by a woman, and four were mixed. Many of these refer to the so called “gender ideology” and its ill effects on the nation; many wish to exchange the word “gender” for “sex” from certain laws, thus excluding transgender women or stop some action from the federal government towards gender equality. Two are slightly more controversial applications - they are bills that look to implement some form of censorship, one by excluding any and all scenes of fictional violence that include women and children and another prohibiting the use of female models in lingerie ads on all media. Those were marked as negative given the extreme use of censorship in a country that faced a civil-military dictatorship and now faces a coup d’état under a culturally conservative climate.

There were 196 bills considered gender positive (2,2%), 74 by a female first author and 122 by a male first author. There were 78 bills concerning gender violence including domestic violence, rape, assault, sexual harassment (0,9%), 36 by women (46,2%) and 42 by men (53,8%). Six of those were considered negative.

Table 4: Summary results for bills database 2014-2016 Women’s interests as the central First author's gender Bills on women’s interests by first target of the bill author’s gender (only gender positive) Frequency % Frequency % Frequency % No 8439 97,4 Male 7855 90,7 Male 122 62,2 Yes 223 2,6 Female 807 9,3 Female 74 37,8 Total 8662 100,0 Total 8662 100,0 Total 196 100,0 Source: the author

There were 108 public hearing requests on gender topics during 2014 and 2016, 39 of which were about gender violence in some way (36,1%). Although public debate is usually something positive in politics, they can be used for propaganda and misinformation. Those requests were marked as negative. There were seven (6,5%) of

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them all regarding “gender ideology” and clearly stating in their briefs that their objective was to discuss how it hurt society and the nation. All were requested by right-wing conservative members; one was authored by one woman; another by the same female deputy and another request by the same deputy, another woman and one man.

The remaining requests were all considered positive and so were all requests on gender violence, meaning that 93,5% of all requests on gender matters were considered positive. Women were responsible for 65 (60,2%) of requests concerning women’s interests and for 786 (17%) of all public hearing requests, way beyond their largest bound of legislative production in the same period, which is for ordinary law, at 9,7%. Left-wing members were responsible for 36% of public hearing requests; female left-wing authors were responsible for 27,6% of that. Left-wing women also tended to request more public hearings: from the 17% that make up the female total, 58,5% came from left-wing female authors. It is important to note that these are quite likely the same deputies and it is also likely that the same subject or bill gets more than one request.

Public requests on women’s interests is the only situation where women are more productive than men are. Even when considering bill or law types individually, women do not match men’s production, although they have a considerably high relative number of constitutional amendments approved. A constitutional amendment needs 171 support signatures before being allowed to go through the commission system. Afterwards, it needs two votes on the plenary floor, both requiring a two-thirds majority. Then, it goes to the Senate. Considering that women do not seem to propose more constitutional amendments than they do other bills, this seems to indicate an impressive ability on the part of these deputies. None of the amendments was on women’s interests specifically; all deputies were seasoned politicians, three from left-wing parties and one from a right- wing party.

Table 4: Summary results for public hearing requests database 2014-2016 Women’s interests as the central First author's gender Requests on women’s interests by target of the request first author’s gender (only gender positive) Frequency % Frequency % Frequency % No 4520 97,7 Male 3840 83,0 Male 36 36,4 Yes 106 2,3 Female 786 17,0 Female 63 63,6 Total 4626 100,0 Total 4626 100,0 Total 99 100,0

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Request is on gender violence Request has a gender positive Request has a gender negative content content Frequency % Frequency % Frequency %

No 4587 99,2 No 4525 97,8 No 4619 99,8 Yes 39 ,8 Yes 101 2,2 Yes 7 ,2 Total 4626 100,0 Total 4626 100,0 Total 4626 100,0 Source: the author

Table 5: Law type by first author gender 2000-2016

Male Female Total Ordinary law Frequency 452 90 542

% 83,4% 16,6% 100,0%

Legislative decree Frequency 5 1 6

% 83,3% 16,7% 100,0%

Constitutional Frequency 14 4 18 amendment % 77,8% 22,2% 100,0%

Supplementary to Frequency 13 1 14 ordinary law % 92,9% 7,1% 100,0%

Total 484 96 580 83,4% 16,6% 100,0% Source: the author

Table 6: Proposition type by first author gender 2014-2016

Male Female Total Ordinary law Frequency 6856 734 7590 % 90,3% 9,7% 100,0% Legislative decree Frequency 313 16 329 % 95,1% 4,9% 100,0% Constitutional amendment Frequency 325 26 351

