“You will never get re-elected!” That’s what , deputy of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, heard when announcing her daughter Lara’s pregnancy at a meeting in her first year in office, in 2019.
At the meeting, the reaction was different when another deputy said that his wife was pregnant. He only heard congratulations, says Helou, at the time at Rede, now a pre-candidate for the Chamber for .
It was the deputy’s second pregnancy, who had already campaigned in 2018 with her son Martin, then six months old.
“I suffered a lot of aversion from people. They either said that I couldn’t be campaigning with such a small baby and that I was taking advantage of his image or, if I left my son, that I was being a bad mother”, she says.
The feeling of constant judgment faced in different careers also appears in politics, where women from different parties and states report hostility when balancing the mandate.
According to experts, this problem keeps many women away from politics, despite the growing interest in female candidates, which peaked in October 2022, according to data from Google Trends.
In the last ten years, , shows a survey of Sheet with state and Federal District Legislatures, available via Pinpoint.
Maranhão, Amapá and Goiás reported not having a specific license. In Alagoas, Bahia, Rondônia and Sergipe, the report did not find the rule. When questioned, the Assemblies did not respond until the publication of the report.
Deputy in the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais and pre-candidate for the third term, Ana Paula Siqueira, who migrated from Rede to , says she was surprised to discover that there was no leave when she became pregnant with her third child, in 2019, in the first year of her term.
Although the leave is provided for by the Federal Constitution, the lack of internal regulations required her to make a pilgrimage to the Board of Directors and the legal department to be able to approve an opinion authorizing the leave for 120 days. Four months after Manuel’s birth, the Assembly approved the creation of maternity leave.
Luciana Ramos, professor of constitutional law at FGV Direito São Paulo, states that there is a gap in legislation for women who hold office, which creates legal uncertainty.
“It is very important that the rules are explicit and clear, because if they are not [estiverem]this could be overturned overnight. In this sense, protecting women’s maternity is the guarantee that they will return to their role under the same conditions as others.”
Women’s power in politics is harmed when differentiated rights are not established for them, says political scientist Débora Thomé, professor at IDP-DF (Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research).
“The woman has to participate. If she wants to reproduce, she will reproduce in those years when she will be politically active. How do you do it when there is no maternity leave? For years this was registered as a lack.”
In 2020, the then federal deputy (-MG) says that she had to petition the Board of Directors of the Chamber to correct the absences on the plenary panel due to her son Jorge’s maternity leave. After the campaign for Mayor of Belo Horizonte, she experienced burnout and decided to leave office.
“‘Do you want to be mayor of Belo Horizonte with this little boy?’ To change these things, it’s almost a feminist revolution, because we need a society that understands what it means to have supportive policies and not judge women”, says she, who is a pre-candidate for the Senate.
In 2016, while breastfeeding her daughter Laura in the plenary session of the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, the now former deputy and pre-candidate for the Senate raised the debate about the lack of initiatives for mothers.
“When these images circulate, sometimes there is a distorted idea that these children would stay with their mothers all the time, and it is common to say: ‘this doesn’t happen to anyone’. No, no one wants this to happen to a parliamentarian, but this happens due to the disorganized routine of the sessions.”
For congresswoman and pre-candidate for re-election Júlia Zanatta (-SC), a woman has the right to keep her child wherever she wants. After her leave, she says she started traveling weekly with her second daughter, Olívia, from Criciúma to Brasília, to breastfeed until she was six months old.
when taking to. She says she did it because she wanted to, she felt safe and because she was alone in the federal capital.
“They invented the story that I took my daughter to use as a shield. I felt it was disrespectful to my motherhood. These attacks I suffered were quite exhausting.”
Pre-candidate for state deputy for Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro councilor Joyce Trindade says she spent the first three months after her daughter Antonela was born dealing with sabotage from opponents and the removal of allies.
“We talk about the need for women in politics, but which woman do we want: the one who wants to be a mother or just the one who already has her personal life sorted out and will be available 24 hours a day? In which part do we have a choice and in which part are we coerced into postponing a decision because the market is not permissive for a woman mother to continue being a leader?”
For Flávia Biroli, professor of political science at UnB, the lack of policies punishes mothers.
“Women are the ones who have fulfilled the role of caring for a newborn, and it wouldn’t be fair to harm them in their careers, including politics, because they are playing a role for the whole of society.”
