J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
DOI 10.1007/s10826-011-9504-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Families, Gender Relations and Social Change in Brazil:
Practices, Discourse, Policy
Miriam Adelman Mariana Correa de Azevedo
Published online: 13 May 2011
 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract We discuss three different areas in which poli-
cies on gender and the family have been debated and for-
mulated in Brazil, revealing both the forces of change and
the many contradictions that are at work within this society
today. After a brief look at the historical vicissitudes of
families and family life in Brazil, as representations and as
forms of social organization, we come to our more imme-
diate context: the re-democratization processes that engulfed
Brazilian society as of the 1980s and the social actors gen-
erated therein. Issues relating to gender and sexuality
become increasingly visible on the broad political agenda
that, notwithstanding national specificities, also converges
with social, political and cultural trends emerging all over
the world in the latter decades of the twentieth century. The
three specific issues we discuss herethe Maria da Penha
Law on domestic violence, efforts regarding the legalization
of abortion and recent debates that have emerged around a
bill introduced to give legal status to same-sex relation-
shipsprovide testimony of a society characterized by
tensions between mechanisms sustaining restrictive defini-
tions of family, linked to male dominance, heterosexism and
hierarchical gender roles, and those that push toward more
egalitarian, diverse and democratic family relations.
As our article goes to press, the Brazilian Supreme Court has just
made a landmark legal decision recognizing that gay and lesbian
couples have the same rights as heterosexual couples. This has
numerous ramifications on specific matters such as marriage and
adoption, but must still be ratified by congress.
M. Adelman (&)
M. Correa de Azevedo
Department of Social Sciences, Universidade Federal do Parana,
Rua General Carneiro 460, Curitiba, Parana 80060-150, Brazil
e-mail: miriamad@ufpr.br
M. Correa de Azevedo
e-mail: azevedomariana@uol.com.br
Keywords Family
Family policy
Gender relations

Brazilian society
Introduction
In Brazil as in many other parts of the modern Western
world there has been ample reference to a current and
ongoing crisis of the family, rooted in the social and
cultural changes of the late twentieth century and inter-
preted in a wide variety of ways, drawing from different
symbolic repertoires. Thus, while some portray the fabric
of family life and conflicts through recourse to metaphors
of loss and disintegration, others emphasize democratiza-
tion and new forms of sociability or innovation in
practice, values and understanding.
Yet as a Latin American nation occupying a particular
location within the processes that shape modernity and
modern imaginariesa location that has in fact been marked
as Other, and oft-rendered in the mystifying terms of the
hyper-sexual or hyper-sensual, as carnival, tropical para-
dise (Nao existe pecado do lado de baixo do equador or
South of the equator, nothing is sinful, as songwriter
Chico Buarque translated this into Brazilian mass culture), a
few initial paragraphs of contextualization are necessary.
We attempt to summarize some key debates in studies on the
family in Brazil, addressing the question of whether or to
what extent the specificities of Brazilian family culture
(Machado 2001; Scott 2004) produce convergence or
divergence from contemporary trends portrayed in socio-
logical literature; particularly, the growing democratization
of intimacy and family life identified by authors such as
Giddens (1993) and Weeks (2007). We then look at current
trends and contradictions in family life as they are expressed
and exemplified in the arena of family policy in Brazil today.
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Family in Brazilian Society
Historians of Brazil have written widely on the patriarchal
family form that emerged in the colonial period and had a
formative influence on many aspects of Brazilian society
and culture. Among the most famous are the narratives of
scholars Freyre (2006) and Buarque de Hollanda (1995),
emphasizing questions such as the racial mixing resulting
from patriarchal slavocrats relationships with Black and
indigenous women, often taken as concubines, and the
genesis of peculiar sociabilities, including rather sui
generis forms of extended family and a culture of cor-
diality in which people who are not social equals mingle
and relate. Furthermore, this form of family is generally
understood to have left greater imprints on popular classes
and social elites, whereas the growing urban middle classes
are seen as more prone to embracing the individualizing
values promoted by modernity. It is in light of this legacy
that Machado has suggested the co-existence of two (nei-
ther clearly oppositional nor easily complementary) codes
that shoot through Brazilian society, one that is rela-
tional and the other, individualist. Thus, there seems to
be some agreement (Machado 2001; Scott 2004) around
the idea that there always been a degree of ambivalence
within Brazilian modes of individualism, and the model of
the nuclear family that has been so apparently hege-
monicas norm if not in terms of actual social arrange-
mentswithin other modern cultures has never prevailed
clearly over other models and options individualist influ-
ences make themselves felt, but come to fruition under
conditions and context that are can be characterized by
some fundamental differences with northern European and
Euro-American cultures:
On the one hand, neither in Brazil nor in the Hispano-
American nations was a Welfare State created nor
were citizenship rights extended over the general
population, as occurred, following different paths,
throughout the developed Western world. On the
other hand, the Ibero-American cultural paradigm
that informs the social construction of forms of
family, sociability and the notion of the individual
has strong historical roots in a Catholicism inflected
with Arab influence. It also stands at quite a distance
from the Lutheran-Calvinist cultural paradigm that
prevails in the Anglo-Saxon world and extends its
influence, to different degrees, over continental Eur-
ope, particularly its non-Latin countries. (Machado
2001, p. 13)
Feminist scholars have applied a gender lens to these
processes, bringing out important dimensions neglected by
the mainstream literature. Ragos intersectional perspective
has shed light on different womens relationship to the
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J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
patriarchal household and to malefemale relations in
spaces/places outside the latter, such as the brothel (Rago
2008) and the factory (Rago 1985). Our own work has
suggested a re-reading of the concept of the cordial man
through the prism of Sedgwicks concept of homosocia-
bility (Adelman and Moraes 2008). Fonseca (1993, 2003)
has written widely on family and gender in poor and
working class communities and how their patterns of
sociability and reciprocity embody forms that have very
little to do with the modern (bourgeois) nuclear family
model.
