In March, we celebrate International Women’s Day. It is an ambiguous period that, at the same time as it shows us how far we have come and grown in this matter, we also realize how stagnant we are. But, despite this, it is a month of unity, of female empowerment and to celebrate all the incredible women who have passed through our journey.
As a way to honor this meaning, today we present the stories of four empowered and inspiring female professors from Faculdade Cásper Líbero, who cultivate this feeling of transformation and love in their students.
- Simonetta Persichetti – The Storyteller
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“I remain, in some way, that 13-year-old girl driven by curiosity.”
Every journalist, when they are going to interview a source, goes through a preparation process. You formulate the questions, think about the tone, plan the rhythm. But it often happens that when the time comes, all this planning falls apart, and you follow a completely different course. This is what happened in the interview with Simonetta. It was supposed to be a chat, to know more about the Italian journalist, winner of the Jabuti prize and who exudes love for her profession. I achieved this, but with another method: I got to know Simonetta through many of her stories.
“If someone asked me where I saw myself in 10 years, I would say: ‘I don’t know, wherever life takes me. I never liked those very closed little boxes. I really don’t know, and one of the beauties of journalism is that, you don’t know where you’re going to be. I just want to be somewhere where I have a story to tell, whatever it is. That’s still one of the things I try to keep to this day.’”
She came to Brazil with her family when she was only 7 years old. Since then, she has adopted the best and worst of both worlds, but she has never let go of her strength and her Italian heritage. “What made me who I am was a little bit of the Italian culture and tradition, you know? The education, the question of facing up, of not letting anything let me down, going forward, believing in who I am. For Brazilians, this way I am is very Italian. There, I am very Brazilian. So, I think I must have combined the best and the worst of both places.”
At 13, she decided to become a journalist. One of the main reasons was the possibility that the profession gives to hear and spread new stories, from different people and universes. The passion for photography came later, it was not the original plan. Simonetta says she never imagined herself writing about photography, nor did she imagine herself teaching. She was just open to the possibilities, and photography ended up choosing her. From 1980 to 1995 she wrote about photography as a freelancer for a magazine, in parallel with her career in big newsrooms, such as IstoÉ and SBT. She only took up photography for good in 1996, once she took up her job at Estado de São Paulo.
“I thought about photography in a way that people didn’t. Not because I was a genius, but maybe even because I didn’t understand it. Deep down, I always had this desire to tell stories, no matter if it’s about a war, a president, or a photographer.”
One of the funniest stories she told was about the book she wrote with eighteen articles she wrote for Estadão at the time, alongside her friend Rosely Nakagawa. “One day, someone called my house from Estadão saying: ‘Congratulations!’. I asked why, it wasn’t my birthday or anything. They said I was running for the Jabuti prize, and I thought it was a journalist’s prank because I had just published the book. I answered “ok” and hung up the phone, kind of cursing. When I saw that I had actually won the prize, I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself: ‘they tried to throw the book away and it ended up in the winners’ pile, it’s not possible’. It was my first book and I won the Jabuti prize, I was very happy, for myself and for photography, for it gaining space. This made me write the second book, which obviously didn’t win any prizes.”
About the difficulties faced for being a woman, especially within the country’s largest press vehicles, Simonetta says she has never been shaken by it: “I’ve always been this way, I’ve always entered with the foot in the door, I’ve never been one to ask permission for anything, I’ve always put myself out there. I was not raised with ‘you are not going to do this because you are a woman’, I was told that I would do whatever I wanted. So, if in my house I didn’t have this prejudice, I didn’t accept it outside.”
But behind all the incredible women, there were others who helped pave and shape this path. For Simonetta, the big ones responsible were her grandmothers and, above all, her mother. “The paternal grandmother was a strong woman who taught me to love stories; she used to tell me several stories that she made up when I was a child. My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, taught me the importance of roots and of being grounded, of not thinking that, just because we studied, we are more or better than others. And my mother, without any doubt, was my example of strength, to be a woman, to place oneself as a woman within the family. I come from a family with very strong women.”
As a message to 17 year old Simonetta, a freshman in college, she says: “Go ahead, you will get there. Believe in yourself. Don’t be so hard, don’t take yourself so seriously. Allow yourself to be a little lighter.”
- Mei Hua Soares – The Resilient
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“And when I am losing my breath, I remember all these women”
Mei is that woman who always lightens the mood. She has managed to transform a tough experience into strength to keep going, and she motivates those around her to have the same courage.
Her story is closely linked to theater. It started when she was 14, in public workshops that were created by the government as part of the cultural public policy agenda. It was in those environments that she was able to have contact with different people, different worlds, and to “drank a lot from the fountains of other people who were very empowered.”