% 92,6% 7,4% 100,0%

Supplementary to ordinary Frequency 361 31 392 law % 92,1% 7,9% 100,0% Public hearing requests Frequency 3840 786 4626

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% 83,0% 17,0% 100,0%

Total 11695 1593 13288 88,0% 12,0% 100,0% Source: the author

One aspect of Brazilian political culture that has been confirmed by all three databases is the individualistic nature of political work. The bills database (97,6%) and the 2000-2016 laws database (95,5%) both show that Brazilian representatives, whether male or female, tend to work alone. Co-authorship is rare, and when it does happen, it stays in the low digits. Only the public hearings database demonstrates some interaction: 13,4% were co- authored and 4,6% were co-authored by men and women.

All three databases were converged into one in order to increase the number of cases for statistical testing. A crosstabs procedure was performed on SPSS, demonstrating that indeed women are more dedicated towards women’s interests: it takes up 8,4% of their legislative production versus 1,7% of men’s legislative production and out of all legislation produced on women’s interests (including laws, bills, and public hearing requests), women were responsible for 41,2%, which is remarkable considering their low numbers in the Chamber. Pearson’s chi-square was 277,813, with a significance value of .000. Although the descriptive statistics and the test statistic are very telling, the effect size, in this case, the phi coefficient, was in the medium range, but rather low at 0,142, albeit significant (Gravetter and Wallnau, 2013; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013; Pallant, 2010). It is important to consider all the different factors that are in play: party pressure, the deputy’s interest (including religion, since many women are part of the Bible Caucus), pressure from the electoral base, electoral year, negotiations on other bills, other issues of interest, etc. A female deputy may be completely devoted to women’s interests; she still will have many other issues of interest and other matters she must work on.

Table 7: Crosstabs Women’s interest laws, bills, and public hearing requests according to first author’s gender First author’s gender Total Male Female No % in Women’s interest proposition 88,6% 11,4% 100,0% % First author’s gender 98,3% 91,6% 97,5% % Total 86,4% 11,2% 97,5% Total 11976 1547 13523 Yes % in Women’s interest proposition 58,8% 41,2% 100,0%

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% First author’s gender 1,7% 8,4% 2,5% % Total 1,5% 1,0% 2,5% Total 203 142 345 Total % in Women’s interest proposition 87,8% 12,2% 100,0% % First author’s gender 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% % Total 87,8% 12,2% 100,0% Total 12179 1689 13868 Source: the author.

The only women’s interest bill produced and approved between 2014 and 2016 was written by a male deputy from an PMDB, a non-programmatic, but usually centre-right party. It amended an existing law stipulating prorogation of legal proceedings when the only lawyer for one of the parties became a parent, either mother or father. There were several high visibility bills approved in 2015, but either proposed before 2014 or by another branch of government, that were produced or supported by the Women’s Caucus. The legislative success of the Women’s Caucus may be interpreted in two ways. Notably, they did not get a nominal vote, only a symbolic one. This seems to indicate that there was collective action on the part of the female legislators and that the Chamber was willing to support their initiatives. It also demonstrates the need for negotiation and abatement in order to ensure approval, since some did require negotiation, as I will demonstrate further.

Quantitative data on legislation can obscure the real work that is being done, particularly when one is looking at a political minority. The work of female deputies and of the Women’s Caucus goes beyond only proposing bills – they must negotiate on behalf of the bills they propose, bills proposed by male deputies or other government branches that favour women, act to stop bills that will harm women, maintain their image in order to sustain symbolic representation, etc. Because legislative work is so massive, it was necessary to rely solely on descriptive statistics, rather than statistical testing because the effect of the relationships will always be too small despite a strong relationship between the variables and a high significance. In order to bring some clarity, the next subsections deal with the topics that have stood out the most: presence and participation; domestic violence; transgender rights; and reproductive rights.

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Presence and participation

When asked about collective agenda, deputy Moraes said that the caucus has found consensus on two topics: gender violence and political participation. Although there are women who have voted against measure that would increase female participation within the Chamber, these have been consistent themes since redemocratisation that female representatives can agree upon and work together to develop strategies in order to see their proposals through.

