FEMINIST COLLECTIVE CANDIDACIES: LISTENING TO DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIL

This paper aims to discuss feminist collective candidacies as a powerful new means of political representation in Brazil, one historically connected with previous feminist struggles in the country. Considering the key role that language plays in understanding labor, I will explain how this new way of making politics can challenge the sexual division of labor through the idea of horizontality. Moreover, I will examine feminist collective candidacies as an effective tactic to reinforce Brazilian participatory democracy.

In what follows, I will present a brief retrospective of the struggle for the equal rights of women in Brazil in the 20 th century, focusing on three key moments in which the feminist movement played a significant role in the struggle against authoritarian governments that threatened Brazilian democracy. Following this, I will introduce the topic of feminist collective candidacies emerging from the context of "feminist insurrection of the last decade" in Brazil (HOLLANDA, 2018, p. 231-232, my translation). Considering the key role that language plays in understanding labor, I will finally discuss how this new way of making politics can challenge the sexual division of labor through the idea of horizontality, as well as being an effective tactic to reinforce Brazilian participatory democracy through the notion of a feminist collective representation.

A brief retrospective of the feminist movement in Brazil: twentieth-century Brazilian feminism and the struggle for equal rights
The suffrage movement in Brazil was inspired by the National American Woman Suffrage However, differently from the experience of American suffragists, which at least attempted to be associated with the abolitionist movement initially, 5 the Brazilian movement was conducted by a local elite composed of women of the dominant class whose main role  2019, p. 11).
Feminists wanted to be recognized as citizens, so they fought for their sexual and reproductive rights (including the right to abortion), against domestic violence, and for the right to have access to the job market with fair wages and without sexual discrimination. can be seen as an important social actor against the authoritarianism that threatened democracy in the country throughout the 20 th century, as well as against the conservative legacy of these neoliberal governments, which characterized the period of re-democratization.
At the start of the 21 st century, the close relation between Lula's government and the feminist movement, through the Special Bureau mentioned above, gave rise to important achievements in the battle for gender equality in Brazil, including the election of President Dilma Rousseff (from the Workers' Party -PT) in 2010. However, the "peaceful" years would not last long, due to a conservative ideological basis that had been established in Brazilian politics, as I will discuss below, in order to introduce the context in which feminist collective candidacies emerged. 9 It is clear that feminists were prevented from confronting the conservative wing of the government, having to keep silent, for instance, on issues such as: the problem of violence against women and children in the interior, which affected mainly women who worked in other people's lands; racism (which was not recognized at that time as a structural problem in Brazil, due to the myth of racial democracy); and the right to abortion (BIROLI, 2017). The period of re-democratization was further characterized by adjustments and accommodations that were considered by feminists as necessary to negotiate the approval of many public policies, as well as by the inclusion of women's rights in the new Constitution. These negotiations were also known as "the lipstick lobby". For a deeper discussion of the myth of racial democracy in Brazil, see Lilia Schwartz, Sobre o autoritarismo brasileiro (2019), and for its interpretation within black feminism, see Lélia Gonzalez's: Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano (2020).

