Women's Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil: The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff

214 Pages·2021·4.192 MB·English

by  Pedro A. G. dos Santos, Farida Jalalzai

Women’s Empowerment and
Disempowerment in Brazil

Women’s
Empowerment and
Disempowerment
in Brazil
The Rise and Fall of
President Dilma Rousseff
Pedro A. G. dos Santos
and Farida Jalalzai
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu
Copyright © 2021 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System
of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Santos, Pedro A. G. dos, 1980– author. | Jalalzai, Farida, author.
Title: Women’s empowerment and disempowerment in Brazil : the rise and fall
of President Dilma Rousseff / Pedro A. G. dos Santos and Farida
Jalalzai.
Description: Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Women’s Empowerment
and Disempowerment in Brazil uses both quantitative and qualitative
methods to investigate how Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female
president, shaped women’s political empowerment in her country and what
the implications of these findings may be for women’s executive
leadership globally”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019232 (print) | LCCN 2020019233 (ebook) | ISBN
9781439916179 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439916186 (paperback) | ISBN
9781439916193 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Rousseff, Dilma. | Women presidents—Brazil. |
Women—Political activity—Brazil. | Power (Social sciences)—Brazil.
Classification: LCC HQ1236.5.B6 S37 2021 (print) | LCC HQ1236.5.B6
(ebook) | DDC 320.082/0981—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019232
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019233
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to the memory of Oraida Maria Machado de Abreu.
You were the embodiment of women’s empowerment.
Dedicated also to the memory of Dr. Abdur Raheem Jalalzai,
whose love, encouragement, and support empowered his
five daughters to become the women they are today.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 From Guerrilheira to Presidenta: The Rise of Dilma Rousseff 16
2 Tchau, Querida: Empowerment, Disempowerment, and Misogyny
in the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff 36
3 Empowering Women through Appointment 58
4 Losing It All: Policymaking and Women’s Empowerment
under Rousseff and Beyond 85
5 The First Presidenta: Empowering through Symbolizing 112
Conclusion 135
Appendix 145
References 165
Index 195

Acknowledgments
T
his book is a culmination of many years of research from both auth-
ors, research that converged in 2010 with the election of Dilma
Rousseff. Pedro dos Santos was starting his fieldwork on what would
end up becoming his dissertation on gender quotas in Brazil. While in the
country, he was able to see the presidential campaign that led to the election
of Dilma Rousseff, sparking his interest in better understanding the role of a
woman president in the representation of women as a group. Farida Jalalzai’s
work on women in the executive office led her to study the rise of women
presidents in Latin America, as Rousseff was, at that time, the newest woman
president to break the executive glass ceiling in the region.
Along with Chile, Costa Rica, and Argentina, Brazil was one of four Latin
American countries to have a woman president in power. Brazil having its first
woman break the executive glass ceiling—one who had no family links to power
as women traditionally did—at a time when Brazil enjoyed a strong economy
and growing visibility on the world stage proved especially compelling. Rous-
seff came to power in a highly masculine space where few women held elected
positions and where violence against women was entrenched. Not only did we
want to know more about the story of her rise, but we also became even more
concerned with the ways her presidency mattered for women in the country.
During our earlier collaborations, we focused on gendered media coverage
regarding Rousseff but also on ways that Rousseff offered women represen-
tational benefits, particularly policy representation for women as well as en-
hancing women’s influence in appointed positions such as cabinet ministers.