Brazilian political culture is extremely personalistic and favours individual candidates with large amounts of resources, financial or otherwise. Those tend to be wealthy, white, heterosexual, middle-aged men (Miguel, 2003; Araújo, 2010; Gomes, 2015; 2016). While Brazil is not split into districts, it is common that politicians have bases in which they campaign, and particularly in rural areas, they tend to rule politics. Therefore, it was to be expected that during the political reform debates, both majoritarian voting as well as single non-transferable voting became topics of discussion. SNTV was debated profusely, and included a petition by Brazilian political scientists arguing against it, which was used by several deputies. That system would be disastrous for most candidates, but managed to get 210 votes in its favour, although it needed 308. There were 267 votes against it, and 28 belonged to women. Fourteen women voted for the measure, surprisingly, given that none of them seemed to be under duress to do so, as few parties voted cohesively, despite party orientations. Nine women did not vote at all.16

The Women’s Caucus also argued in favour of seat reserves, although they referred to them as quotas. Signed by the Caucus, but officially presented by deputy Moema Gramacho (Workers’ Party – PT), the amendment to the bill stated that a progressive minimum of each sex17 should be elected for three consecutive elections, thus: 10%; 12%, 15%. If the percentages were not met in the proportional system, the women should be elected via majoritarian rule. This amendment is only one of several, some suggesting 20%, others 30%, without a time limit. This one went to a vote after a lot of negotiation. Many deputies did not want this even coming to a vote, and it is clear why: it almost

16http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade- legislativa/plenario/chamadaExterna.html?link=http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/votacao/mostraVotaca o.asp?ideVotacao=6352&tipo=partido 17 All affirmative action in Brazil is written in this manner in order to not face criticism or be taken to court for legislating for one group. 20 passed, with 293 yays, missing the mark by only 15 votes. One deputy went so far as to say “soon everyone will be having sex changes in order to get into Congress”.18 There were 43 women present, out of 51, and one voted nay. Another proposal, offering the same progression with a limited timeframe has been approved in the Senate (PEC 134/2015).

During the same vote, campaign financing was also up for discussion. Specifically, an amendment that would enshrine corporate donations in the Constitution was up for a vote. This time, only 33 women voted, 29 against, 13 for, and one abstention. There were 264 votes for the amendment, which needed 308. The one “official” abstention, that is, who was present and chose to abstain, came from deputy Mara Gabrilli, from the right-wing Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB), which had instructed its deputies to vote for the measure. Votes against it came mostly from left-wing and some small parties. Why there were so many women missing and why there were so many women voting for the measure is only matter for speculation. After the vote, speaker Cunha attempted to circumvent the rules and vote it again. In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court ruled on a case determining that corporate campaign contributions were unconstitutional. Once the political reform bill went to President Rousseff, she was able to veto the campaign finance article using the Supreme Court ruling.

One success case that is 10 years in the making was of Constitutional Amendment 590/2006. Written by deputy Luiza Erundina (at the time, Socialist Brazilian Party – PSB), it states that the Directing Board of the Chamber of Deputies must have men and women present, proportionally to their presence in the Chamber, with a minimum of one seat per gender. It also states that women must be allocated in all commissions, as much as possible. As female representation has not passed the 10% threshold since redemocratisation, little can be expected to change in the long term. After a long time being archived, processed, and discussed, this bill became a priority with Caucus members, who pressured speaker Cunha into putting to a vote, which was successful. According to Moraes, he needed to give something back to his base and the women he put in the Women’s Secretariat were pushing him on this matter. It now sits in the Senate.

18http://www2.camara.leg.br/camaranoticias/noticias/POLITICA/490383-CAMARA-REJEITA- CRIACAO-DE-COTA-PARA-MULHERES-NO-LEGISLATIVO.html 21

Domestic violence

Domestic violence is definitely a favourite topic for all deputies, especially since Law Maria da Penha19 was introduced by the executive branch. Considering that the law makes it easier by defining the types of violence that constitute domestic violence and that it is something that hardly anyone will dispute that is “bad”, it does make sense that this topic receives so much attention. Currently, there are 194 proposals that use the expression “domestic violence” somewhere in their text. In the 2016 bills database alone, there are 17 bills that have the expression, ten written by women, four attempting to directly alter the original law.

