A milestone of female participation in politics in Brazil occurred in May 1986, when the country saw Iolanda Fleming, a teacher, daughter of a rubber tapper and an Arab immigrant, take office at 49 as the first to definitively assume the position of governor, no.
Iolanda was a farmer and maid before teaching and public life and held the position after the departure of the then holder, Nabor Júnior, to run for that year. At the age of 12, he was encouraging the Acrian’s rallies, joining the party at the time associated with Varguismo.
She spent only 305 days in office, dedicating herself to complete investments made by her predecessor and looking at works of social reach, including the first specialized police station in the state.
Most of their projects were implemented in other management, and their political future stagnated after exercising the government, unsuccessful to reach other elective positions. To this day, in the country on a substitute or definitive basis.
Born in Manoel Urbano (244 km from), he was literate by his mother, as the city where he lived had no school while working with some rural activities already in childhood. To maintain studies, it would be necessary to move to Sena Madureira (137 km from the capital), which occurred years later.
There, he was enrolled at the Madre Santa Juliana College of Nuns to do elementary school. The then second degree, today high school, she did in the Capital Acriana, where she performed household tasks and worked as cash at Pernambuco stores to be able to stay in the city and continue her studies.
It was in the meantime that he had the first contact with politics and the PTB, founded by in 1945 and with a picture. The acronym chose children and adolescents to sing campaign songs on the Acrianos Local stands, and Iolanda was one of the rallies animators.
When the second degree was over – which also authorized teaching – he went to to live with an aunt and try to be a flight attendant or pursue a modeling career.
The two career options were frustrated after being convinced that, despite the determination, both areas were restricted to people with less privileges, or that they had no pre -established contacts in these sectors. With that, he decided to return to Acre.
Returning to Rio Branco, he worked as a primary school teacher and met Geraldo Fleming, a veterinarian and army captain, in 1960 – the military, born in and trained at, was sent to the city for the government’s efforts to consolidate the borders of the territory. Married in 1963.
A year later, with Jango in the Planalto Palace indicating Rui Lino (PTB) to manage Acre, he was appointed teacher of the state network. In the same year, Geraldo Fleming joins the party, and Iolanda is invited to be secretary of the Acrian Directory of the association.
Iolanda’s husband, who also made a political career initially by the PTB, was Secretary of Agriculture and Justice, as well as state deputy and federal deputy, holding public office since 1962. He died in 1991.
Iolanda began to hold elective positions later. After the imposition of bipartisanship on both she and her husband migrated to in 1965. She was elected councilwoman of the Capital Acriana in 1972 and 1976, the same year she was raised to the presidency of the city.
In 2010, he said he had faced prejudice since the beginning of his political career. He remembered, especially, when he studied law at 37 while he entered the public life. “I heard things like, ‘Woman who goes to college is slut.'”
He arrived at the Acre Assembly in 1978, when he was elected state deputy, remaining until 1983, after applying for deputy governor at the time alongside Nabor Júnior, who had already been a congressman for the state. She was chosen for the plate for the political force she had in Rio Branco.
Iolanda assumed the position interimly several times until Nabor’s departure in 1986 and even dealt with secretary insubordination. In, she said that after the beating of a student for a military man, he called the security secretary and he refused to go, “because governor for him was just Nabor.”
The chief of the portfolio was then locked in his office, and the governor fired him, determining that the PM commander Acriana had 20 minutes to break into the secretary’s door for the inauguration of a new holder. With the order, the holder left the place.
He assumed the position definitively on May 14, 1986, being the first woman to take office as the effective governor of a state of Brazil. The first jurisdiction through the vote in the country, in turn, was Roseana Sarney (PMDB) in 1994, eight years later.
Iolanda sought to invest in social scope and started projects such as the installation of the first specialized police station in the state and the paving of highway stretches and the construction of Acre State Hospital, completed in the mandate of its successor, Flaviano Melo – Governo in which he occupied the Transportation Secretariat until 1988.
After that, he joined the PDS of and was part of the Rio Branco City Hall as vice, successfully, in office until 1992. He returned to the PMDB and tried to be a federal deputy in 1994, councilwoman of the Capital Acriana in 1996 and state deputy in 2002, unsuccessful in any of the attempts.
In 2009, he migrated to the PTB and again claimed a place in the state assembly, being defeated once again. In 2022, he supported (PL) to reelection to the Plateau-he said to have admiration for the military and the administration of the former president.
The Senate granted him in 2019 the Bertha Lutz diploma, in honor of the biologist and one of the forerunners of the feminist movement in the country, which aims to recognize women who contributed to the defense of gender equality in Brazil. Today she is 88 years old and remains living in Acre.
For Brenda Barreto, a political scientist from the IPOL (Institute of Political Science) of UNB (University of Brasilia), the passage of Iolanda in the Acrian government had a resistance symbolism in an almost totally masculine environment.
According to the political scientist, the former governor and other women in power pass the message that politics is a public and democratic place, and should be occupied from other perspectives.
Asked about the sub -presentation of women in the heads of state executives despite the growth of women’s candidacies, Barreto cites a number of issues, such as campaign financing, cultural and institutional issues, in the decision -making process of parties.
It also says it is necessary to effect the rules existing in the legislation and approved by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) to strengthen women’s candidates.
“It is also important to have inspection. We already have 30 years of the quotas for female candidates, but each year there is an attempt by the acronyms to circumvent the rules. If there is inspection, we must make parties really punished, do not have amnesty,” he said, in reference to the series of regons that the acronyms approved themselves in the legislature.
