Eunice Michiles was received in the Senate with party in 1979, when she became the first woman to hold the position in the republican period in Brazil.
So 49 years old, the paulistana elected by Amazonas, now 95, received chocolate and bouquets of flowers and even had recited poetry in his honor.
At that time, the Senate plenary had not even a women’s room for congressmen. Previously, women needed to use a space in a restaurant attached to the plenary.
“When I entered the Senate, I was ‘very well received’, with flowers, poetry, a lot of hype. But I realized the following: I was not a colleague who was coming. I was a lady, a lady,” Michiles said in.
Elected as João Bosco’s first alternate, killed three months after taking office, she found some resistance to speak up, including scolding a colleague for being late in a session.
Today, 95 years old and living in Brasilia, the paulistana Michiles came from family with German origin. Born in 1929 in Santo Amaro, he studied and then taught in Adventist schools, his religion.
He only left after marrying Darcy Augusto Michiles, born in Maués (356 km), a city on the border with Pará of which he was mayor. They met in São Paulo; She moved to the Amazonian municipality of 66,000 inhabitants in 1950.
With teaching experience, he held management positions in schools in the Amazon city and entered political life in 1974, when he was elected state deputy, with 4,172 votes for the Arena, a party she chose to avoid friction with the government after her husband, PTB, was revoked by her party and her positions on education.
Then the acronym of the military regime insisted that she would compete in the Senate despite her willingness to claim reelection.
The idea was to face the, which started to include women in the plates to the chairs, but gave strength to men, since the votes of each candidate would be agglutinated in the subtitle, who would choose who would be elected. Michiles had the potential to raise voters, so much so that he got almost 33,000 votes, the third most voted among all competitors in the state.
He was the second senator in the history of Brazil, the first of the Republic and the first directly elected. Before her, in the Senate of Brazil Empire despite never taking office.
Some of the projects proposed by her were the reduction of working hours, with a proportional decrease in salary, to the with children, and end the possibility of a married man in communion of goods to contract loans and give family assets as guarantee without the consent of his wife.
Another proposal was the revocation of an article in the 1916 Civil Code that authorized the man to “return” his wife to parents if she were not a virgin. None of them were approved – some were rejected in vote, and others, never based.
In an interview with the BBC, Michiles stated that his entry into the Senate was a “small revolution,” but was not treated as a senator.
He also said that her political experience was very difficult, because, according to her, it was not a good tone that the woman manifested or spoke a little louder and appeared, something necessary in politics.
“One day, I was late in the Senate, and a finger senator in laugh told me ‘don’t do that anymore’. I was withered, as if I had [levado uma bronca] of my father. Another senator replied, ‘My daughter, do not allow them to do this to you. You are as senator as they ‘. I realized: it really was. From there, I felt that I had the responsibility to put myself to them. “
A Sheet He sought family members of the senator, who did not want to give an interview.
Despite the difficulties in the legislature, Michiles had a good traffic with Planalto, having space with the last general of the military dictatorship.
She was one of those responsible for forming a political group that would convince the then agent to appoint in (Ministry of Education) successfully. Esther became the first woman to be Minister of the State of Brazil.
Michiles voted for Tancredo Neves at the 1985 Electoral College, and at the end of the dictatorship, left the Senate. It was elected by the PFL the following year, integrating the Constituent Assembly that promulgated that of 1988. It was unsuccessful in the 1990s, when it tried the reelection, already by the PDC.
He was then elected counselor of the TCE-AM (Court of Auditors of the State of Amazonas), reaching the deputy presidency of the agency until he retired in 1999. One of his four children, Humberto Michiles, pursued a career in politics, having been mayor of Maués and state and federal deputy.
Researcher Michelle Vale, author of the book “Women in Power – The political trajectory of Eunice Michiles, the first senator in Brazil” (Appris Publisher), says Michiles has always considered himself right, including his context, being a white and evangelical woman.
“Her mindset at that time was the following, if she wanted to get something, she had to be the situation, because in the situation she would be able to ask for something and possibly be answered,” he says.
She says Michiles had her work very focused on existing gender inequality. According to her, the performance was invisible in the face of resistance and at the time, but Michiles left a legacy of opening of the legislature of the legislature for women.
“Eunice Michiles opened the doors for many women so that they could think about politics, not just as a space for men, but for women, so that this space would be understood as a space for discussion of law for women.”