In one situation, domestic violence has even overcome the controversy of reproductive rights. One bill would create the National Fund to Combat Violence against Women, guaranteeing discretionary financial resources for that purpose by being independent from the regular budget. As Moraes described in her interview, a male deputy who is a Christian conservative added an amendment that would prohibit those resources from being used for legal abortion.20 The caucus managed to dissuade this deputy, but after the removed his amendment, another one came and added an identical one. The Bible Caucus refuses to remove the amendment and the Women’s Caucus refuses to vote, “because it would be too great a victory, prohibiting legal resources from being used for the legal termination, as written in law, [of a pregnancy]”. As it is with most women’s caucuses, no matter how institutionalised and organised, reproductive rights are usually off-limits. In this case, the women who believe in this cause and strategy managed to talk to the other women and get them to help with their strategy. There was a lot of movement online during late February 2017, in an attempt to get the bill passed for Women’s International Day, but there was no change on its status.

19 Maria da Penha was at the mercy of her husband for decades, without any help from the police, despite the many police reports she filed. Finally, when she was paralysed from the waist down after he shot her, she got the help she needed and became an advocate for women’s rights and against gender violence. She has now been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The law identifies psychological, patrimonial, moral, sexual, and physical violence, and specifies how they occur. 20 Abortion in Brazil is legal in the cases of rape, danger to the mother’s life, and fetal anencephaly. 22

Transgender rights

Three of the gender negative bills proposed in 2015 were in response to some measures taken by the federal government under President Rousseff. Consequently, they were all legislative decree projects (PDC), and amassed the highest numbers of co-authorship seen. PDC 122/2015 sought to stop a resolution from the National Council to Combat Discrimination Against and Promote the Rights of Lesbians, Gays, Crossdressers, and Transgender Persons (Conae) that ensured that a person’s chosen name should be used in schools and universities and restrooms should be used according to gender identity. It was signed 67 deputies, including two women, Geovania de Sá and Clarissa Garotinho.

PDC 214/2015 seeks to stop resolution 916/2015 from the Ministry of Education, which instituted a Gender Committee in order to promote gender equality policy in education. It had 48 signatures, including four women, Geovania de Sá, Júlia Marinho Rosangela Gomes, and Tereza Cristina. Finally, PDC 30/2015 seeks to stop an executive decree signed by President Rousseff in 28 April 2016 which ensured the use of the chosen name by transgender persons in all areas of the federal government. This had 74 signatures, including two women, Brunny and Raquel Muniz.

PDC 122/2015 was terminated because the authors had no authority over this particular institution, which made the bill unconstitutional. The other two, however, were included in the processing of near-identical bills, but that were submitted previously and are now waiting for the assignment of a commission rapporteur.

The Feminicide Bill (13.104/2015), which is officially by the Federal Senate, but was constructed during a Mixed Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPMI) on gender violence, presided by deputy Jô Moraes, was altered last minute in order to exclude trans women – changing the text from “gender” to “female sex”. Moraes said, during her interview, that “we needed that legislation” and that the dispute with the Bible Caucus has been constant during these past legislatures and “nothing with the word gender is ever approved”. On the one hand, the Women’s Caucus did not reject the idea of including trans women on the bill, despite having religious members who are part of the conservative caucus. Nonetheless, they did not have enough strength to fight the other members of the Bible Caucus.

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One bill, by deputy Jandira Feghali (Communisty Party of Brazil – PCdoB) requests that Law Maria da Penha, which codifies domestic violence, be applied to trans women as well. The law does not, specifically, exclude trans women or lesbians, but it does not specifically include them. The bill was assigned to three commissions: Humans Rights and Minorities, Social Security and Family, and Constitution and Justice and Citizenship. It has gone through the first one, getting a favourable report from rapporteur deputy Dorinha Seabra Rezende (Democrats – DEM), from an extreme right-wing party.

Reproductive rights

The Sexual Victims Law (12.845/2013)21, by deputy Iara Bernadi (Workers’ Party – PT) details what must be the treatment given to a victim of sexual assault by healthcare facilities that are public or associated with the Public Healthcare System (SUS). Among other things, it states that a woman should be informed about pregnancy prophylaxis, also known as the “morning after” pill. Despite the pill not actually being abortifacient, religious deputies and movements came in conflict with the Women’s Caucus and feminist movements. The female deputies had meetings with ministers in order to ensure that the law would be sanctioned without any vetoes from president Rousseff, which was the result after all.

