As BW of Brazil announced on October 29th, a coalition representing the collective voices of black Brazilian women were to travel to Washington DC on November 1st to participate in a session of the Commission on Human Rights to denounce the Brazilian state for a lack of public policies aimed specifically at black women. The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy forced a re-scheduling of their participation, but it appears that after the decades long struggle to bring attention to the plight of black Brazilian women, the Brazilian government is starting to listen. Read the story below:
The federal government announced that in 2013 it will launch a program of public policies for black women. In September workshops were held with black women of social movements and government representatives to establish a specific plan of action. The representative of the Secretariat for the Policy of the Promotion of Racial Equality of the Presidency of the Republic Eunice Léa de Moraes explains that the plan will have three axis.
“The first is the empowerment of the organization of black women, the second is the fight against racism and sexism, and the third is ‘communication for equality’ to reverse the negative stereotype of black women in the media,” she said in an interview with Rádio Brasil Atual.
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| Jurema Werneck |
Jurema Werneck, of the (black women’s) NGO Criola, says there is no public policy for this population. According to her, it is necessary to denaturalize racism in order that the creation of these policies can occur. “The differences in education and the labor market that we observe in the data are seen as natural, we need to denaturalize this situation,” she says. “Despite our efforts to increase the education of the population of black women, in the education policy there are no initiatives that allow us to maximize these efforts. And that is a reflection of racism in education.”
The majority of black women are mostly domestic workers, Jurema recalls. “Even though they have a relatively high educational level, black women are earning less, always experience injustice and exploited by receiving less than they deserve.” Although it is required by law to have a carteira assinada (formal contract), most of them are still (employed) informally. This means lack of access to a range of rights, such as Social Security, maternity leave and unemployment insurance.
Source: Rede Brasil Atual
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