Since International Women’s Day happens on March 8th, it is important that we not only celebrate women and their existence, but also acknowledge their fights and struggles to find the space to raise their voices in society.
Although a lot of progress has already been made with women gaining the right to vote and conquering many other rights, that does not mean that the battle is over nor that they have reached equality.
Going back through history, it is possible to see that it has been a very rough and long fight, with the first woman to vote in Brazil being Celina Guimarães Vianna, who voted all the way back in 1927 and petitioned to do so because she felt that, since she had enlisted, she deserved the right to vote. When the judge gave her a favorable decision, he decided that all women should have that same right and appealed to the president.
Celina’s official electoral registration was very important, not only because she was the first female voter in Brazil, but in all Latin America, which resonated worldwide. In 1928, another Brazilian woman made history by being elected the first female mayor of a city called Lajes, also the first in all Latin America.
In 1932, the Decree No. 21,076 from the first Electoral Code guaranteed every woman over 21 years old had the right to vote and be voted throughout the national territory. Ever since then, many important women have participated in politics, but men still had more power and were much more present in higher positions. The year of 1934 was the first one of elections after the approval of the Electoral Code that gave women the right to vote, and it was also the first year a black woman was elected as a state representative in Santa Catarina. Her name was Antonieta de Barros.
Now, it is essential to study the trajectory that women have gone through in order to understand what is going on in the world right now and how the sexism is still present and often in disguise, either in politics when females have a less effective voice, at school when female teachers are not taken as seriously as male teachers, or even how women are still expected to quit their jobs to take care of their families while men won’t even change their night routine to help put the baby to sleep.
The best way to understand what women went through and still do is to talk to them and listen to their experiences, as a man would never be able to fully understand how hard it is to exist as a woman and to deal with the extreme inequality in all fields.
According to Olga Salomão, former deputy mayor of Rio Claro, Brazil, the inequality between women and men is something rooted in society: “Women have been educated to serve while men have been educated to be served by them. Women were raised to take care of the house, of the children, and to break this pattern… it is hard from the personal and cultural points of view“.
Born in a time when women were extremely dependent on their husbands, she proudly says that it was different in her home: “I come from a family in which women have always had a strong participation. They had access to education, to work… so that’s something important. The work issue is primordial because it gives the woman financial independence, and when she has that, she has more freedom to have her own political choices and even political participations. It takes money to be able to participate actively, but it also takes encouragement. Most women you see, as rich as they are, are not motivated enough to do the tough part, or have not studied enough to do so.”
When asked about the differences from the past, Olga says: “I think the participation of women has increased a lot from the 90s to 2010s.” In 2024, according to the Superior Electoral Court, from the total of 456.310 registered candidates, only 155 thousand were women, while the other 301.310 were men.
Looking around the world, it is noticeable that, even though most countries have been ruled by men throughout most of their histories, more and more women have been elected to high political offices in the last few years, even including heads of state. The percentage of women in leadership roles in the UN Member States is still very small. According to the UN, women’s equal participation and leadership in political and public life are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Most countries that were led by women did not have them as political representatives in the current way, but as monarchs, and that usually happened through lineage, for example, when a king died and his wife had to take over. Today, women have been elected as important representatives of their countries, but they are still underrepresented as they are not given the same voice, power and trust as men. It is a known fact that a lot of progress has been made, but it doesn’t mean it is time to celebrate just yet.
Girls that were taught to obey and follow orders should be taught to raise their voices and speak their minds, to never settle until they are respected equally and to start their political activism as soon as they can, because being a woman is a political act by itself, it is a strong statement to say “I am a woman” and it is even harder to say “I am a feminist”, but it is through participating from a very young age in student councils and school debates that you can take small steps towards making a change.
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The article above was edited by Larissa Buzon.
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