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A: Welcome. I'm very happy to welcome Jacqueline Pitanguy from Brazil. We'd love to hear a
little bit about what you are doing now and what lead you to that point.
J: Well, right now I am still doing what I have been doing for the past 23 years. I run
an organization, a non-governmental organization, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And we work
mostly with violence and access to justice, health, *** and reproductive rights and
with low-income community women in terms of enhancing their leadership capacity, their
citizenship rights. So within these broad, problematic lives we developed a number of
things. You know I always say that women are like pulpos (octopi). We have many arms, many
legs. It is the same when we work. I mean we do so many different things within that
basic, programmatic line. So CEPIA is still going on and I would say today it is a reference
human rights NGO in Brazil.
A: I think, as I recall, CEPIA was founded specifically around the violence against women.
Is that true?
J: Well CEPIA, its interesting. Because before starting CEPIA, I was in a governmental position.
I was on a cabinet position. We were on the democratization moment of our countries in
the late 80s, mid 80s. By being on this national council for women's rights, I understood the
need to have very strong non-governmental organizations, very strong NGO, a very strong
civil, societal organization in order to make advocacy and push the government not only
in a critical way towards government but also proposal.
So when we started CEPIA, it had this feature of being a very strong advocacy group for
women's rights. So we work within this broad frame of women's/human's rights and citizenship
rights. And then we do have privilege to the issues of violence and access to justice,
but also *** and reproductive rights -- which is a form of violence if a woman has been
deprived of. We have always been working on an advocacy level.
A: And has the work of CEPIA and other groups worked? In other words has it had an effect
in Brazil on government and other organizations?
J: Certainly, yes. I would say that the women's movement in Brazil has had an effect -- an
important one. We started and we came as a political actor in the arena in the late 70s
But then in the 80s with the democratization process, we also started to get inside the
government in doing public policy with a women's or gendered perspective -- we didn't use the
word gendered then, those words are historical. But anyway, I think that our Constitution,
our 1988 Constitution, reflects the impact of women's movements, advocacy, and the National
Council for Women's Rights. It really is a constitution that assures women's rights.
So I would say that today in Brazil in terms of a normative frame we are quite advanced.
What we see now is the need to break this distance between laws and reality, between
laws and life, and to guarantee the real access to what is already written so it does not
become only rhetoric. And then you do have categories that we will make an interface
to make this distance between laws and reality larger or shorter -- and that is social class,
that's race and ethnicity, *** orientation, poverty. SO there is a number of issues that
cut transversally and do interfere. So I like to talk about women in plural because we are
a category among ourselves.
A: I'd like to speak specifically, if we could, a little about violence against women and
whether in Brazil, you and your colleagues have come to a decision in terms of what can
be done effectively around what me might describe as an epidemic of violence against women around
the world.
J: This issue of the epidemic of violence against women around the world I think requires
multiple answers because it is multi-layered. It is a very complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon.
And in Brazil I think we have had, in 2006, an important achievement which is a new legislation
called "Lei [Law] Maria da Penha". It is named for a woman that became paraplegic because
her husband tried to *** her. So this new legislation is specific on domestic violence
and also establishes courts, special courts of justice, to deal with the cases. So we
do have now a frame, some principles that are very important. This does not mean that
violence will end because you have a law. But yes, women will now have a more strong
protection. They have some principles to which they can refer to and so this was very important.
But on the other hand, another issue that I think is going to be very important when
dealing with violence against women is the issue of invisibility and the lack of reliable
statistics. There is a lack of reliable statistics many times because: first, they are still
not considered a real crime by the police in general; second, statistics are not good
on a specific country and if they are not good they will be really worse when it is
not considered an issue.
This is really violence against women, the fact that we really do not know how many women
are victims of violence. And I think this is something that can be acted upon and quickly,
demanding institutes of statistics, and etc.
