The women of the statutes in Brazilian National Congress

Abstract

This article analyzes the transformation of woman as a legal category, by looking at debates on the running of a bill that proposed a Woman's Statute in Brazil's legislative chambers in 2003-2004. It contrasts documents presented at the legislative chambers with speeches made at the Special Committee created to report the bill. This comparison shed light on the manner in which speeches made at the Committee cast woman as an inherently maternal subject embedded in specific family relations. Such an association of woman retrocedes legal improvements obtained in the pursuit of gender equality. Additionally, comparing the discourses of 2004 to another bill that proposed a Woman's Statute in 1937 illuminates how woman remains a subject subordinated to the notion of family, which contradicts the legal improvements for woman's equality gained in the last decades.