The minister is the (Federal Supreme Court). Of the 172 ministers who served on the court over 134 years, only three were women. Alongside Carmen were and .
The minister says that affirmative actions have been decisive for women to obtain “some small spaces”, but that it is urgent to raise awareness in society about the need to be plural and diverse. “Now we want transformative actions.”
“There are competent women in the Brazilian legal field, talented judges, committed to democratic law, independent, with experience in the judiciary and law, with notable legal knowledge and who can have their names considered and”, he told Sheet the minister, honored of the year at 2 Folha/Alandar, in an email interview.
After the retirement of minister Rosa Weber, in September 2023, the president (PT) chose her for the position. Recently, with the departure of , the PT member indicated that it still needs to be examined and approved by the Senate. In ten appointments that he has already been able to make in his three terms, .
In the court plenary, Cármen frequently cites persistent gender and racial inequalities in Brazilian society. The minister does not spare her colleagues and also draws attention to the differences in treatment of women in the collegiate.
On September 11 of this year, the date on which the First Panel concluded the trial for an attempted coup d’état, the minister cast her vote when Flávio Dino asked to speak.
“As long as it’s quick”, Cármen Lúcia replied to Dino. “Because we women have been silent for 2,000 years and we want the right to speak. But I grant [o aparte]as always,” he added.
When she presided over the Supreme Court, the minister also took a position on the issue on some occasions. In a session in May 2017, after a debate about whose turn it was to vote, he joked with Rosa Weber: “I give the floor to the full vote.”
Cármen Lúcia then mentioned a study carried out in the United States based on the analysis of 15 years of transcripts of oral arguments which showed that, although ministers use the floor less, they are interrupted significantly more frequently.
“How do you grant the floor? It’s her turn [Rosa Weber] to vote. She is the one who grants, if you want, an aside”, Cármen told Fux, at the time. And he continued: “A survey was carried out in all constitutional courts where there are women, the number of times women are aside is 18 times greater than among ministers. And the [da Suprema Corte americana] He asked me: ‘What’s it like there?’. There, in general, Minister Rosa and I are not allowed to speak, so we are not interrupted.”
Cármen Lúcia currently presides over the (Superior Electoral Court) and commanded the last municipal elections, in 2024.
As for the low representation of women in politics, the minister points to misogyny as something to be faced. “Political violence culminates in women being affected by hateful, violent speeches, which affect family members, friends and people in the women’s relationships, causing women’s participation to decrease or for them to be very threatened in their search for political and administrative participation in the public space”, he told the report.
Although women make up the majority of the electorate eligible to vote (52%), .
Themes linked to women’s dignity are dear to Cármen Lúcia, she says. In , the minister institutionalized the Justice Campaign for Peace at Home, which determines that trials of cases have priority in all states and the Federal District for three weeks: in March, the week of ; in August, in celebration of ; and in November, due to the 21 Days of Activism to End Violence against Women.
“The number of trials that have occurred in these ten years is impressive and constitutes a change, which was essential to occur”, stated the minister about the campaign, established in 2015.
One, and statistics show that episodes have increased. Until the beginning of December, the city of São Paulo, for example, recorded 53 cases of femicide this year, according to data from the Public Security Secretariat.
In the minister’s assessment, the Judiciary is more attentive and an effort has been made to raise awareness among the judiciary.
“Judge training schools have been running courses to give greater sensitivity to the judiciary to also judge from a gender perspective. There is specialization, in some capitals and in a few districts, of courts for judging cases of . It is a step forward”, he says.
In a meeting at the TSE on the 24th, the minister recalled that black and poor women are the most vulnerable to violence and that Brazilian democracy will not reach its full potential while attacks persist. “There is no democracy with inequality, discrimination and violence,” he said.
The minister has also expressed concern about maneuvers that seek to weaken the effectiveness of gender quotas in elections. In May 2024, the TSE, under the presidency of , approved a summary to combat .
Then vice-president of the court, Cármem Lúcia praised the measure. “This is the fight of my entire life, the fight for general equality.”
