A programme for
BRAZIL on primary schooling, which is the responsibility of local government, on the attention that should be given to women who have been the victims of rape and sexual at-
The elaboration of a policy on women means having the instruments necessary for such a policy, having a structure at execuwomen in South
America's largest city tive level which has the power to plan, execute and coordinate, along with other bodies, all the different aspects of public policy that have an impact on the situation of women in society.
After the installation of a civil government in 1985, the government of the "New Republic", partly under the pressure of women organized within the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB),
A POLITICAL earthquake took place in Brazil in
November 1988. Luiza Erundina, a woman and activist of the Partido de Trabalho (PT — Workers' Party), was elected mayor of the biggest town in South America, São
Paulo. In last November's municipal elections, the PT had
36 mayors and 2,000 councillors elected (see the last issue of IV).
This article is taken from the December 1988/January
1989 issue of Em Tempo, the journal of the Fourth
Internationalist Socialist Democracy current in the PT.
TATAU GODINHO
UIZA ERUNDINA, 53 years old, is originally from the Nordeste, the poorest state in Brazil. Very involved in the Christian circles identifying with liberation theology, she participated in the peasants' land occupations in this region.
As a woman and a left-wing activist in a continent rich in political caudillos (male
"leaders"), she has received every kind of
"compliment". Her predecessor as mayor,
Janio Quadros, a 71-year-old right-wing politician, told the journalists who asked him what he thought of a women occupying his post: "Personally, I like a woman to be at home, with a child round her neck and preparing a dish of beans for me."
The PT faces enormous problems in administering São Paulo. The city is bankrupt, 35% of the population live in shanty towns, 50% have no access to sanitary services, and homicide is the main cause of death among adults. The PT faces the task of reorientating municipal policy to respond to the needs of the mass of the people. The administrative machine alone is incapable of doing this and there will be an important role for the self-organization of the population in the people's councils which the PT announced it intended to
One of the most important things for the
PT in the towns that it is going to run is to in integrating succeed antian
24 jects. Because of the PT's influence among discrimination policy into its general pro-
International Viewpoint #158 • March 6, 1989 the most active sectors of the mass movement, its wish to politically represent, organize and lead the different oppressed layers, and because of the organized presence of women in the party in the women's commission, the party will be forced to develop a policy that can answer the needs
Need for a conscious anti-discrimination policy
The first task is to understand the need for such a policy and to have adequate means for putting it into practice. This requires an understanding of two problems: first of all that the discrimination which women suffer is not simply an ideological or cultural problem; and secondly, that when the public authorities do not consciously adopt a policy against this discrimination they in turn reproduce the mechanisms of it, even if their general policies are favourable to the workers.
On certain important questions, state action can have a direct influence on the situwomen. This is the case for example with public policy on the question of domestic labour or women's control over their own bodies. The first point implies building public facilities: crèches, laundries, restaurants or canteens. The second requires modifications in health policies. Many other examples could be given, tried to broaden its social base and to "moderize" they way it governed. One aspect of this was the creation of "women's councils" at national, state and municipal level. It was in this context that the special women's police stations for rape victims and battered women were created.
The limits of the existing
"women's councils"
These councils are linked to the executive bodies, but they do not have any real power to interfere in the elaboration or implementation of public policy. In most cases, they are only appendages of the governors' cabinets. There is no definition of their sphere and decision-making, either alone or in coordination with other government secretariats. In general they have hardly any administrative and financial autonomy. Their activity is reduced to making suggestions to the executive and mainly to organizing propaganda supporting the government's policy on women.
As these councils do not have any effective role in defining the policy of the public authorities, their role as representing the population and social movements is in fact nothing but a demagogic excuse for so-called public participation.
The ambiguity of this type of structure, a state body which includes sections of the population, spreads confusion about the meaning of the type of independent bodies proposed by the PT (people's councils, and
Although the creation of the "women's signified a recognition at the institutional level of the discrimination suffered by women, their real activity was not expressed in the creation of political mechanisms that could create the conditions for a change in women's situation. The PT can and must break with the limits of the present government's demagogic institutional policy towards women.
It is on the basis of an assessment of the
"women's councils", and pushing an understanding of the need for the public authorities to establish a special policy, that the question of the special secretariat on the question of women is raised.
The creation of a structure equivalent to the government secretariats, participating on equal terms in the definition of government policy and with financial and administrative autonomy, provides a real possibility for defining, elaborating, executing and coordinating policy at all levels of direct and indirect public administration that responds to women's needs.