Feminist collective candidacies: context of emergence
Feminist collective candidacies in Brazil emerged as a consequence of a relevant political mobilization which has been consistent since 2010, through social media sites, especially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These platforms can impact social movements mainly in two ways: by facilitating "traditional offline activism", and by creating "new forms of activism and resistance" (HARLOW, 2012, p. 225). To illustrate the first instance in the context of Brazil, the Avaaz platform, which collects signatures in petitions to pressure authorities for a given cause, has seen the numbers of its Brazilian members increase dramatically be- The Brazilian feminist movement of the last decade expanded in a virtual scenario in which women were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences with sexual harassment, rape, sexism, gender/race issues and the abuse of power in labor environments, to mention but a few topics that stimulated the organization of marches throughout the country through the use of hashtags. This powerful virtual label was instrumental in giving voice to the diversity of feminisms that were emerging in Brazil in the middle of the decade, "bringing together multiple feminist identities within an intersectional basis indispensable to the expression of the new women's activisms" (COSTA, 2018, p. 45). According to the author, using personal narratives to denounce different kinds of violence was a strategy these women employed to perform a "public narrative" rather than to "lay blame" or "solve individual cases" (COSTA, 2018, p. 54).
Indeed, it is very important to emphasize that these women were exposing kinds of violence that had always been treated as private issues. On the one hand, the performance of a public narrative is a means of penetrating a public sphere traditionally reserved for men in a patriarchal society; on the other hand, it is in itself a manner of giving visibility to a social problem through individuals manifesting themselves collectively. Furthermore, as Sara Ahmed (2014, p. 25) states, we need to consider that "emotions are also relegated to the private sphere, which conceals their public dimension and their role ordering social life". This is very pertinent to our discussion because, through exposing their painful histories, women make pain enter politics. In this way, they demolish the predominant representation of pain in "Western culture as a lonely thing", and show that "while the experience of pain may be solitary, it is never private" (AHMED, 2014, p. 35).
The ever-growing use of social networks gives visibility to women's voices and helps to strengthen the feminist struggle in current politics, as evidenced by the expressive number of feminist candidacies in different Brazilian regions in the municipal elections of 2020, compiled by Mosaic 2020 on the website Meu voto será feminista ("My vote will be feminist"). This is particularly suggestive in the political context that was established in Brazil, especially after President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in 2016, in which a corrupt congress conspired to accuse her of breaking the law by using "a budget trick . . . to mask public debt", a strategy that had been employed with impunity by many presidents before her. This is why the impeachment was considered a coup, once "it was never about any alleged lawbreaking by Dilma Rousseff -that was just an excuse to remove a democratically elected president Party -was controversially arrested without proof in early 2018. The arrest was carried out The collective got together to organize the '#EleNão'... It was a friend who asked me if the women of Garanhuns weren't going to join in, because it was happening all over country. I saw an event on Facebook; Fany belonged to the same virtual event, but nobody knew exactly who was responsible for organizing the march. Then I talked to Fany; we got together with people who were part of the event on Facebook, and then Marília came too, and then many people got together to hold the #EleNão event. After that, we continued to meet to engage in political activities through a group on WhatsApp … Then with the election of the current president, I had the idea of creating a gathering at the Park Euclides Dourado, and in this way we founded the Collective Motirõ … Right after that I proposed the idea of a collective candidacy, which was accepted by the group (PORTO, 2020, p. 1, my translation).
The name Collective Motirõ, which in Tupi-guarani means a group that works together with mutual goals, is illustrative of how feminist collectives fight for a non-hierarchical and non-individually-based society. These principles will serve as a basis for feminist collective candidacies to seek the approval of bills in the city councils, taking into account their commitment to the most vulnerable social groups, with whom they have close ties. In the next section, I will discuss how these principles are born from ideas of horizontality and collectivity, which are employed by feminist collective candidacies to introduce an innovative form of political representation. I am looking at feminists who decided to join with other feminists to run together in 14 See the brutal and emblematic case of a 10-year-old black girl who was sexually abused by her uncle and became pregnant as a result. Her right to a legal and safe abortion became a national debate in which religious fundamentalist groups and Damares herself revealed and publicized the child's identity, threating her life. Professor Débora Diniz (UNB), who was the first political exile of Bolsonaro's government and currently lives in the US, defended through her social media the child's legal right to abortion and to be protected by the state (SCHWINGEL, 2020). 15 Other examples of Damares' work against women is that she drastically reduced the budget to destined for the Casa da Mulher Brasileira (Brazilian Women's House), "an institution that is essential for the protection of victims of domestic violence". She also cut the budget for "secretariats focused on diversity, such as that focused on the promotion of racial equality" (GHIROTTO, 2020). collective candidacies, since they intend to represent women in their diversity. As Audre Lorde explains: As a black lesbian, a feminist, a socialist, a poet, mother of two, including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior, or just plain 'wrong'. From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference comes in all shapes and sexes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression … I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination (LORDE, 1983, p. 1).
Since there is no hierarchy of oppression, as Lorde argues, every form and manifestation of oppression must be faced intersectionally, that is, one cannot prioritize dealing with gender-related issues over race, class, or sexuality: to fight against gender oppression is to struggle against race, class and sexual oppression. Feminist collective candidacies offer a political expedient for an intersectional representation in the public sphere, encompassing not only women, but also other oppressed minorities.
In the  The statements above show that feminists of the three candidacies introduce themselves through their multiple identities. Jussara is a working class solo mother who also co- to give birth to children and take care of them were natural functions, while the public sphere was assigned to men whose gainful employment produces the surplus value. However, men could not be publicly productive without being supported by a "subsistence production … necessary for people's own survival", generally performed by women, colonies, or peasants.
This is why "we should no longer look at the sexual division of labour as a problem related to the family only, but rather as a structural problem of a whole society" (MIES, 1994, p. 48-49).

