Porous Parties, Permeable State

Abstract

In order to understand why it should have been a political party, the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores — PT), rather than a government ministry that opened up new ground in gender legislation and policies in the 1990s, this chapter first outlines some of the peculiarities of the Brazilian party system, its development and underlying cleavages. It examines why the influence of the women’s movement on the other parties has been so conjunctural and unreliable, as illustrated by the political problems encountered by the National Council on Women’s Rights (Conselho Nacional dos Direitos da Mulher — CNDM). As the municipality and state are much more important spheres of government in a federal system, the chapter concludes by outlining how gender policy initiatives have emerged through the institutional spaces and instruments available in these sub-national arenas.