MAPPING THE BACKLASH AGAINST WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND GENDER JUSTICE IN THE BOLSONARO ERA (2019-2022)

Abstract

In January, 2020, the Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Studies on Women – NEIM, of the Federal University of Bahia, initiated a new partnership with the Institute of Development Studies – IDS, and a group of other institutions, to develop the action-research program, Countering the Backlash project, Reclaiming Gender Justice, in our countries. One of the venues of this research was the mapping of policies and practices regarding these issues throughout the life of the program (which, given the delays caused by the Covid 19 pandemics, will run for six years). Thus, after undertaking a literature review of such issues in Brazil, we chose to map and analyze four areas in which the backlash – and the counter-backlash – against women’s rights and gender justice have been especially intense during the period of the Bolsonaro government in Brazil (2019-2023): a) conditional cash transfers; sexual and reproductive rights; gender-based violence; and education and culture (Sardenberg; Mano; Sacchet, 2020). In this report, we bring an updating of policies and practices on these issues, covering the period between May, 2021, through July, 2022. This corresponds still to the period of the Covid-19 pandemics, but one in which vaccines to combat it were available and applied free of cost to all the population that sought it. Yet, as we shall see ahead, it was a period still marked by unemployment, famine, increased rates of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, and an anti-gender standing on the part of government and institutional violence against women’s sexual and reproductive rights