Flávia Biroli's definition of the sexual division of labor as "a fundamental basis which
supports hierarchies of gender in contemporary societies" is particularly significant in this context. According to the author, the exploitation suffered by women in the domestic sphere directly affects their access to the public sphere, and consequently their political participation as well, "not only in terms of occupying public seats, but also in terms of participating in broader political actions". In fact, the effects of exploitation surpass the private sphere, once women's "obligations with the family restrict and mold their occupation outside the home" in current capitalism (BIROLI, 2017, p. 25-31, my translation According to the author, the sexual division of labor affects women as a group, but the effects of that division are not the same for women of different races and social backgrounds, because upper-class, often white, women can afford to delegate housework to lower-class, mostly black women, which gives them the freedom to pursue higher-income jobs outside the home. Considering that the differences between women "are defined as privileges and disadvantages, we are not talking about identities, but rather about positions that make sense within a hierarchy" (BIROLI, 2017, p. 39, my translation).
Generally, white, upper-class, heterosexual women have the privilege of holding political office, yet they are not free from gender discrimination either. Manuela D'Ávila's own experience in Congress is illustrative of this issue: as a congresswoman and breastfeeding mother, she realized that the long night-shifts she had to work to vote bills were not a problem for the congressmen, because they had no responsibilities at home or with childcare. She brought her baby daughter to work, but her colleagues 'recommended' she not breastfeed it in Congress, saying she should leave the baby in a nursery during work hours. As an act of resistance to the blatant sexism present in her work environment, Manuela decided from then on always to bring her daughter with her to work, drawing attention to the debate on women's rights in the public sphere (D'ÁVILA, 2017).
Sexist abuse of this kind is often present even before a woman takes office. In a revealing speech, Marília Ferro, of the feminist collective candidacy Fany das Manas (Garanhuns, Pernambuco), denounced the sexist abuse she suffered during her campaign in the City Council elections: It is something that I and the girls heard a lot from people who we had never met before, with whom we'd never spoken to before, telling us that it would be very difficult to work with us, because we would be quarrelsome, we would be the bums and the down-and-outers of the City Council … We are always going to be seen as aggressive, as crazy, as unbalanced women, simply because we defend what we believe in. Unfortunately, we can see a very conservative City Council, full of misinformed people… We live in a patriarchal, sexist, misogynistic country, and we've been through many situations in which men tried to explain to Fany how to perform as a lawyer, in which men tried to tell me and Fernanda how to perform, for example, as city councilors, as if we didn't know (PORTO, 2020, p.

