La política de género en el gobierno del PT

Abstract

What difference will a Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores-PT) govern­ment make to women’s status and rights in Brazil? In order to analyse the Lula government’s approach to gender issues, the article first examines the party’s foundation and development, and relationship to social movements, including the women’s movement. The PT is shown to be a groundbreaker in the Brazilian party system, in terms both of promoting women’s leadership and of its ideological and institutional commitment to gender equity and equality, as illustrated by the party’s state and municipal governments, by its actions in the legislative sphere. The article then analyses the likely direction of the new Special Secretariat for Policies on Women in the light of the previous, uneven trajectory of Brazil’s national machinery for promoting women’s status, and of the kinds of gender policy orientations discernible in the party’s subnational administrations. It concludes by analysing some of the gender policies put forward since the beginning of the Lula government in January 2003.