Brazil is experiencing a strange contradiction: while it is one of the countries in the Americas with the largest number of laws and initiatives against female violence, attacks on women have grown alarmingly in recent years.
According to a Datafolha
report
, every minute 35 women are attacked.
Of these, 31% by hand from their husbands or ex-partners.
Perhaps for this reason and because he knows that he was elected thanks to the women's vote, President Lula da Silva has launched for the next 8th, International Women's Day and for the entire month of March, the largest known mobilization in favor of women until today.
Led by the Minister for Women, Cida Gonçalves, and the other 10 ministries headed by women, the new initiatives in favor of women's rights will mobilize 30 of the current 37 government ministries.
According to the Minister for Women, the campaign of the new Administration will deal with the rights of women "as a non-negotiable value with a set of policies that differentiate the lives of 52% of the population."
No one escapes the fact that the increase in the rates of violence against women despite the existing laws in their favor is due to four years of the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, with his strong macho accent, contempt for what is feminine and verbal aggression against women.
And it is curious that, precisely in the midst of this climate of resurgence of violence against women, politicians are concerned because in the polls that are already beginning to be carried out on the next presidential elections, women of various ideological tendencies appear.
If a preference of the electorate for a female candidate prevails in the polls for the next elections, there is no doubt that Lula has succeeded in promoting, through his new wife, Janja, an openly feminist, the largest government campaign known to date.
Among the numerous initiatives and new laws in favor of women launched this month, the one that promotes equal pay between men and women stands out.
The law already existed but it had become borage waters.
This time, Lula swears that it will be fulfilled and she is already mobilizing the political forces to be able to carry it out.
It is not that Lula has stood out in his long career as a convinced feminist despite the fact that he always had the sympathy of the female vote, which, paradoxically, also favored the super-macho Bolsonaro.
Lula always knew how to play with two cards when it comes to her gender politics.
He was always graced with the female vote and was the first to propose a woman to succeed him after his second term, his former minister, Dilma Rousseff and today the fierce Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of his party, the PT.
And yet, no one would consider Lula a feminist.
They say that when he chose Dilma to be a candidate for her succession, a trade unionist asked him between mocking and curious why he had chosen a woman.
Lula placing his hand on her shoulder told her sarcastically, in a low voice: "Because she is more macho than the two of us put together."
Lula is like that and it is perhaps his sense of humor and at the same time his sympathy for the feminine world that ends up being rewarded at the polls for which he has decided, stimulated this time by the large number of ministers, to launch his great crusade with measures and specific laws in favor of women's rights.
And it is that women are not only the majority in Brazil but also that many of them are black and the ones who have been able to study the least and on whom the greatest attacks fall every day.
The paradox is that it is these black women who have always been the outcasts, the worst paid, the least listened to, the most rejected, who have resisted and saved society with their moral strength in the worst moments of calamity such as those of the pandemic. and those of the resurgence of hunger.
They have been and will continue to be the true lightning rods in the most tragic and dark moments in the history of this country.
A modern country, but where the shreds of slavery continue to shamefully accompany a society where the pyramid between rich and poor, between those who accumulate wealth and those who suffer need, continues unfairly deformed.
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