Vaitsman (1994) is a contemporary scholar interested in
looking at the specific ways in which modernizing pro-
cesses unfold in Brazil and how they lead to the transfor-
mation of gender relations and family life. Emphasizing
womens increased participation in education and work
from the mid twentieth century onwards, she argued that it
created spaces for life projects that challenged patriarchal
individualism and broke up gendered public/private
dichotomies (Vaitsman 1994, p. 188, our translation). Yet
twentieth century Brazilian history is also heavily marked
by authoritarian political regimes, such as President
Getulio Vargas national developmentalist New State
which curtailed social freedoms, promoted censorship and
highly conservative patriarchal values and persecuted
opposition. Nonetheless, certain aspects of changing gen-
der and family relations did not come to a halt, but rather
strained in a different direction. Thus, Vaitsman stressed
the importance of access to higher education: For women,
the role of education, and for [young women and men
alike], participation in university-based activities at the end
of the 1960s, in which authoritarianism was challenged
politically and culturally, were decisive elements in pro-
moting change in womens and mens identities, making its
imprint on affective and sexual behavior (Vaitsman 1994,
p. 188, our translation).
The accelerated urbanization, industrialization and eco-
nomic growth of the 1970s led to renewed social crises that
could no longer be held in check or camouflaged by the
military dictatorship that had been spawned during the
1960s. Furthermore, the decade of the 1970s was also the
period in which the Brazilian urban middle class was con-
solidated. If in Europe and the United States, the oft-
mythologized generation of 1968 was busy inventing a
new political language and culture that emphasized ques-
tions of identity and difference, in Brazil, political struggles
were articulated, most urgently, as the fight against the
military regime. Yet as significant as these particular con-
texts may be, in one part of the world and the other, there was
an identifiable tendency to move away from the large scale
political projects of the Old Left and toward the emer-
gence of new social movements linked to new(ly visible)
social subjects and their specific claims for social change.
J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
Second wave feminism, in Brazil, as elsewhere, was thus
born of a context of broad and varied social struggles, yet
marked by particular difficulties emerging from a climate of
repression and censorship. Its first clear manifestations may
be seen in the publication of several periodicals addressing
feminist issues, in 1974. Scholars who have studied the
struggles for re-democratization that take on greater force in
Brazil during the 1980s have also noted that while poor and
working class women were at often the forefront of rural
and urban resistance to the dictatorship and demands for
civil and social rights, the birth of a feminist perspective
that was able to articulate womens demands in terms of
contemporary forms of gender politics and consciousness
depended on the contribution of middle class intellectual
women many of whom were at the time returning from
years of exile in Europe and the United States, where they
had grown to appreciate the need for autonomous womens
organization and developed a commitment to feminist
theory and practice (Goldenberg and Toscano 1992).
Today, as Brazil swears in its first woman president
(someone, in fact, who began her political life as a cou-
rageous young woman who put her body and life on the
front line in the struggle against the military regime) and
feminism boasts several decades of recognized participa-
tion in public life, from universities and trade unions to
NGOs and the ranks of the State itself, the challenge that
changing gender relations make on the evolution of family
patterns is all the more undeniable. Landmark legal chan-
ges of the post-dictatorship period consolidated womens
political rights and (finally!) put an end to longstanding
patriarchal tutelage over wives and daughters that Freitas
(2010) has so well summarized:
[In the] 1916 Civil Code marriage [was] the only
way of establishing a legitimate family, juridically
marginalizing families that are otherwise constituted.
[It also] attributed different rights and duties to hus-
bands (articles 233 to 239 CC/16) and wives (articles
240 to255 CC/16) and placed women within a posi-
tion of uncontestable juridical and social inferiority.
State interest in maintaining marriage led, in a first
moment, to consecrating its undissoluble character, to
the obliged identification of the family by the hus-
bands last name and thus, the relativization of the
wife. Thus the civil legislature of the early 20th
century reproduced a maritally-based, patriarchal,
hierarchical, patrimonial and heterosexual family. A
woman could not choose where to live and only had
power to make decisions in cases in which her hus-
band was incapacitated, could not work without his
permission and a pre-marital loss of virginity was a
basis for marital annulment if the husband so desired.