As a backlash, then chair of the Chamber Eduardo Cunha presented his own bill (5.069/2013), which would have revoked Law 12.845/2013, and would obstruct access to emergency contraception as well as penalise medical professionals that advised women on that medication and any abortion methods, even under legal circumstances. The Women’s Caucus and feminist movements mobilised intensely against that proposal, sparking street protests and several news articles on the subject and Cunha’s conservative stances.22 The last time that bill had any activity was December 2015.

In 2016, deputy Elcione Barbalho’s (PMDB) bill from 2007 (PRC 8/2007) creating a new commission in charge of matters referring to women, youths, and the elderly came to a vote. It was joined together with several other similar proposals and despite all attempts by her and the other proponents, the Directing Board insisted on their similarities. After years being archived and joined, the bill had come to the plenary floor, but kept being

21 It was first introduced in 1999. 22 http://sxpolitics.org/brazil-feminists-take-the-streets-against-cunha-and-bill-50692013/13573 24 pushed back. Finally, by the time it came to a vote, an amendment had been tacked on by three right-wing male deputies, with support signatures from several others. The amendment added the words “unborn child” which, in Portuguese, has become a controversial and politicised expression.23 Dozens of requests were made to postpone the vote or to vote article by article. At this point, the Directing Board, led by Eduardo Cunha and, for some time by his alternate, preacher João Campos (Brazilian Republican Party – PRB), wrote a substitute text, keeping the aforementioned expression, and immediately putting it to a vote. Their text was approved and excluded all others from discussion, including Barbalho’s initial proposal. After this, party caucuses were still able to request changes on the text. The expression stood, after five different attempts by the Workers’ Party, the Socialism and Liberty Party and Brazilian Labour Party24, and deputies Erika Kokay and Cristiane Brasil to remove it.

There were seven bills in the database regarding abortion, all written by men, five considered negative, that is, restricting of women’s rights and autonomy. One is the current bill proposing the decriminalisation of a woman’s right to choose, by left-wing deputy Jean Wyllys, the only openly gay deputy in the Chamber. The other considered positive would determine that women would not lose their jobs if they have lawful terminations. In her interview, deputy Jô Moraes mentioned that there several heated debates surrounding the last time a proposition with the same content was discussed in the Chamber. After being proposed in 1991, it went through several commissions and was archived several times, until it was archived one last time in 2012. All its authors had been gone from the Chamber for quite some time by then (it was, in fact, two bills that were joined, one written by one male deputy and another by one male and one female deputy). So far, only a popular initiative suggestion regarding the decriminalisation of the right to choose has been discussed, but those go first to the Senate and that institution has the prerogative to turn the suggestion into a bill.

Two recent instances have increased the debate over the right to choose in 2016: a decision by the Federal Supreme Court which cleared five people who worked in an illegal abortion clinic, stating that the unlawfulness of abortion was unconstitutional25;

23 A bill from 2007 attempts to establish an “unborn child” as a human being not yet born and thus award it all the same rights as any other humans. 24 Despite its name, this is an un-programmatic party tends to lean to the right. 25 According to the vote by Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, the unconstitutionality is based on the restriction of women’s autonomy and individual liberty, enshrined in the Constitution, and that, given that men do not 25 and the discovery of association between the zika virus and microcephaly in foetuses, along with a zika virus outbreak. In both instances, there was upheaval in the Chamber of Deputies, however, from the Bible Caucus.

In the first case, a constitutional amendment on extending maternity leave in the case on premature birth is being used as a “Trojan horse” in order to impose harsher restrictions on abortion in the Constitution. Currently, it is in the special commission stage, with 29 deputies as principal members. It was widely reported that most of them are against the right to choose in all cases.26 There are four female members, two from left-wing parties, including Jô Moraes, one who is known for anti-abortion stances, and who is an alternate and has no history within the Chamber.

In the second case, a bill was created in order to increase the sentence against women to attempt abortions in cases of microcephaly. It was joined with a similar bill from 2003, which encompasses any “anomalies in foetal formation” (PL 1459/2003). The Women’s Caucus as well as the feminist and/or left-wing deputies have been silent on both matters, in comparison to the Bible Caucus and feminist movements.

Presently, and possibly considering the aforementioned case before the Supreme Court, a non-governmental organisation supported by a few left-wing female deputies have filed a case for the legalisation of the right to choose claiming that denying it is unconstitutional.

Sticking together against all odds?

