Lecture addresses rights of black women

 Zélia affirms that the black woman needs to be integrated into the job market
 Mônica Conrado was one of the speakers at the event
Giovana Miranda seeks to elevate the self esteem of the black woman

Lecture addresses rights of black women



During a lecture on the rights of black women that happened on Friday, January 30th of 2009 in the tent theme of the Movimento Negro (Black Movement) at the Universidade Rural do Pará (Rural University of Pará) (UFRA), members of NGOs and associations discussed the difficulty of entering the labor market and also for birth control and sexual exploitation.

According to Amador Zelia, who is one of the coordinators of the movement’s activities in Pará, black men already enter the labor market with a deficit of 50%, due to their color, while women have a disadvantage of 75%, due to the question of gender and race.
“There are studies that show progress on these data, because females have entered into certain careers such as law and medicine, but inferior functions are assigned to black women, because they often think that they are only cut out to be maids,” said Zelia.

For Monica Conrad, part of the Organization “We Women” (“Nós Mulheres”) of the state of Pará, the debate over discrimination excludes the specifics of black women, because for them, there are three forms of oppression. “The political oppression removes the rights, the economic excludes the cost of the labor market, while the ideological creates stereotypes of beauty and this is what generates inequalities.”

Still according to Monica, black women have the highest illiteracy rate, more children, lower wages, are victims of domestic violence and continue to be worshiped as sexual objects, and die earlier because they are poor and they are hardly the focus of research because subjects of official figures are white and this topic has a color and a gender and they must have their identity recognized. “In the hospitals are discriminated against and if they know that we practice religions with African roots, the situation is worse,” she added.

The student Giovana Miranda, who is a part of Dandara* Women’s Movement, that promotes training courses and produce information in the city of Itupiranga (state of Pará) says that prejudice against women is still intense. “We are discriminated against three times: Because we are women, indigenous or black and poor.”

Giovana reported that she has already seen cases where women were not accepted to perform specific functions due to their color and therefore, the group of 40 women who are part of the movement, sought to change the mindset of the black women themselves, who feel excluded from society. “In our organization, which has existed for eight years and managed to form other groups of disucssion, we have a salon that works with Afro hairstyles in order for women stop to thinking that their hair is ugly and different from those that they see on television because many of them do not identify themselves as black”, she said.

*- Dandara was a black woman warrior of Brazil’s colonial period. She as the wife of Zumbi of Palmares (the greatest black leader of Brazil’s runaway slave societies known as quilombos) also the mother of his three children. Dandara killed herself when she was arrested on February 6th, 1694, in order to not return to slavery. Although there is not much data about the life of Dandara, the stories are legendary. Today, many black women’s organizations and cultural group take their names in memory of Dandara.
About Marques Travae 3747 Articles
Marques Travae. For more on the creator and editor of BLACK WOMEN OF BRAZIL, see the interview here.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.