This reality began to change very slowly. The
67
greatest impelling force in this regard was the Statute
of the Married Woman (Law 4.121 dated 27/08/
1962), in which wives are no longer considered rel-
atively incapable and come to be seen as collaborat-
ing with their husbands in managing conjugal society.
The 1988 [post-dictatorship] Constitution finally
pronounces equality between men and women [hus-
bands and wives] (p. 1).
Social movements that consciously articulated egalitar-
ian expectations, as well as the vicissitudes and contradic-
tions of culture in a highly mediated and globalized
context, also helped to thrust Brazilian family forms in the
world-wide post-modern direction of growing heteroge-
neity: in marriage and family patterns and peoples ideas
about how they want to live their adult lives. Thus, Vaits-
man was able to assert that the alleged crisis of the family
that has received attention in Brazil and elsewhere is, above
and beyond all else, the result of the questioning of gender
roles, creating new models for the way people establish
their ties to relatives, children and partners. In practice, this
has been manifested through dissociation of sexuality and
procreation, the burgeoning of diverse sexual practices and
desires encompassing youth and adults at different stages in
the life cycle, the increasing instability of households
forged around (heterosexual) marriage (separation and
divorce have been on the rise for decades, but have been
coupled with remarriage and cohabitation, and blended
families), and numerous other forms in which the increas-
ingly, openly recognized conflicts between individual
aspirations and traditional, gender-based family roles are
(re)negotiated. Plurality and flexibility are on the order of
the day, albeit in ways that are profoundly influenced by
class, ethnic and urban/rural differences, among others.
Thus, changes and contradictions in gender relations and
family life have been produced in the interaction of cul-
tural, economic and political forces. At the institutional
level, this has meant new challenges that, in turn, clamor to
be translated into new policies, as the State is obliged to
deal with growing pressures and emergent demands from
people and collectivities and provide protection for those
who face vulnerability and/or exclusion. Some scholars,
following the Foucauldian path, would alsoand not
incorrectlyemphasize that new forms of recognition, of
programs, policy and legislation, can also be seen as new
forms of regulating family and marital relations, just as the
very definition of these terms become hotly contested.
Paths to Change? Gender and Family in Public Policy
As Fineman (1995) has pointed out, law and public policy
bear a peculiar relationship to social change: on the one
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hand, the juridical sphere tends to be a conservative one,
and although it must respond to societal evolution, is
usually slow in its tasks of codifying, institutionalizing and
disciplining the emergent. On the other hand, processes dictatorship. Womens movements denounced both State
of social change are at least partially contingent on the
translation of social demands into laws, policies and pro-
grams, and therefore present a series of very difficult
challenges for those who are committed to using the latter
to dismantle the very historic structures of power and
inequality they helped to establish.
Farah (2004) broached the same issue in more concrete
and specific terms, identifying a tension between a political
perspective that places emphasis on social movements as
agents and actors of social change whose autonomy should
be preserved, and one which advocates an active strategy
of winning space and resources within the newly-democ-
ratizing State. She also mentioned that many of those in
civil society and social movements who were initially
reluctant to engage with the State later move on to occupy
space within the NGOs of todays Third Sector, seeking a
dialog meant to propose or influence guidelines for public
policy. It is important to come back here to a point raised
earlier: Brazilian re-democratization occurs within a con-
text of the absence of a developed Welfare State harboring
consolidated channels for civil society participation. Thus,
the struggles around State policies and resources erupting
during the 1980s mark important new tendencies, and at
the same time, are not in themselves able to eradicate the
vestiges of an authoritarian and patriarchal past. Further-
more, the politicization of gender coexists with a historic
climate of extreme prejudice toward feminist views and
attitudes (Schmidt 2006), creating a scenario of deep
contradiction. We have chosen three examples of struggles
around issues of gender and notions of family that illustrate
this contested terrain, which we believe will continue to
polarize passions and oppose interest groups in the years to
come, as the forces of progressive change, of social reform
and of conservative reaction confront one another within
political institutions and civil society.
Domestic Violence Against Women and the Maria da
Penha Law
Domestic violence is an extremely complex phenomenon,
and may involve a wide range of actors: women (or min-
ors) who are victims, aggressors who are usually male;
police and public safety officers; the juridical sphere and its
professionals and staff, etc. It can be understood as a
privileged space for understanding the way social phe-
nomena and cultural, psychological and subjective mean-
ings come together and perhaps one of the most difficult
and tragic sites where gender inequality, intersected by
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J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
class inequalities, is played out. Bandeira (2009) wrote of
30 years of feminist resistance to gendered violence and
sexism, beginning with 1970s youth opposition to the
violence and the violence that occurred hidden within the
home, coining the phrase violencia contra a mulher
(violence against women) and soon articulating demands
for specific public policies on this issue.
