Maria Collier de Mendonça and Patrícia Fonseca Fanaya speak to Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês

• Main Author: Renaud Beeckmans
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2013-07-01
• Series: Studies in the Maternal
• Online Access: https://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/4199/

This ‘in conversation’ aims at exploring some voices reflecting recent decades of feminism in Brazil and how women’s rights activism has been experienced in this context. For this purpose, we have interviewed two Brazilian women whose careers have contributed extensively to the Brazilian feminist movement. The two interviewees, Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês, belong to a privileged class in terms of education and socioeconomic brackets in Brazil. They both have held powerful positions as public policies makers, in the State bureaucracy, during the late 1980s. Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês were members of the National Council for Women’s Rights (CNDM - Conselho Nacional de Direitos da Mulher), a committee that worked to ensure the implementation of women’s rights during the elaboration of the new Brazilian Constitution of 1988. After the 1980s, an important period marking Brazil’s re-democratisation, they have been working with feminist non-governmental organisations dedicated to a wide range of feminist issues and women’s rights agendas.