Femmes : espaces acquis, espace permis à l’heure de la réforme agraire au Brésil

L'annonce du Premier Plan national de réforme agraire en mai 1985 suscite la mobilisation des masses populaires à la campagne. Petits producteurs, paysans sans terre et ouvriers agricoles revendiquent l'accès à la terre. Les auteures analysent la participation des femmes à ce mouvement, aussi bien sur le plan institutionnel que non institutionnel. À partir d'une enquête menée auprès d'une « invasion » dans l'état de Rio de Janeiro, elles s'interrogent sur le rôle des femmes dans l'organisation des campements et la consolidation de la propriété proprement dite. Les auteures examinent également l'émergence d'un mouvement autonome fort, parmi les femmes du sud du pays, axé sur la reconnaissance du statut d'agricultrice.The announcement of the First National Plan for Agrarian Reform in May 1985 led to the mobilization of Brazil's rural dwellers. Small producers, landless peasants and agricultural workers all claimed their rights of access to the land. This article addresses women's participation in this movement, both at the institutional level and in non institutionalized groupings. Using the results of field work carried out after a popular « invasion » in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the authors explore the roles of women in the organization of the encampments and in the consolidation of formal ownership of land. The emergence of a strong autonomous movement among rural women from southern Brazil, calling for the recognition of women as agriculturalists in their own right, is also examined

Anti-poverty schemes instead of social protection

This paper examines the extent to which poverty reduction schemes and targeting replaced the incomplete framework of social protection and universality in Latin America over the last decade, through the provision of monetary cash transfers rather than decommodified goods and services. Is this a turning point towards a new pattern of social policy in the region, characterized by basic standards, controls and selectivity for those who cannot afford market provision? What are the outcomes of such a turnaround with regard to poverty and inequality? Are there setbacks in the reduction of inequality, notably in terms of failing to overcome patterns of segregation and the social stigma of poverty? Will these new trends reinforce the case for reforming social protection pillars for the non-poor? Will the discourse of privatization gain a new momentum and reverse the counter-reforms in favor of integrated public systems? The first section of this paper provides the conceptual background to understand why social protection systems and poverty reduction strategies differ, highlighting the role of the various components of social protection and their arguments in economic terms and for purposes of equity and social justice. Likewise, two distinct paradigms will be confronted: on the one hand, the social risk management strategy (Holzmann and Jørgensen 2000), and, on the other, universal social protection systems as they were gradually fashioned during the golden years of the 20th century in Western countries. The second section scrutinizes the profile of the public provision of welfare in some Latin American countries, through an overview of social spending, presenting the main features of conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America and other contributory schemes that have been reshaped as of late. The last section draws lessons from the experiment of the Bolsa Família Program in Brazil to discuss the effectiveness and the limits of conditional cash transfers on poverty reduction and inequality. Finally, the concluding section calls attention to the risks of developing social protection schemes mainly on the grounds of the provision of cash benefits – a pro-market strategy – if the goal is to tackle poverty and inequality in the long run, promoting social cohesion such an uneven region

How Social Developmentalism Reframed Social Policy in Brazil

How Social Developmentalism Reframed Social Policy in Brazil Lena Lavinas Abstract This paper proposes to critically situate the social-developmentalist current of the last decade within the broader moment of finance-dominated accumulation regime, wherein, crucially, credit and access to financial markets have become the core motifs for the new mass-consumption market society. This structural move is, from our point of view, radically distinct from the very framework which inspired the tenets of early structuralist thought and which prevailed during the Keynesian post-war period. Today, highly segmented credit loans, private insurance, and other new financial products such as payment protection insurance have synthesized into indispensable elements for growth. In this new financialized framework, social policy has been used to underwrite a financial inclusion model that sowed the seeds of its own demise—while it enabled Brazil’s transition into a society of mass consumption, it also deepened the indebtedness of households, partially transforming social insurance and welfare benefits into financial rents

Integração econômica e reestruturação espacial

Resum

A long way from tax justice: the Brazilian case

This paper presents the major characteristics of the Brazilian tax system, after underlining the modifications it went through since 1988, when the country adopted a new and democratic Constitution. One important feature is the marked incidence of indirect consumer and production taxes (49% of all tax revenues) in place of direct taxes on income, inheritance, and capital gains. This imbalance between indirect and direct taxes explains, in large part, the elevated regressivity of the Brazilian tax system, which both expresses and reproduces the profound inequalities that characterize Brazilian society

Activity and vulnerability: what family arrangements are at risk?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to compare different family models according to the typology proposed by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or National Census Bureau), to verify whether families headed by women really represent the most vulnerable or "at-risk" family arrangement. The latter is the commonsense notion that legitimizes the framework of feminization of poverty, in vogue in the last two decades and with considerable impact on the design of anti-poverty social policies. The current empirical study disaggregates the employment data (employment rate, mean wages, workweek) not only by gender (identifying differences between men and women), but also breaking down the data for women, comparing the situation of women heads-of-families versus wives. In terms of women's full participation in the work market, the effect of conjugality is even more harmful than motherhood (presence of children). Key words: gender and work market; feminization of poverty; gender inequalities Much is spoken of the enormous vulnerability of families with children, notably those headed by lone mothers (i.e. with no spouse). Incontestably, Brazil lacks permanent, universal family-support policies and, therefore, much of what could be de-commodified through public policies to compensate families properly for their (i.e. the women's) contribution is not. As a result, families themselves bear all such costs privately. However, given this enormous vacuum in terms of family-friendly policies, the question is: is the greatest onus borne by families headed by lone women? Which family arrangements are rendered most precarious by the absence of a social protection system to provide security, reduce vulnerability and promote equity? The labour market and the nature and scope of the social protection system are two factors that explain the greater or lesser degree of social vulnerability, and are thus intricately related to the levels of poverty and inequality observed in a society. Below, it will be seen how they operate on gender inequalities. It is well known that, in Brazil, not only has the schooling gap between the sexes been reversed in favour of women at all levels of schooling since the mid-80

PISO DE PROTECCIÓN SOCIAL:PROS Y CONTRAS

El presente artículo tiene el objetivo de discutir el tema del piso de protección social preconizado por la OIT y por el sistema de las Naciones Unidas, y su adecuación a Brasil.  Por piso de protección social se entiende asegurar “garantías básicas” de seguridad social a los grupos más vulnerables, en particular ingreso monetario para determinadas categorías, como niños, discapacitados o personas de edad. Mientras se reconozca que el piso es una iniciativa muy relevante para países en desarrollo con sistemas de seguridad incompletos y débiles, planteamos que hay las ventajas del sistema de Seguridad Social brasileño respecto del piso