The pioneering, highly structured response of the Bra-
zilian State was the creation of specialized police stations
responsible for protecting women. The first one was cre-
ated in the countrys largest metropolis, Sao Paulo, in 1985,
followed by another in Rio de Janeiro in 1986, seen as
particularly important in providing much-needed assistance
to women from less privileged segments of society. This
was followed in the 1990s with the creation of Special
Criminal Courts (Juizados Especiais CriminaisJECrim),
through the Law 9.099 enacted in 1995. Grievances
brought before special police stations were now dealt with
within the ambit of this law, raising a number of problems
that feminists took issue with, as we will soon argue. As of
the year 2000, intensified efforts to consolidate democracy
and human rights brought the creation of the Special Sec-
retariat of Policies for Women, in 2003during the
Workers Party president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvas first
term in officefollowed by a dense mobilization of
women and feminist organizations leading to the approval
new protective legislation. The 2006 Law 11.340/2006,
known as Maria da Penha and to which we will soon
return, goes beyond the restricted scenario of grievances
taken to the special police stations, characterized by diffi-
culties in understanding the complex dynamics of gendered
inter-personal conflict that mark the lives of the women
who make complaints or press charges, and takes an
important step insofar as it recognizes the public (social)
nature of private (hidden in the household) forms of
gendered violence.
Bandeira (2009) revealed some of the contradictions in
the gains consolidated over 30 years of feminist organi-
zation. During the 1980s, the first organizations to garner
attention in denouncing violence against womenSOS
Corpo and SOS Mulher had no institutional connections.
One of their campaign slogans was Quem ama nao mata.
(People who love dont murder). Activities consisted pri-
marily in providing support to women who were victims of
violence. The first specialized station to serve only women
(Delegacia Especializada de Atendimento a Mulher
(DEAM)) represented a historic first action in public policy
in which the State assumes co-responsibility for control
over this type of violence. Although aligned with a general
process of re-democratization, these stations soon revealed
their insufficiencies in providing assistance to those who
sought it, first and foremost because the staff itself was
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largely made up of police officers who were lacking This law was coined Lei Maria da Penha (the Maria
understanding of all that was at stake and appropriate da Penha Law) in tribute to the biopharmacist Maria
training to deal with the cases that came to them. da Penha Maia, whom in 1983 suffered two episodes
Law 9.099, enacted in 1995, promoting the creation of of attempted murder on the part of her husband, a
Special Crime Courts, had as its underlying raison d etre a university professor and as a result ended up a
certain unburdening of the Judiciary Power, providing a paraplegic. She spent 20 years struggling to get her
conciliatory model for conflict resolution that allowed for aggressor condemned, including pressing charges
alternative punishment for crimes considered to be less through the United Nations, an action which woke the
offensive. Unexpectedly, these courts became the major Brazilian State up to the seriousness of the situation.
site for dealing with the grievances brought to special Maria da Penha transformed her pain into struggle
womens stations, particularly in cases of minor aggres- and her tragedy into solidarity with Brazilian women.
sion and threat. This happened particularly because (Bandeira 2009, p. 419)
there was no specific legislation for this type of crime. Yet
Among the major innovations that this Law brings with
this in turn generated a way of dealing with violence
it are a broadened concept of gendered violence, a con-
against women that ran counter to the feminist agenda and
sideration of the negative moral judgments that victims are
all the struggles that had come before (Bandeira 2009;
subjected to, the combat of sexist violence in a wider sense,
Debert and Oliveira 2007). In the face of the victims need
not restricted only to the private sphere, regulation of aid
to decide whether or not to press criminal charges (after an
and assistance provided to the victims through inter-insti-
initial hearing had taken place), courts actively encouraged
tutional networks and the establishment of protective
couples reconciliation, thereby pushing the problem back
measures and innovations in penal codes. There is some
into the private sphere. Extensive use of the Law 9.099/
consensus among researchers in their contention that it is
1995 also led to restricting the action of the Special
still too early for an evaluation of the law and its efficiency,
Womens Stations, which no longer engaged in investi-
but it is possible to assert that in itself it poses a significant
gating charges. Fines and alternative punishments often
challenge both to the sexist culture in Brazil and how the
proved counterproductive, leaving aggressors off the hook
latter is played out within jurisprudence and the legal field
fairly easily and doing little to stop new offenses. In fact,
as a whole. The founding myth of the virile manthe
70% of all cases handled by the Special Courts (JECrim)
patriarch who gathers his folk around him, providing sup-
involved domestic violence, of which 50% ended with no
port and tutelageto which we referred earlier remains
criminal charges being pressed, that is, both parties simply
alive today: The notion of the cordial man, orderly rather
signing a reconciliation agreement (Bandeira 2009, p. 417).
than violent and whom, if under any extenuating circum-
In short, in addition to providing no real support to the
stances inflicts violence on his woman, is acting within his
victim, this scenario simply furthered a culture of impunity
disciplining function, persists within the Brazilian imag-
and re-privatized domestic violence.