“They were families that I met and gained throughout my life. How loving there was, how affectionate that environment was. I lost my parents at a very early age, and those figures from the theater were true fathers and mothers to me, there’s no question about that. For example, this proximity to homosexual directors was determinant for my complete acceptance of all the LGBTQIA + agendas today, there is no way to separate this matter because, in these debates, I always remember these figures that were almost like fathers to me.”
In college, she chose to major in letters. First, according to her, because it was the most rational option, since she was studying alone, and it was easier to get in because of the number of openings. But, it was also in search of recovering the roots and cultures of her mother, who passed away when she was 11 years old, through Chinese language studies.
“I owe a lot to the public university. A lot indeed. Again, I was a result of public policies, educational policies this time. I was only able to complete higher education because there are public universities in Brazil. I am very grateful and, in a way, I had this as a premise when teaching, for almost 15 years, in public schools, with all the precariousness that this involves, because it is not easy. It was almost a debt I had, I had a public investment in my education and this has to revert in benefits for the population and the community where I live.”
Today, Mei is passionate about the classroom environment, her researches, and her students. She bets on and is delighted with the exchanges that take place within it, where teachers are also able to learn a lot from the baggage that students bring, according to their individual experiences.
As inspiration and empowerment, she talks a lot about the incredible women who have passed through her life, but who are characters usually not valued for all their strength and empowerment.
“How do we feel empowered? We only get it because so many other amazing women paved the way for us. From all over, from the lunch ladies, to the inspectors, to the cleaning assistants. They are amazing! When I am running out of breath, I remember these women. For them, life was always hard, even outside of pandemic contexts. They’ve gone through a lot worse, but they continue to sustain worlds. No, I cannot afford to fade away.”
Mei looks to her background as the biggest influence for her art. From scripts for the theater to scientific research, the most critical, political and social issues are the major protagonists, because they are issues that have always affected her.
This way, she is able to take all this history of struggle, from a very young age, with all her social baggage and different experiences throughout her trajectory, and turn it into fuel to keep her moving forward. This, without ever forgetting who she is, where she came from, and how it all started.
“I think that, in this way, you keep on going and asking yourself: have I forgotten who I am? But when life gets tough, and we have this legacy well paved, this story is no small thing. It is what holds us up in difficult moments. I will not deviate from this path because many people have helped me get here, inspired me to get here, and I cannot give this up. All of these small actions I do has to be consistent with the conduct of these incredible people we came in contact with. This is what I think is fundamental, this network that we weave with these empowered people, this is what feeds us and holds us up. In this context that we are in, this is the only thing that keeps me going.”
- Maria Candida Almeida – The Sensible
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“There are times when the only thing that is left for me is poetry”.
Candida is the woman of many stories. A specialist in generalities, her trajectory is made of paths that, many times, get mixed up and add up to form the person and professional we know today.
In journalism, she was enchanted with the multiple possibilities of language. This is also how the passion for the arts, in its multiplicity, came about. From video, through photography, to poetry, she is in constant transiting through this universe.
“Art happens in my life as something that I enjoy in the apprehension, in the aesthetic experience, but that I enjoy in the representation. To present myself artistically, to talk about the world artistically. It is a foundation of thought, of those who can’t handle just explaining the world by rationality.”
And she uses that world as her foundation of life. More than just her numerous published works, Candida uses poetry as a way of expressing herself and dealing with the world around her, even in the most difficult moments. “There are times when the only thing that is left for me is poetry. Last year I had a very strong and severe depression. I became a hollow person. In this process, what rescued me was writing. To write and put to music. That was it, it was the only way I could communicate, it was by writing. We are all poets, anyone can be. Writer is something else. They charge us to be writers, but we are all poets, because we all feel and translate feelings, no matter if in words.”
As a woman, LGBT and a teacher, there are many obstacles she had to face to get here. The lack of references, family support, and the imposing boxes of the time were some of the big challenges of adolescence, preventing her from understanding who she really was.
“We’re talking about the early 90s, it was very difficult. When I was 14, 15 years old and I started to get interested in women, there was no reference. I went through some very difficult times, even wanting to end this world because I didn’t understand myself. When I had the courage to tell my mother to ask to see a psychologist, it was a scandal. When I came to São Paulo to do my master’s degree, I got married for the first time and sent a letter to my mother just informing her, not inviting. Today she is an activist, but it took 25 years for this to happen.”