Recently, there have been two situations that have tested the Women’s Caucus strength. The first, the 2015 election of its current coordinator, Dâmina Pereira (PSL). During the 2015 election, Cunha found a loophole in the Internal Regulations referring to the elections of the Women’s Secretariat, and argued that the Women’s Caucus should follow the same rules as the Chamber’s Directing Board and be proportional by party. According to Moraes, if that had actually happened, the second largest party coalition, formed by her party and the Workers’ Party, should have gotten either the Attorneyship or the Bureau. Instead, Cunha negotiated all those positions away. Elections still happened, but with get pregnant, also violates the article on gender equality. He goes on to argue how this illegality affects poor and non-white women more strongly. 26 http://www.huffpostbrasil.com/2016/12/14/dos-28-deputados-da-comissao-sobre-aborto-24-sao-contra- interru_a_21697359/ 26 nominees being decided by party proportionality in the Chamber, which is not the same in the Women’s Caucus. Up until that point, the coordinator of the Caucus had either been a woman belonging to a left-wing party or, in one case, a woman committed to social causes but who came from a centre-right party.

According to her, “he removed entirely the autonomy that the Women’s Caucus had up to that point in the selection process”. The women who would benefit from that decision supported his claim. He negotiated with a smaller party that was an ally of PMDB’s to grant the position of coordinator to one of theirs (National Mobilisation Party – PMN). The women who disagreed with this action, Moraes included, refused to attend the election and vote in what was already a decided outcome.

Another situation that showed the differences between the women in the Caucus was the coup against President Dilma Rousseff. As the media had managed to spin the situation and create a favourable opinion for the impeachment, all deputies felt pressure in order to vote against the president. In addition, many deputies had been named in the “Car Wash” operation, which President Rousseff refused to interfere with. As the women divided in voting for or against the impeachment, according to Moraes, once again the Caucus saw itself divided, with 29 votes for impeachment, 20 against, and two abstentions.

Moraes also cited as a problem within the Caucus, the amount of women without a “political background”. For a woman who started in politics fighting against a dictatorship, going on to be part of social movements during the transition, and eventually rising up through party ranks and becoming a respected federal deputy, it makes sense that she sees women who come some different traditions with at least some distrust. In Brazil, political families have been very important, both for men and women. However, as Araújo (2010) points out, most Brazilian men see elected office as the ultimate goal, and women usually see it as a means to an end. Men in traditional families are groomed to eventually become elected officials. Women in political families are used props during election and might take over if the men in the family are unable to compete in elections. Of course, there are several exceptions to this rule and often times both the women and men in a family are politically engaged. What is common is that women who do use family connections to become elected are judged more harshly than the men who do the same. It creates a divide between left-wing and right-wing women, given their differences

27 in trajectory. However, as Gomes (2015) shows, the family route for women does not seem to be as common as common sense dictates.

Despite the fractures within the caucus, there is a concerted effort to stay organised, as institutionalisation is still fragile. As Moraes stated, within the Women’s Caucus, the most important thing is respecting differences. Especially after the issue with the election, which saw the Caucus seriously divided along ideological and pragmatic lines, the women in the left had to choose the caucus before their own ideals.

Conclusion: the goldilocks zone of politics

The Brazilian Women’s Caucus has, in fact, a great institutional design. That, however, has not been enough to make it a constant effective political agent. The women in the Caucus have to strategise for their own individual purposes, for the Caucus, and for the party, as well as any other caucus they might be a part of, and plan for re-election. Considering that in 2014, 43,7% of the Chamber did not get re-elected27 and that is actually within the norm for Brazilian legislative turnover, it is to be expected that priorities shift constantly.

The past few years have been very polarising and issues that would not have come up, such as the electoral reform, did, and suddenly the Women’s Caucus itself became a central actor. They came very close to approving seat reserves for women in the Chamber, despite having to negotiate them down, and even their coordinator at the time, Jô Moraes was surprised at the outcome. They were also integral in keeping majoritarian and SNTV systems from passing. Indeed, in her interview, Moraes discussed the need to find male allies in order to get their bills approved, as well as finding favourable contexts in which to introduce their bills, such as International Women’s Day or, in this case, a critical juncture where all rules were up in the air.