inary. (Bandeira 2009, p. 426). Legal professionals are
It is also important to emphasize that the gender per-
imbued with a familist rationality that implicitly denies
spectives of those who work within the legal system have
women full citizenship by subordinating their needs and
represented a major problem for creating strategies against
desires to a supposed social (familial) mission.
domestic violence. Prosecutors and lawyers, whether men or
Although the social tensions inherent in the theme of
women, most frequently display a naturalized view of
domestic violence are far from resolved and have much to
womens need/desire to have a husband which also tends
do with cultural changes that do not emanate from the legal
to place responsibility for marital failure on womens
sphere, we should still recognize that policies such as these
shoulders. Conservative values regarding the family and its
bring crucial, silenced issues to the forefront, subjecting
sexual division of roles and labor are firmly rooted within the
them to public debate and of course, legal action. In this
juridical sphere, hardly conducive to a greater understanding
regard, they play a very significant role in promoting
of gendered violence within families and quite often
changes that may then irradiate throughout society.
expressing themselves in judgmental attitudes that blame the
women themselves for being complicit or not knowing
how to exercise their rights. In fact, criticisms such as these
were raised by members of civil societypublic entities, Policies on Contraception, Health and Abortion
NGOs, representatives of feminist movements and organi- in Brazil
zations, the feminist bench in Congress, most notablywho
organized to demand new ways of handling the issue of Similarly to the issue of domestic violence, abortion is also
domestic violence. The definitive text of Law 11.340 from a topic that has generated considerable polemic. Both
2006 was a congressional answer to social demands: issues raise fundamental questions about womens position

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within family and society. Today, most developed Western
nations have legislation which guarantees abortion as a
womans right to make decisions regarding her body, fer-
tility and motherhood. Yet in Brazil as in other countries in
Latin America and the Caribbean, only under some very
specific circumstances is abortion not considered a crime
(Duarte et al. 2010). In the Brazilian case, given a Penal
Code formulated in 1940, abortion is only legal when it can
be shown that pregnancy would put the womans life at risk
or when it is the result of rape. In recent years, there has
been intensified public and political debate on this legis-
lation, mobilizing feminist challenges similar to those we
have seen around domestic violence, and stirring up the
impassioned reactions of some of the most conservative
forces in Brazilian society, including Catholic and Evan-
gelical benches of parliament.
Discussions on contraception and public policies in
Brazil are good examples of how social problems become
political issues and demands (Alvarenga and Schor 1998),
thus contesting the notion that family is a merely private
matter in which the State should have no interference. In
fact, these conflicts provide evidence of just how much the
State really does influence or control diverse aspects of
family life and how these issues are also linked to a broader
political conjuncture.
In Brazil, discussions on contraception became public
issues during the 1980s, expressed through two opposing
tendencies: family planning, on the one hand, and toppled, largely through concerted feminist action. On this
population control, on the other. In order to understand occasion, as Alvarenga and Schor (1998) explain, members
the ensuing disputes, it is important to take a look at the
type of discourse that the Brazilian State has sustained in
relation to public policies affecting family life. From 1965
to 1974, the State was basically pro-natalism, advocating
policies of population growth. Yet in 1974, within a con-
text of social crisis, government policy took another turn,
attempting to provide wider access to health care and
making some modifications in its earlier pro-natalism
position. The 19841993 period retains some ambiguity:
the issue of womens health emerged clearly, promoted by
the Ministry of Health (under the influence of the 1984
international forum on womens health in Amsterdam), yet
other sectors of government acted to undermine this per-
spective, isolating the more progressive wing. Some new
steps were taken when the 1988 Constitution recognized
family planning as a peoples right and State responsi- stances current legislation provides for), almost all abor-
bility in promoting educational and scientific resources tions are carried out clandestinely, posing serious risks to
that allow its exercise (Alvarenga and Schor 1998).
In the post 1993 conjuncture, debates between State and
civil society, including positions taken and disseminated
through the media, shift from the focus of opposing posi-
tions on family planning and population control to issues of
womens health, such as abortion and male and female
sterilization, as services which should be provided by the
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Brazilian public health system, S.U.S. (Sistema Unico de
Saude). Discussions on abortion intensified womens dia-
log with the State, a phenomenon which can also be taken
as evidence of the development of the feminist movement
in Brazil, now a recognized actor in public debates and
formal institutional (as well as informal) political negoti-
ation. The Cairo Conference (1994) is an important land-
mark in the democratization debate in Brazil, since it was
there that the notion of reproductive rights came to
supersede that of family planning. The Brazilian dele-
gations participation in the conference had important
political implications, raising issues of gender equality,
male dominance, womens empowerment and right to
control of their own bodies (Alvarenga and Schor 1998,
p. 99), in opposition to positions taken by representatives
of religious groups or authoritarian or fundamentalist
States. Furthermore, it demonstrated the role of feminist
NGOs in Brazil and their influence within the Brazilian
government.
