Júlia Rocha: "Capitalism exploits women's lack of autonomy over their bodies."

By Ricardo Nêggo Tom - With each passing day, women are occupying a prominent role in the Brazilian political environment. Although the underrepresentation of women in parliaments still needs to be combated, women are gaining more space in this historically male-dominated space. More important than female participation in the political decisions of society is the participation of Black women in decisions that directly affect so-called minority representation groups. Issues such as family planning, for example, have never been discussed as a public policy in a humanized way for the poorest segments of the population, taking into account the opinion of women, who often have the responsibility of heading these families. According to physician and singer Julia Rocha, who ran for federal deputy for the PCB in Minas Gerais, “we have qualified workers for this process, but they are scarce. We have good contraceptive methods, but they are inaccessible. And in the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system), we have a restriction on the types of methods and a very large delay when we talk about surgical methods, such as vasectomy and tubal ligation. The consequence of these situations is a real tragedy in the lives of women. To give you an idea, 62% of pregnancies in Brazil are unplanned. And this is the beginning of a great economic and emotional imbalance.” Julia also recalls that “the deaths that occur during clandestine abortions, which we are fighting to prevent, begin with an unplanned pregnancy. So, giving families and individuals the opportunity to plan their reproductive lives is a condition for them to be able to minimally organize themselves economically, so that these children have more adequate assistance.”

Júlia, who is also a writer, revealed that during her practice as a doctor she always asked her patients, especially those from low-income backgrounds and mostly Black women, how many children they planned to have when they got married or when they were younger. “Many women say they planned to have one or two children, but due to lack of opportunities and access to information and appropriate methods, they ended up with 6 or 8 children. And you can imagine the impact that has on a family's budget.” She also highlights the fight against racism in the healthcare system, which sometimes dehumanizes the care of Black people. “Fighting racism, whether in healthcare, education, or daily life—this racism that crushes non-white people based on economic scarcity—is also fighting for change and overcoming this capitalist system and creating a new world, more supportive and more just.” This more just and egalitarian vision, where the population that works the most and contributes most to social progress can also enjoy the wealth it produces, is seen by Júlia as a way to combat the exploitation of the labor of children not planned by these women in the future. “The lack of control and autonomy of women over their own bodies serves the capitalist system. A woman who has eight children, instead of the two she wanted and planned for, probably won't have the physical, emotional, and economic conditions to care for these children the way she would like; these children won't study as much as she would like them to, and in the end, they will be cheap labor for this system to exploit on the street corner.”

Education as an emancipatory process

History professor and environmental activist Adriana Souza, who ran for state representative for the PT party in Minas Gerais, spoke about the importance of education in the process of women's emancipation in Brazilian society, and also about the elitism characteristic of Bolsonaro's ideology, which considers investing in the education of the poorest to be a waste of time. “Besides being the daughter and granddaughter of single mothers and grandmothers, a traditional family from the periphery of this country, I am also a child of the changes implemented in the country during President Lula's governments. Because I accessed university and graduated as a teacher from PUC-MG through a full scholarship from Prouni, demonstrating once again how public inclusion policies, especially in the area of ​​education, are great windows of opportunity for our people. And this type of talk that Bolsonaro says about our people is the same talk reproduced by the elite of this country, which, for the most part, is an elite that has no kind of identity with our country. It is a submissive and subservient elite that does not deserve our respect. Because the Brazilian people are a creative, hardworking, and fighting people. I would even say that we are an original civilization and we will still prove to the world our capacity for development. And a new type of development, which takes into account a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature, and also considering the potential we have from the point of view of water resources and…” natural. Adriana believes that "it is our task, as our people, to point the way towards an anti-capitalist and eco-socialist solution so that we can envision a different world."

Also with a communist background, Adriana views education from a feminist perspective as a way to rethink the role of women in the country's history. "As a history teacher, the activities I've always carried out in the classroom—and not just activities prepared and planned for teaching—aimed to prioritize and privilege, for example, a feminist perspective, thinking about the role of women, not only in the history of our country, but in the history of our people's struggles. We have great references in Brazilian history of women like Dandara and Maria Quitéria, who were made invisible for many years in history teaching. Thinking from this perspective is important because girls recognize themselves as women who can transform their reality. Feminist education largely involves constantly bringing this recovery of the historical representation of women into everyday life, in speech, in conversations with students, which is often permeated by sexism, racism, and especially homophobia in the classroom. So, we also need to have a posture of dialogue and confrontation with this type of discrimination and prejudice that is recurrent in the classroom, but not only on the part of the children. In the teachers' room, we often find colleagues who reproduce sexism and racism." "And homophobia, and we need to understand that these everyday spaces of micro-power and micro-relations are fundamental spaces for confronting these prejudices that kill our people and make it difficult for them to access many things in our society."

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