When looking at the big picture, it seems that the female deputies have adopted a two- pronged strategy as critical actors: collective and token when it suits them. In this case, token does not, necessarily, mean alone. When deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (Social Christian Party) offended deputy Maria do Rosário (Workers’ Party – PT) by saying she “didn’t deserve to be raped by him”, the Caucus rallied around her demanding that such

27 http://www2.camara.leg.br/camaranoticias/noticias/POLITICA/475450-INDICE-DE-RENOVACAO- DE-PARLAMENTARES-NA-CAMARA-CHEGA-A-43,7.html 28 remarks be prohibited by the Ethics Code. While deputy Maria do Rosário stood her ground, their strategy was to highlight their minority status.28 However, they do adapt quickly to the individualistic culture of the Chamber and author bills on their own.

As much as the female deputies and their Caucus are critical actors for change, there are critical actors for backlash. Eduardo Cunha was the first to notice how powerful the Women’s Caucus had actually become. Rather than fight it, he found an informal way to make it work for him. In this case, the formality of the Caucus worked against it – when it existed as just a regular thematic caucus, without any power, no one ever noticed when elections occurred. Layering and conversion work both ways, and in a case of a new institution, it is important to make sure it is not subverted (Mackay, 2014).

In addition, the Bible Caucus has increased exponentially and has particularly famous leaders, such as former speaker Eduardo Cunha, Eduardo Bolsonaro,29 and Marcos Feliciano, who was president of the Human Rights and Minorities Commission in 2013. As Moraes stated in her interview, their strategy is to go against reproductive rights and sexual freedom. In one instance, an educational kit called “School without Homophobia”, created by the Ministry of Education in 2011 was targeted by Bolsonaro, who dubbed it “gay kit” and said that it would teach children “to be gay” (Lacerda, 2016). He succeeded in removing it from circulation. Moraes described how difficult it is it breaking through the wrong definition of “gender” as something that means diluting the differences between the sexes and the traditional notion of marriage, and the ever-growing notion of “gender ideology”. According to her, that topic has become so controversial that it has “contaminated” all parties and all members.

It is remarkable how the critical actors for conservatism have managed to bring attention to their issues as general issues and generate support both inside and outside the Chamber, while feminist critical actors or, on occasion, female critical actors, have not managed the same despite having issues that speak to the majority of the population, such as the right to choose for the former and domestic violence and rape culture for the latter. As far as the reproductive rights are concerned, the Women’s Caucus as well as individual female

28 http://agenciapatriciagalvao.org.br/mulheres-de-olho-2/bancada-feminina-e-procuradoria-da-mulher- repudiam-declaracao-de-bolsonaro-sobre-estupro/ 29 Bolsonaro has even been interviewed by Stephen Fry and Ellen Page on his homophobic views. 29 deputies have left Brazilian women and organised feminist and public health movements to fight for themselves.

This speaks to the main issue of the Caucus: its institutional frailty. It is safe to assume that, even if after the internal elections and the coup, with the left-wing deputies returning to the Caucus, things are not exactly back to normal. These were very extraneous events, the Caucus coordinator is an inexperienced politician, and the country is in very delicate situation. Priorities certainly have shifted for now and a high legislative turnover in 2018 might see this Caucus disbanded despite its potential.

As for a party divide, there does not seem to be much when one looks at legislation, but there are definitely friendships and “clicks” that are worth taking a closer look in future research. Party loyalty depends on how much women depend on their party for their next election, as certain key votes and the interview with Moraes show. As she said, the women who have electoral autonomy do not care about party loyalty – they are going to vote however they want. On the other hand, that does not mean that party loyalty is not something that they do not take into account: those are alliances and friendships that they have taken years in building and that they need for other bills in their interest and for their campaign, no matter how autonomous they are. It seems that the Brazilian case would greatly benefit from a qualitative, in-depth analysis of how friendships and networks are built within the Chamber.

The female deputies are stuck between a great institutional design, some ideological rifts but mostly common ground, and not enough numbers in order to be truly effective in passing substantive legislation for women. As they struggle against the rising tide of religious conservatism, it seems more likely that they will hang on to their tried and true themes of domestic violence, rape culture, and political participation, but that will only go so far as they start to fight over control of the Secretariat. As this article is being written, they are once again debating how the election will be this year, now that Cunha is gone. The two women who seem likely to get the spot are one of Cunha’s allies and a deputy currently under indictment for corruption and against transgender rights. Given the strength in numbers of the Bible Caucus, it seems like a simple strategic move to ensure the presence of an extremely conservative woman in the Women’s Caucus in order to hollow out all the progress made in previous years.

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