In ensuing conflicts within parliament, resistance and
counter-resistance to change appeared. For example, in
1995, a political maneuver on the part of conservative
forces attempted to make abortion completely illegal,
which meant removing the cases currently considered legal
(risk to a womans life and pregnancy resulting from rape).
This proposal, coming from a member of the Evangelical
bench and was supported by the Catholic Church, was soon
of the feminist movement accused the State of schizo-
phrenia, attempting to superimpose an agenda of
authoritarian dominance over one in which already-con-
solidated womens rights, consecrated at the international
level and ratified at the national level, prevailed. These
disputes continue to be quite alive today; within the terrain
of reproductive rights some of the major obstacles that
feminist struggles continue to face are those coming from
openly declared religious representativesEvangelical and
Catholicwithin the Brazilian legislature.
Duarte et al. (2010) provide a quantitative analysis of
the view of Brazilian magistrates and public prosecutors
regarding abortion and abortion policies. One of the first
clarifications to be made on this issue was that given its
largely illegal nature (excepting the two specific circum-
womens health and lives. In the cases that current law
provides for, there are nonetheless a series of problems to
be overcome, particularly when dealing with pregnancies
resulting from rape. Most recently, the issue of fetal
anomalies has been raised, a product of the new medical
technologies which permit their diagnosis and the type of
demand that this has generated. New pressures on the
J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
judiciary coming from different sectors of societylaw-
yers, health professionals and womens groups, in partic-
ular, have made themselves felt, and in fact an attempt was
made to promote new legislation in this regard, authorizing
abortion in cases of fetal anomaly (a Supreme Court ruling
in 2004 that made this concession was then revoked hat
same year). The authors of the above-mentioned study sent
out questionnaires to 11,000 judges and 13,000 prosecu-
tors; although only 14% of participants in the sample
returned the surveys, most were favorable to changes in the
current legislation. Religion appears as one of the strongest
obstacles to change. Questionnaires applied to men,
women and medical doctors in the field of gynecology and
obstetrics have rendered a similar portrait, showing atti-
tudes that are supportive of changes that facilitate abortion
in cases permitted by law and therefore morally justifi-
able. Yet it continues to be difficult to reframe thinking in
the sense of understanding the issue of abortion within the
broader framework of reproductive rights and gender
inequality.
We cannot, nonetheless, refrain from mentioning the
important presence of a group of Catholic feminists, who
formed the group Catholics for the Right to Choose
(Catolicas pelo Direito de Decidir [CDD] in 1993). This
NGO has had a major role in systematizing pro-choice
arguments in Brazilian society, emphasizing the need to
deal with the critical situation of unsafe, illegal abortion
and its race and class-based implications (Porto and Grossi
2008; Scavone 2008). The group brings together theolo-
gians, sociologists, psychologists and others who attempt to
promote more open-minded Christian and Catholic
approaches to womens and humanist concerns.
Scavone (2008) pointed to the negotiations and alliances
that have been involved in contemporary struggles around
abortion issues in Brazil, linked in particular ways to issues
of social inequality and differential (class, race and gender-
based) access to resources. Furthermore, although illegal
abortion has rarely been the target of actual punishment
(for women, abortionists and/or doctors), the material and
symbolic consequences of its interdiction should not be
underemphasized. Its legal prohibition leads to difficulties
in terms of mental and physical health and involves serious
matters of social, racial and economic inequality which
mark Brazilian society and family life today; furthermore,
it invokes firmly-rooted cultural notions linking women to
reproduction and maternity, all of which inflects the
political struggles that emerge around the issue.
The recently created Special Secretariat for Womens
Policies (Secretaria Especial de Polticas para as Mul-
heresSPM) has designated a tripartite commission
including the Executive, the Legislature and civil society
to discuss the issue of abortion. A bill, written up in 2006,
is being handled quite slowly, as tends to be the case for
71
bills that stir up considerable polemic. In Scavones opin-
ion, one of the major obstacles standing in the way of
progress is the difficulty in raising sensitivity among
broader sectors of society, now that the feminist movement
has succeeded in putting together substantive alliances with
progressive sectors within government:
We see, then, that feminism has been able to skill-
fully place the issue of abortion on the broader
agenda of sexual and reproductive rights, affirming
not only the countrys commitments to international
agreements but also [through proposing] a bill at the
national level that has been sent to congress. Evi-
dently this position has had greater political than
social outreach. (Scavone 2008, p. 679)
The struggle is ongoing: with each step forward, con-
servative forces come back with a counter-attack,
increasingly aggressive and sometimes quite successful in
co-opting public opinion. Thus, by looking at the elements
that make up the debate, we are able to detect some major
types of resistance to substantive change still holding out in
Brazilian society and culture, whether coming from those
most directly involved in the disputewomen, health and
law professionals, political and religious groupsor
among the population at large. Public policies around
issues of gender and sexuality, although increasingly a part
of the public agenda, are also highly contentious, as many
people who in practice diverge from traditional patterns of
gender and family life are still not able or willing to take
ideological and political positions which would in fact be
much more consistent with their own experience.