### Real difficulties are undoubtedly political ones
The problems linked to women's situation affect different sectors of the administration (education, health, and so on). Thus action has to be taken in coordination with these different secretariats so that the aspects relating to women are not isolated. This policy has to be put into practice in each sector of the public administration, and these specific programmes integrated and combined in an overall struggle against discrimination. Without underestimating the difficulties of putting into practice proposals of this type because of the need to reorganize the structures of the executive, the real difficulty is undoubtedly political.
Because of the lack of previous experiences to draw on, the weakness of the understanding of women's oppression and the integration of feminism within the PT, all proposals that imply giving a real priority to the question of women will only be won by a real political fight. So it is fundamentally important to strengthen women's organization in the PT and coordinate this with the broader women's movement. *
Women's commissions in the PT
Within the PT there are women's commissions which work with the leadership bodies at all levels to develop policy in relation to
These commissions are responsible for developing, proposing and examining all the questions related to the oppression and super-exploitation of women.
Far from being marginal or ghettoized into mere talking-shops, these commissions are composed of PT activists who consid er that work among women is of vital importance for the party.
They have fixed a certain num-
• encouraging PT women to participate in the women's movement,
• creating the conditions for this question to be taken up within the PT itself. Creating adequate channels for this discussion to involve all the party s members;
• developing the PT's proposals on women's questions. *
"Old
traditions
are hard to
change"
MUNICIPAL elections are due to take place in France in March. This is the level at which women are "best" represented in French political life: they make up 14% of municipal councillors and 3.9% of mayors (mainly in small rural villages - only five lead towns of more than 30,000 inhabitants).
Michèle Ernis, a teacher and an activist in the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the Fourth International), was elected councillor for the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray suburb of Rouen in 1983 on a list supported by the LCR and Lutte
Natacha Brink of the LCR's Cahiers du feminisme journal, spoke to her about her experience.
W HAT IS the representa-
tion of women in the Many of the 39 members of the council are women, including the first deputy. A decision was made to feminize the council and its public appearance. However, during the full council sessions — held about 7 or 8 times a year — few people speak, and in particular few women. The women mainly work in the council committee and in the day-to-day running of council affairs. • Is there sexism in the division of responsibilities?
Of course, there are strong prejudices in this sphere. The women councillors are above all responsible for old people, education, artistic questions and social welfare. The male councillors take sport, finances, town planning, the council newspaper. As a council member can only be in two committees at once I am personally in the finance committee and the committee for social welfare, young children and old • Do you have a special relationship with the women in the town?
BRAZIL • FRANCE
We have an experimental open committee on very young children. Around thirty women and two men come along from schools, family associations and the Family Planning Movement. They are above all concerned by the lack of facilities. There is no municipal crèche in Saint-Etienne, although 10% of the children are under five in a population of 35,000. There is only one public playgroup, which can only take 24 children for half-days, and cannot provide the midday meal. There are private facilities, registered childminders and a playgroup organized by one of the family associations.
The committee has started various activities in the localities. Discussions have been organized. But no money has been voted the demands coming out of these discussion seemed to be too subversive for some women who have disappeared from these activities. However, the commission is con•tinuing its work, in a less spectacular way, by proposing to organize a council information service on all the childcare facilities that exist in the town. • Can you give other examples of your municipal activities?
Last year, the council decided to give subsidies for the March 8 International Women's Day celebrations. This was an initiative of the Family Planning Movement and was centred around the theme of sexism. Several teachers worked together on the question of sexism at school, showing up the stereotypes used in school textbooks and asking children to make drawings on this theme. Thanks to the cooperation between the council, the school and groups like the Family Planning this was very successful.
On another question, I denounced the 25 subsidies the town hall gives every year for
Cuts threaten women's committees
FRANCE • BRITAIN the Mothers' Day celebration — which is a big event with medals, speeches and deserving mothers and lots of family pride. These subsidies would be very useful for collective facilities, but old traditions and mentalities are difficult to change. • Is there a feminist programme that could be drawn up for the council?
A whole programme is ambitious. But I think there's a real need for a feminist fight in the municipal councils. To be successful, this has to be taken outwards though collective work and groups that are rooted in the community. One cannot have a real effect as an isolated councillor. I can, for example, talk about the specific difficulties for women as far as the "minimum income for social insertion" [limited social security] is concerned, and the sexism of the existing law, but unless there is a women's group in Saint-Etienne which is going to take up this question then what I say will remain abstract.
