Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin
January 25, 2013
In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women’s roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy and fought for women’s rights in the wake of a military dictatorship. Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a father-daughter research team, tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement.
Abstract
In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women’s roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy and fought for women’s rights in the wake of a military dictatorship. Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a father-daughter research team, tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement.
Starting in 2002, Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin traveled together to southern Brazil, where they interviewed activists over the course of ten years. Their vivid descriptions of women’s lives reveal the hard work of sustaining a social movement in the years after initial victories, when the political way forward was no longer clear and the goal of remaking gender roles proved more difficult than activists had ever imagined. Highlighting the tensions within the movement about how best to effect change, their work ultimately shows that democracies need nonviolent social movements in order to improve people’s lives and create a more just society.
Jeffrey W. Rubin is Associate Professor of History and Research Associate, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University. Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a recent Yale graduate, is a reporter for Gotham Schools. Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin are coauthors of Sustaining Activism: A Brazilian Women’s Movement and a Father-Daughter Collaboration.