Gay and Lesbian Conjugality and Parenthood:
Expanding Definitions of Family
Perhaps the most direct challenge to the normative notions
of family that have, until now, been codified in law and
public policy are those resulting from the social and
political demands articulated by gay and lesbian rights
movements. For, notwithstanding ongoing debates around
whether these demands promote new accommodations to
existing symbolic and material hierarchies or deeper cul-
tural and structural changethey certainly raise issues that
de-stabilize modern ideas about what/whom can constitute
family, which, as Fineman (1995) argued, have always
emphasized the coupling (sexual) bond between one
man and one woman.
In Brazil as in other parts of the world, the issue of
extending formal legal rights to marriage and custody and
adoption of children to the GLBTT population has gained
increasing visibility and support. Although a fairly wide
range of social actors have taken part in the debates that
123
72
surround particular demands for policy change in this
regardincluding the media and several categories of
expertsthe two major adversaries in ensuing political matively on gay marriage, and in the two latter cases this
confrontations have been the GLBTT movement and rep-
resentatives of organized religion (Mello 2005). A key
moment for understanding what this has meant in policy
terms is the Bill 1154 of 1995, called Parceria Civil Reg-
istrada (PCR) or Registered Civil Partnership, the first
vigorous and concerted legal effort to widen notions of
conjugality, marriage and family in this direction.
This bill was proposed by Workers Party congressional
representative Marta Suplicy, intended to implement legal
recognition of same sex partnerships. Considered at the
time as a very progressive measure, many years have now
gone by and it has yet to be accepted within the Con-
gressional agenda, where a series of impediments have
managed to keep it off voting floor. Yet this also serves to
illustrate how, during the 1990s in particular, homosexual
relationships began to move from stigma and closet to
recognition as identities or simply different ways of
being (Grossi 2003). The demand for the recognition of a
homosexual family thus moves into the scenario of
cultural and political disputes over legitimate definitions of
family.
Thus, if in 1995 Brazil could be considered progres-
sive in this regard, today there seems to be no prospects
for PCR legalization. Perhaps this can be explained largely
by the impact of religious opposition and by the sexist and
homophobic attitudes demonstrated by members of par-
liament. Yet in civil society as a whole, new campaigns
against discrimination and homophobic violence have
unfolded and, in stark contrast to the lethargy of the Leg-
islature, there have been numerous gains regarding the
rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered couples and par-
ents that have been battled out through the Judiciary. It is
this latter sphere that has been able to guarantee individual
rights through lawsuits, though as the situation makes
evident, this gives rise to a significant gap between such
initiatives and the broader, change-resistant general
scenario.
Over the last 25 years, lesbians and gays have emerged
as visible political actors in Brazil, sometimes acting in
concert with other collective actors but often working to
promote their specific political agenda. While the symbolic
significance of a collective coming out is manifested by
the fact the Brazilian GLBTT Pride Parade (or Diversity
ParadeParada da Diversidade, as it has been re-named)
has in recent years become the largestand probably the
most carnivalesquein the world, such symbolic impact
has not translated easily into gains at the policy level.
Brazil falls behind other countries in this regard: Denmark,
Sweden and Norway, stimulated by the AIDS epidemic
which often left partners in situations of tragic
123
J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
vulnerability, awarded same-sex relations legal status in
1980. Belgium, Spain and Holland have legislated affir-
includes couples rights to adopt children. Other European
countries, such as France and Germany, have recognized
civil partnerships for same-sex couples, although main-
taining a different status in relation to heterosexual mar-
riage. In 2003, a landmark for Latin America took place, as
Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, became the first on the
South American continent to recognize civil partnerships,
albeit restricted to purposes of health insurance privileges.
Yet in Brazil, as we stated earlier, resistance to legal and
policy changes in this regard are strong, demonstrating the
countrys contradictory scenario in which forces of change
and forces of cultural and political conservatism frequently
lock horns.
In October, 2002 an emblematic case swept the country,
involving the death of a celebrity, the popular singer/
songwriter Cassia Eller. Openly lesbian and mother of a
son who lived with her and her partner of many years,
Ellers death led to months and months of judicial battles in
which her partner was finally awarded the custody rights
which had been contested by the childs paternal grandfa-
ther (Grossi 2003; Mello 2005). Although this particular
case was solved through an agreement between the two
parties involved in the dispute, more and more cases of this
sort are being won at the local level. Researchers and
specialists point to the advances made in legislation at the
state level in Rio Grande do Sul, pioneering state in terms
of gay and lesbian rights (Lorea 2006).
Mello (2005) commented that [] the conflict between
a secular and a religious worldview constitutes the core of
conflicts around the recognition of homosexual conjugal-
ity. (p. 219) Yet this dispute, we should again assert,
touches on the very conception of family that is at stake
and in this regard mobilizes many different symbolic and
political elements, to which religious orientations contrib-
ute but which they certainly do not exhaust.
