Public policies for women with effective effectiveness, low popularity with the segment and recurrence of speech considered macho comprise the scenario to be faced by the president () in the race to ensure female support in.
In the midst of this context, the petista Cida Gonçalves, by Márcia Lopes, also from PT. Once appointed, the new minister stated that the public presidents for the sector.
“President Lula said he wants to see the most happy women, that he wants to see the more protected women,” said Marcia Lopes.
The new minister also mentioned to be “very difficult, in a country with continental dimensions, to be able to arrive everywhere.”
It is precisely the difficulty in the execution one of the obstacles identified by experts heard by the Sheet About the performance of the Lula 3 government on the agenda about women. The scenario is to increase spending, but bottlenecks in the execution and effectiveness of actions.
According to the Ministry of Planning and Budget, the government allocated, by 2023, R $ 215 billion in 91 actions distributed in different folders and whose beneficiaries were women, in categories such as social protection, coping with violence and health.
Among the actions highlighted as important by women’s portfolio are the approval of the Salary Equality Law (Law No. 14,611/2023), the National Care Policy and the National Feminicide Prevention Pact.
In 2024, three new folder programs aimed at the combat of violence and economic autonomy of women had a budget authorized of R $ 256.35 million. Only R $ 36.62 million, however, were effectively paid (14.29% of the total), according to the Inec (Institute of Socioeconomic Studies).
“Although 92% of the funds were committed, which demonstrates the intention of using the budget, the effective payment – which represents the actual implementation of actions – was limited to 14.29% of the expected total,” says the institute, to whom the data “reveals that the services have not yet been realized in the territories where women live.”
One of the bottlenecks, says Rosely Pires, professor at UFES (Federal University of Espírito Santo) and coordinator of a program focused on culture and confrontation to violence, is to arrive effectively to states and municipalities, responsible for implementing part of the actions.
Another problem, points out Carmen Migueles, a researcher at FGV Ebape (Brazilian School of Public Administration and Business), is the lack of deeper diagnoses and investment in quality research to support social policies, often done in a hasty manner, she interprets.
“Several projects are quite interesting, such as the construction of houses for women victims of violence, but others are poorly effective in terms of concrete results, such as the 8% quota of women in public hiring, which does not attack the problem of lack of front representativeness,” he says.
The inaccuracy of the effectiveness of actions increases with the lack of tradition in monitoring social programs, says Janaína Feijó, a researcher at FGV Ibre.
February survey registered a sharp drop in optimal and good government assessments among women, from 38% in December 2024 to 24% in February this year. In April, the amount registered up, going to 30%. The search margin of the research for this segment was three percentage points for more or less.
In addition to this uncertainty about whether, in fact, public policies are improving women’s lives, another factor could explain the low of Lula’s popularity with the female electorate, says Feijó.
For her, food inflation and high interest rates may explain the phenomenon, as women head practically half of Brazilian homes, according to the 2022 census.
Carmen Migueles also sees the economy as the main factor to distance women from Lula. She states that part of the voters voted for the petista with the hope of seeing concrete improvements in quality of life, but has not yet been able to progress economically.
The electorate is considered strategic for the petista in 2026. On the eve of the second round that took him to his third term in 2022, women gave the petista considerable advantage against ().
Datafolha survey on voting intent on the eve of the election pointed out that Lula had 55% voting intention among women, against 45% of Bolsonaro. The male segment was divided by 50% for each candidate.
Another aspect brings challenge to the petista: the recurrence of macho speeches, which have generated discomfort and manifestation including allies.
After taking office on Monday, Marcia Lopes stated that the statements cannot be “relativizing”.
“I think we can never relativize these lines and attitudes that contradict our struggle and our own history of the left, those who want democracy and an equal country,” she said in an interview with GloboNews.
Two of Lula’s latest statements criticized by sexism were when he called, on April 8, the Director General of (International Monetary Fund), Kristalina Georgieva, “little woman” and when she said in March, she named a “(PT), to the Secretariat of Institutional Relations to” improve the relationship “with Congress.
For Rosely Pires, you need not to quit when it comes to condemning macho phrases, which produce real impact on the lives of Brazilian women. She says that “misogyny is in the structure of society” and that the type lines need to be reviewed because “weakened women.”
