Flávia Biroli
I am Full Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Brasília since 2005. My Master (1999) and my PhD (2003) were in History, at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). My books, articles, research projects and other academic activities focus on gender and democracy in Brazil and Latin America; feminist political theory; and media and democracy. My recente books are "Gênero e desigualdades: limites da democracia no Brasil" (Gender and Inequalities: limits of democracy in Brazil; São Paulo, Boitempo Editorial, 2018), "Gender, neoconservatism and democracy" (Gender, neoconservatism and democracy; co-authored with Maria das Dores Campos Machado and Juan Vaggione; São Paulo, Boitempo, 2020). Recently, I also co-organized the book "Mulheres, poder e Ciência Política" (Women, power, and Political Science). I was the editor of Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política (2009-2017), and an associate editor of Politics & Gender (2018-19). I was also the president of the Brazilian Political Science Association (ABCP), 2018-20. Besides stricter academic activities, I have been part of the Civil Society Advisory Group for UN Women in Brazil (2016-17) and have since worked in projects about gender parity and violence against women in politics in collaboration with them. I was part of the international Expert Group preparing the reports for the 64th and the 65th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). In 2020, I was a visiting scholar at the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford and a Short-Term Fellow at Jesus College, at the same University. In 2024, I was the Bacardi Eminent Scholar in Latin American Studies at the Center for Latin American Studies, at the University of Florida.
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Olhar para a Ciência e para a política com lentes de gênero certamente não esgota as contradições e limites da democracia brasileira. Permite-nos, no entanto, colaborar para a compreensão de uma dimensão incontornável.
Um dos argumentos centrais dos autores é que a forma atual do conservadorismo latino-americano está relacionada a uma temporalidade marcada pelos avanços dos movimentos feministas e LGBTQI e expressa coalizões políticas de grupos cristãos com setores não religiosos da direita. Neste sentido, dedica atenção à “cultura da morte” e à “ideologia de gênero”, que têm destaque entre as novas estratégias utilizadas pelos conservadores para restringir as agendas da igualdade de gênero e da diversidade sexual, opondo-se a direitos reivindicados historicamente por movimentos feministas, de mulheres e LGBTQI. Trata-se, ainda, de uma estratégia que permite reposicionar o Estado laico e a relação entre autoridade estatal, autoridade paterna e direitos individuais. O redesenho das normas jurídicas e do próprio Estado é, assim, fundamental a essa empreitada.
In the first section, I argue that care is presently set as a gendered and racialized issue, although some of its gendered features have significantly changed. Sexual and racial division of labor are central to understanding the devaluing of care work and the effects of specific social arrangements on caring demands and relationships. The need for care is unequally met, the possibilities to care for others are not evenly distributed, and the positions taken in care work reflect the unequal access to significant social resources, such as money, time, and political influence.
Responsibilities may be allocated in ways that confront those patterns or contribute to its reproduction. The second section discusses the effects of the privatization of responsibilities. Making families and individuals responsible for a large share of care needs concerning children, the elderly, people who have special needs, and other significant ones, reinforces class, gender, and racial inequalities. It also reinforces commodification and inequality, as many will not be in a position to hire services from the labor market. Although “personal responsibility” is often codified as the result of voluntary choices, irresponsibility as a political issue is fundamental to understanding insecurity and “precarization” in a global economized society.
The last section discusses neoliberalism as a logic that organizes boundaries and frontiers between public and private life, democratic concerns, and corporative interests. Considering its impacts on individual lives and collective perspectives, in this section I also draw some final considerations on the potential of a political care ethics in order to face the crisis of care and the crisis of democracy.