Lorea (2006) categorically asserted that there is actually
no need to create a legal mechanism for marriage between
same-sex partners, since the Federal Constitution (1988)
clearly states that any form of discrimination is anti-con-
stitutional. Sexual citizenship presupposes the right to
sexual freedom, and the State does not have the right to
intervene in prescribing or sanctioning in this terrain. The
author also emphasized the role that jurists have had in
holding back changes promoting true sexual citizenship,
insofar as they publicly resort to a rhetoric which affirms a
heterosexist status quo. He concludes that there is no cur-
rently existing legal impediment to same sex marriage, yet
this argument has not been used by social movements or
civil interests in demanding it. With regard to adoption by
homosexual couples (in Brazil a single person is able to
J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:6574
adopt without mention of sexual orientation), the PCR as
initially proposed did not include this demand, for which
reason gay and lesbian movements today are requesting its
revision or substitution (Uziel et al. 2006).
In short, the issue of gay and lesbian rights to (recog-
nized) conjugality, parenthood and family, although linked
to other themes that lead to re-thinking what constitutes a
family and what kinds of policies must be developed in
order to support them may continue to be a radicalizing
element on the family policy agenda, especially in light of
new demands to make changes in the PCR bill presented to
Congress. At any rate, the formulation of this project is at
least partially responsible for the large media coverage the
issue has received, which, in turn, does not necessarily
mean that media discussions have promoted favorable and
non-discriminatory positions. Often it has been quite the
contrary. Furthermore, as stated above, the Judiciary has
become the key site of legal support for gay and lesbian
community demands, while many sectors of society refuse
to abandon the forms of thinking that Sedgwick (1990)
once captured so well through her notion of the episte-
mology of the closet.
During former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silvas
administration, social movements for diversity and gay and
lesbian rights received more open State recognition than
ever before. Yet cultural disputes, civil society and social
institutions contain heterogeneous and often contradictory
forces and tendencies. Public policies that recognize the
diversity of family life and prioritize the well-being of all
citizens, dismantling historic systems of power and
inequality, will depend to a large extent on a widening base
of support. This implies a growing capacity on the part of
progressive forces within government to forge further
support and alliances, but also on the everyday workin
schools, universities, social movement efforts, and hope-
fully from segments of the media and the culture indus-
try as wellof showing that in fact, families have always
been much more pluralist and diverse than dominant ide-
ologies would have it, and are probably becoming
increasingly more so, as our post-modern culture multiplies
choices for personal and collective projects.
Conclusions
In the discussions above, we have taken a brief look at the
historical forces shaping family life and notions of family
in Brazilian society and culture, as they have evolved from
strongly hierarchical and patriarchal forms to their current
and sometimes quite innovating patterns. We have con-
sidered both the difficulties inherent in and the concrete
need for translating changes in gender relations and family
life into State laws and public policies that can reinforce
73
and promote democratizing social transformation. In the
Brazilian case, there has been considerable tension between
those sectors of government who, through their relationship
with certain social movements, have sought to change laws
and initiate innovative policies and conservative forces
often linked to organized religion. These disputes, borne of
the re-democratization processes of the 1980s, are of
course tied to many other social and cultural processes that
unfold within civil society. What is at stake is nothing less
than the very notion of what family is, and what women,
men and gender relations are or should be.
Thus, in Brazil, debates on de-criminalizing abortion run
up against deeply conservative notions of womens
maternal roles and bodies, and the impasse that has
occurred with regard to the Civil Partnership Bill indicates
a reticence to re-think who can be included within the
sexualized bond (Fineman 1995) of the couple/family
that neighboring southern cone nation of Argentina has
recently overcome. The Maria da Penha Law on domestic
violence, on the other hand, represents a step forwardnot
only in terms of its concrete measures to combat gendered
family violence and protect those who may vulnerable to it
but also as in terms of recognition that family life, as we
know it, is not by definition harmonious and conflict free,
and that it has been built on the basis of gender hierarchies,
privileges and inequalities.
There is every reason to believe that gender and family
issues will continue to constitute a contested terrain in
which a variety of social, cultural, political and legal dis-
putes unfold. Advances in the arena of social policy
recognizing diversity and promoting equalitywill con-
tinue to be intimately tied to social movements and col-
lective struggles that seek to redefine gender relations and
to transform ways of thinking about men, women, bodies,
sexuality, family and the ties that bind us to one another.
Class and race issues are also a part of this configuration of
struggles and issues, as Brazilians continue to face a his-
torical legacy that has constructed the Brazilian nation as
one of the most unequal in the worldcharacterized, on
the one hand, by a wealth of natural, human, cultural,
technological and economic resources, and on the other, by
a social structure that promotes extremely asymmetrical
access to the social resources that enable or deny people the
opportunity to actively (re)shape their lives and
communities.
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