College was important for her to find her world, her peers, people with whom she shared her thoughts. In her professors, she saw the image of a superhero, someone she admired and dreamed of following that same path. Then came the desire to become someone that people mirror and get inspired by every day as well, and those heroes continue to be her role models until today. In her classes, Candida seeks to pass on the following message:
“As long as you are in respect and synergy with the world, you can be whatever you want to be. This is a message of encouragement, because people are too different to think that they should be formatted in the same way. To let people know that they have individual power, and that the world often makes us believe that we are not, that we do not fit in. Man, it is good that we don’t fit in, if we are to fit into a mold, who am I? If I am modulated, then I am nobody. I will only be someone when I take ownership of myself, and believe in this.”
And she managed to achieve all that she aspired to. Admired by her students, today she has become a reference for many of them, something that she herself was unable to have as a young woman.
“I taught at a college in Caraguatatuba and there I met an older student, who became my friend. I met his wife, his daughter, he worked with me as a designer. About 5 years ago he contacted me to tell me that he was in the process of changing his gender, and today his name is Alice. I was chosen as the first person she told about it. So I was able to accompany the whole process, from the beginning to the end.”
- Helena Jacob – The Extraordinary
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“But it’s with women that we are true more, that we are genuine and we can learn more. It’s our tribe.”
Helena started the year 2021, again, as the new coordinator of the journalism course at Cásper Líbero. But her path to get here was long, and full of achievements along the way.
The choice for journalism was motivated mainly by her parents, since the world of news has always been very present in her home. She grew up immersed in it, and ended up combining this reality with her passion for reading and writing. But these were not the only factors that culminated in her decision, according to her “with Mercury in Gemini, there was really no other way for me.”
“Funny, I imagined myself covering wars and international conflicts, or being the editorial director of a major magazine. They were more watertight futures, you know? Today I look back and am very thankful for such diversity in my professional life: I worked in a newspaper (my passion), in magazines, on websites, in publishers, I worked as a freelancer, teacher, researcher, coordinator for the third time of the most important journalism course in the country, I work in educational management. Wow, I didn’t even imagine so much. I am grateful for such a privilege in life.
In all these years, she has been through memorable moments, such as the coverage of the 1998 World Cup for Lance!, the coverage of the September 11th attacks for Valor Econômico, and the two 5th grades in the Enade exam for the coordination of the journalism course at Cásper. But it’s not all great all the time, and Helena recalls the hardest part of the profession:
“The harassment. To be a woman in a sports newsroom 23 years ago was very complicated. Today I can better understand all the absurd harassment I suffered at that time. I also suffered harassment in other newsrooms, especially moral harassment. Even a very privileged white woman like me needs to prove herself worthy all the time – I still do, every day. It is very tiring. We have advanced a lot, we no longer keep quiet as much as before, and we are more and more the absolute majority, just look at the classes at Casper. But we still lack a lot: respect, recognition, salary. We have a lot to fight and to conquer.”
Helena has several ongoing projects currently. Besides coordinating the course, which is the biggest of all, she also has research in Communication and Food, volunteer work at the ONG Adote um Gatinho, and some projects to return to journalism “getting her shoes dirty.”
With years of experience, today the teacher tries to guide her female students so that they don’t have to go through what she had to pass through. She also always reminds them of the importance of journalism for democracy and life in society, and how it is one of the most important professions in the world. These moments in the classroom have yielded stories that are very dear to her:
“I love to remember the day I spontaneously mentioned to the 2013 4JOB that Cásper could only have one selector hat, because the classes were always the same, like the houses of Hogwarts. One of the best laughs I’ve ever seen in the classroom. Apart from that, I fondly remember so many young faces that I follow and see shining in journalism, and the support of the classes when I was teaching with a huge belly, in 2010 and 2011, pregnant with my son Pedro.”
In 2020, Cásper adopted the regime of online classes because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, Helena also talked about all the losses that came along with this system.
“Yes, digital takes away the eye to eye, the body expression, the bump and the smile in the hallways. How much we miss that, don’t we? I almost die of nostalgia every day. But I have managed to maintain a strong bond with the classes and I am very grateful. Without this connection it would be impossible to cope with such a difficult world.”
Of inspirations and role models who helped shape the sensational Helena we know today, she mentions all the women who have passed through her life, especially in teaching. They were the ones who encouraged her, exchanged knowledge, and made her a better person.
As a last message to the teenage Helena Jacob, newly arrived at university, she says: “Always be proud to be the woman you were born to be and move forward. Doubts will come, but you are amazing and don’t give up. Stop feeling less, because you are always more to the loved ones in your life and to yourself. Never doubt yourself. That would have saved me a lot of suffering.”
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The article above was edited by Helena Leite.
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