What is more, it is not always easy to be a women in a minority position in a council, even if the usual sexist remarks motivate rather than demoralize me.
A feminist activist in a town council has plenty to do. Intervening to make life easier for all the women's groups and associations, encouraging International Women's Day activities and supporting women's struggles. This is all possible. Demanding that there is a regular women's section in the council bulletin, forcing the council to organize sufficient and varied childcare facilities with a sufficient number of places, so that women can have a real choice. Organizing discussions around films, exhibitions and so on.
All this is within reach, so long as there are associations in the town who take up and continue these activities. For example, recently a group in Saint-Etienne supported by the council decided to organize activities for immigrant women at times when their children were at school. • Have you been in contact with other feminist town councillors?
Very little, unfortunately. I have had some individual meetings with women from the another left group, the PSU, and I was lucky enough to participate in the founding meeting of URCOL, the association that the Communist rénovateurs [split from the CP] created for their elected rep. resentatives in February 1988. After the introductory report by Alain Amicabile, one woman intervened straightaway, and a two-hour discussion took place on the question of women as elected representatives, sexism in councils and so on, although this was not at all on the original agenda. This was a sign that these are burning questions for women.
My impression from these contacts is that we all came up against the same sort of problems. But it would be useful to ex26 change experiences and have more discussions. * International Viewpoint #158 • March 6, 1989
IN 1982 the Labour Party fought the local elections in the London Borough of Camden on the basis of a manifesto that included the promise to set up a women's committee. This was one of such women's committees to be set up after the creation of the Greater London Council women's committee.
HE COUNCIL organized four
T
public meetings for women in the borough to discuss how the committee should be structured and what it should do. From these meetings, which were each attended by about 300 women, demands came forward for the cooption of specific women representing groups that might otherwise be excluded. The priorities for cooption were Black and ethnic minority women, older women, women with disabilities and trade-union women - and, somewhat as an afterthought, lesbians.
A women's unit was set up initially with three workers. The committee was given a budget in order to be able to give grants to women's groups in the area. It was decid ed that the priorities in terms of grants should be first Black women's groups, second lesbian groups and third groups for women with disabilities.
Expansion of childcare facilities
As a result of this many new women's structures organizing around a whole range of issues have developed in the borough, and groups that already existed have drawn in more women and been more effective in their campaigns. The committee funded the first lesbian centre and Black women's centre to exist in London.
The women's committee pushed for the council to set up a baby-sitting service for women in the borough, in addition to the nurseries that already existed (although these are still insufficient), and to organize subsidized childcare for council meetings and for public meetings organized by the
Another council policy was in relation to its own employees. Camden became an "equal opportunities" employer - that is, it rejects discrimination in employment and positively encourages applications from minority and oppressed groups and women.
It adopted a policy of "equality targeting", in other words that its workforce should reflect the composition of the population in London with 52% women, 18% ethnic minorities and 8% people with disabilities. Sexual and racial harassment were made disciplinary offences for council employees, and all council employees are entitled to up to 40 days leave per year for caring for dependents, adults or children, whether members of their biological fami-
Labour leaders running scared
The women's unit also appointed an employment officer with a particular brief on the question of low pay. For the council itself, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value was adopted, leading to Camden having the best paid telephonists, typists and home helps in the country.
By 1986, the unit had expanded to eight posts, each with different responsibilities for looking at the way the council as a whole could be more receptive to women's needs and liaising with different groups of women in the community.
However, over the last 18 months the impact of cuts in government grants to local authorities has been that all council services, and in particular those which are seen by the Labour leadership as being "fringe" issues, have been under attack. The grants budget has been removed and the women's unit is under threat. Recruitment of council employees has been halted and 2,500 jobs have been lost, particularly affecting those areas where advances had been made in integrating previously segregated employment.
Further, there is a climate developing — not just in Camden but across labour authorities — that committees organizing around women, race and lesbian and gay issues should be closed down and put under one umbrella equal opportunities committee.
This is not just part of a money-saving exercise but also due to the attempt by the "new realists" in the Labour Party to ditch what they see as contentious issues. It is justified on the basis that the key task is to elect a Labour government - despite the fact that there is no evidence that any of these issues lost Labour votes. Defence of women's gains is and will be a key part of the fight against cuts. *
'IN THE OPINION OF THIS REVIEWER