And then there is another phenomenon that is much harder to deal with that is embedded
into identity and it has to do with cultural and/or religious failures. We all know that
it is much, much slower to change beliefs and cultures than to start legislation, or
anew police station, etc.
This is something that worries me most. Not only the fact that the culture is very slow
to change but also that but in the same culture you have different perspectives as to what
is violence against women, toward what is violence in general, and how should you act
on that?
What I want to say is that crime and order, and order and disorder, this is historical,
it is dated. Its not necessarily homogeneous in a society, or unanimous. You might have
a society with different perceptions, different social perspectives, that might or might not
be ascribed in legislations or practices of what is violence against women. So you might
be in the same country at the same moment, a certain region that accepts a certain amount
of violence because they don't consider it as violence. And that is very dangerous. That
I think is very dangerous. It is exactly to build a country on a certain culture that
we'll be consensual that certain issues, certain behaviors, certain attitudes, are violent.
And then there is a distance between what is seen as a violence, what is criminalized
and what is punished. And this is political. This distance is political. You see this so
clearly in relation to the cases of women who are murdered by their lovers, their spouses
-- so called crimes of passion— and if the woman had been murdered by a man on the street
she doesn't know it has one treatment. But when it comes to this domestic cycle, in certain
societies it is totally accepted -- the issue of honor killing.
In other societies the man argues that the woman was having an affair, she was being
unfaithful, she was doing this and that. And then there is this loop that the victim becomes
the accused and in many cases these men are acquitted or receive ridiculous sentences
because this violence in accepted. Nobody discussed that *** is violence -- maybe
the worst kind of violence, to take the life of someone.
Nobody discussed okay is that criminal behavior? It depends. Will it be punished? Still depends.
So this is something that also worries me a lot. How do we bring together something
that is perceived as a crime, it is criminalized by the laws etcetera, and then it is punished
by the judicial system?
This distance is still very flexible in many countries. And it worries me very much.
A: This may seem like an odd question to ask you but you've been working on the behalf
of women's rights for many, many years. Why are you so passionate? And, why do you feel
that this is so important?
J: Well, I think out of love. Not out of hate or of the sense that society owes me something.
But I have received a lot in my life. I was born to a family that was very liberal, very
progressive, with a deep sense of social justice, and that's the environment I was brought up
in. Also my father had always given incentives
to me, my sisters, that we should study, we should go to the university, not depend on
a man. And so its not that it lacks something, but when I see that so many women do not have
what I have, do not have the chance -- not even the possibility to have a relationship
of love with a man. But so many women have relationship that are permeated by hate, by
anger, and that they feel so devaluated. Maybe because I feel that I am valuable, I want
everybody to feel they are valuable, that they have self-esteem and to believe in the
world and believe in themselves. So maybe that's what brought me but that's always a
mystery of live. So fortunately, we do not know exactly it.
A: Well I think in some sense you've answered this question but let me just say that this
course may be attended by many, many people around the world -- students and people of
all ages. What advice do you have for them about making the world a better place?
J: Well this is ... making the world a better place is a difficult task but I think we can
do it from very, very small attitudes toward the person next to you, whoever that person
is.
To be involved in something that transcends the daily life -- the daily life of just having
a career, which is very good, everybody wants to have a career, acquire knowledge, be successful.
Those are all very important things. But there is something I think that activism or a cause
gives you, which is the sense of transcendence, I do not know if you have this word in English,
but transcendence -- the sense that you are part of history, that you are a little drop
in history towards an end that would be more positive. And that you might do in so many
different circumstances. You might do it by joining big politics. But you might also do
it by being an activist in civil society, by sharing your cause. But it's giving something
of yourself to a cause that is not necessarily your own individual trajectory. But bring
others to that
In my case, I was very much involved with women's issues because I could see how while
talking about democracy, while talking about equality, women were not part of that conversation.
But there were many others causes that transcend the only individual look at live. And I think
this brings more fuel and happiness to the person who adopts this attitude.
A: Thank you so much for being with us.