1, my translation).
Ferro's statements highlight how sexism is used to disqualify women, as if they were not able to pursue a career in public office. By occupying these places of representation, in turn, feminists can fight for the implementation of policies that can contribute to broadening the access of women to the public sphere. The participation of black, indigenous, homeless, working class, and LBT women in feminist collective candidacies is much more meaningful than just being representative of diverse identities. In other words, if elected, these women will be able to introduce bills that can help to attenuate the problems of the sexual division of labor in women's lives. In the fragment below, Natália Trindade, from the Hers Campaign -Co-Councillors Candidacies (Rio de Janeiro), puts forward some suggestions: I am a graduate student and lawyer. Whoever identifies with me probably wants to travel the world, but faces problems in accessing education and cultural facilities, especially women who don't have the right to make use of childcare centers in schools and universities, women working double or triple shifts (Meu voto será feminista, my translation).
The elaboration of public policies to help mothers with childcare and to raise awareness of the problem of double or triple shifts that affects the many women in Brazil is not considered priorities by sexist male politicians. Their work, time, and wages are not affected by these problems (BIROLI, 2017), as is well illustrated by Manuela D'Ávila's testimony. In my opinion, without a feminist agenda, these problems will not be discussed in Congress or in city councils, and, for this reason, it is essential that feminists occupy these spaces, in order to represent a collectivity of women. In addition to the importance of implementing a feminist agenda in politics -which, one might argue, could equally be done by an individual candidate -the collective candidacies rely on the dialogue with associations, collectives and unions to write the bills to be introduced in the city councils. More importantly, as a mandate held by a group, collective candidacies are able to share the duties of office among the constituent members, who can likewise separately or in groups remain in touch with the population, listening to their demands.
In the statement that follows, candidate Fany Bernal, head of the candidacy Fany das Manas (Garanhuns, Pernambuco) -now elected -points out that their candidacy had a broad reach, because it was not linked to any specific neighborhood, and goes on to explain how they intend to represent the population through a popular, participatory and decentralized mandate: Our electorate is not limited to a single territory, as is the case with most of the candidates here. We understood that it was necessary for this mandate to be popular, participatory, and decentralized. As such, we have two proposals: the first is the implementation of a Consulting Board along with unions, associations -in short, with people who are collectively organized. In addition, we also found it necessary to make sure that we have an 'office in motion', what we call 'the itinerant office', so that we can go to a different place each month to bring the institutional politics closer to the people … We realized that in addition to the Consulting Board, there are people who are not collectively organized, they don't belong to a neighborhood association, but would still like to talk to us, and that's how we came up with the idea of the itinerant office (PORTO, 2020, p. 1, my translation). As a political strategy, the "itinerant office" decentralizes political power, challenging local oligarchic political structures 16 ; it provides widespread accessibility and creates a spatialaffective-cognitive shift in people's understanding of political representatives, making sure they are no longer seen as distant and superior. In this way, due to the necessary exercise of listening to people's demands -particularly those directly benefiting women's lives -feminist collective candidacies can "help to improve representative democracy and enhance the dialogue between elected officials and voters" (PAES, 2020, p. 1). As Fany Bernal says: "it is not just about listening to people's demands, it is also about transforming this act of listening into the passing of actual bills, into creating laws that can improve people's lives" (PORTO, 2020, p. 1, my translation).
In an insightful essay about the feminist insurgency in recent years, Heloisa Buarque Although feminist collective candidacies aim to strengthen the relation between social movements and institutional politics, there is no guarantee that real changes will automatically occur. Nonetheless, the experiences both past and present of collective mandates in several Brazilian states, and particularly the experience of feminist collective mandates in Minas Gerais 17 and Pernambuco, 18 have already demonstrated their ability to raise awareness of women's demands. Only time can tell how successful these political projects are, but feminist collective candidacies are a sign that the population is eager to be heard and represented.

To Conclude
In this paper, I have argued that feminist collective candidacies offer a political expedient for intersectional representation in Brazil, constituted by the reframing of the work of collectives in institutional politics. In other words, feminist collective candidacies can represent the struggle for equal rights held by feminist collectives within the city councils.
The emergence of these candidacies finds its historical basis in previous feminist struggles that characterized the Brazilian feminist movement throughout the 20 th century: the suffrage movement, the fight for women's rights during the dictatorship and later in the period of re-democratization. What all these important moments have in common is women's struggle against the authoritarianism and conservatism that crops up from time to time throughout Brazilian history.
In the beginning of the 21 st century, after a period of important social achievements in Brazil, a feminist insurgency took place in opposition to conservative groups focused on destabilizing the gains of those rights by women, the LGBTQ+ population, black and indigenous people, and the working classes. While part of Brazilian society voted for an authoritarian, misogynist, racist and anti-LGBTQ president, with the help of social media the feminist movement grew stronger, and was able to organize acts of protest in the streets. In this context, the feminist collective candidacies emerged to reconnect politics with people; to represent the demands of different women in Congress and in city councils throughout the country.
Of the 28 feminist collectives candidacies running for seats in city councils all over  Among those elected, Fany das Manas is the first collective mandate that will be exercised by three co-councilors in the city of Garanhuns, in the Northeastern interior of Brazil, a region where politics is traditionally associated with an oligarchic power structure. Curiously, it was also in the same region that Alzira Soriano became mayor, being the first Brazilian woman elected, in 1927. Ninety-three years separate the elections of Alzira Soriano and Fany das Manas, yet we are still fighting for women's rights to represent and be represented.
Just as in the past Alzira Soriano challenged the traditional politics in her town by defeating a white, wealthy, influential man with the popular vote, Fany das Manas' election starts to dismantle Garanhuns' time-worn view of politicians, practicing democracy by listening directly to the people's demands.
Finally, the election of feminist collective candidates in different parts of the country highlights the widespread desire for a broader, more participatory form of democracy, based on the ideas of collectivity and horizontality. The political representation of feminist collective mandates challenges the current political system, and at the same time brings a message of hope to people who struggle against systematic state violence of Bolsonaro's government.
These mandates have a great chance of proving that they are not only representative of women's diverse identities, but that they can also help to weaken the consequences of the sexual division of labor, giving women a chance to occupy positions in institutional politics and fight towards a more equal society.