6. DOING GENDER IN PORTUGAL
1.2 Equality from above – difference from below
According to recent surveys, gender inequalities are not perceived as indicators of social inequality in Portugal.142 Women’s rights do not seem to be a major priority as the subject is overshadowed by the huge social class differences and differences between urban and rural communities. Portugal is one of the very few European countries in which women’s
organisations and movements have been almost non-existent, including after 1974. Ferreira reports that one of the very few feminist political demonstrations seen in Portugal was met with extreme ridicule and even violence in 1995. This situation may also explain my problems in finding literature on the gender system and gender culture in the country today. While a vast amount of books have been published in English on women’s situations in USSR/Russia, Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries - and also in Mediterranean countries, such as Italy and Spain - I only succeeded in finding a few articles on Portugal, in addition to anthropological studies of premodern gender structures in villages.
The same silence characterises the interviews with the Portuguese Scouts – both young people as well as adult leaders. They were eager to talk about Scouting, but had surprisingly little to say about gender compared to the Scouts of the other three countries. Whereas the Russian leaders questioned whether the issue of gender equality was appropriate as differences between men and women should persist, whereas the Slovak leaders had a positive attitude in principle but thought it difficult to implement in practice, and whereas the Danish leaders enmeshed themselves in a discussion about when gender equality became the new straitjacket, the Portuguese leaders’ first response was to laugh at the question, and then to insist that it was irrelevant as full equality had already been achieved:
138 Ferreira (1998): 177.
139 Portugal Status of Women, 2000.
140 Ferreira (1998) describes the situation as a ‘carnivalization of politics’ – much is said, little is done.
141 According to Ferreira (1998), the Supreme Court in Portugal in 1989 justified a light sentence for a man accused of rape on the grounds that girls in Portugal should know that they live in the ‘hunting ground of the Iberian male’ and thus should take the necessary precautions (such as not taking lifts) in order not to excite the male libido.
Question: What does the expression ‘equal opportunities’ mean to each of you? Equal opportunities for men and women, for boys and girls…
TL(m): It does not mean anything to me [laughs].
TA(f): I’m thinking, and sincerely, no… equal opportunities…
TL(m): It is like this, no separation, girls on one side and boys on the other. I see them as a group, and I don’t think there are, or should be, or that they have been, separated like that. What we have should be distributed to everyone … there are the same opportunities for everyone. At least, here, with us, I’ve not seen those other kinds of situations.
Question: So, they have all the same opportunities? TA(f): The same opportunities.
Question: And do you notice any differences in making use of those opportunities? TM(m): In the way they do it, yes…that depends on the characteristics of a given girl or a given boy.
TA(f): The same opportunities, yes (...) They are really equals. TL(m): What is made available for one is also available for the other.
However, according to social researchers, the traditional gender order in everyday life seems to prevail. And this is the depiction of gender relations provided by the Portuguese research assistant:
After work, men tend to get together for a drink (this applies in both urban and rural areas, and to Africans as well as Caucasians) and discuss sports, cars, women, their jobs, politics… Women typically stay at home or, if they have a job, get home as soon as possible, collecting their children at school on the way home. They have to do all the shopping and take care of all the household chores (in the middle and higher socio-cultural levels they may get some help from the men). For most women with a job outside the home, there is no active social life. Housewives meet with neighbours at the grocery store or in the street. It is not customary to invite other women home. At the weekend, women may go to the movies or spend the day out with the whole family.
(...)
Men are supposed to carry all the heavy luggage, and are also supposed to perform all the heavy tasks. Women (especially rural women, but…) are supposed to do all of the household chores and to educate the children. The older generations tend to be more conservative than younger ones; they have more ‘macho’ attitudes, but are also more protective towards women.
As in Slovakia, we see a discrepancy between formal principles of equality and the presumption of natural gender differences in everyday life. However, the blindness towards this discrepancy is much more striking in the Portuguese interviews. Everybody refers to formal equality, takes it as a description of how things are, and has nothing more to say about the matter. I asked the Portuguese research assistant what the reason could be for this, and he answered: ‘Gender is a topic that is only discussed in very particular contexts. The usual excuse is: ‘Why speak about something that is natural, when all of us are aware of it?’
One reason for this difference between Portugal and the other countries may be the different histories of gender equality. In Denmark, the term has a long history, and in the former Communist states the concept of gender equality was part of the policy, although in a
somewhat different meaning than in Western Europe. In the Portuguese context, however, the idea is relatively new. Gender equality was definitely not part of their experiences with a totalitarian state, as it was in Russia and Eastern Europe. From the 15th century, when legislation was first compiled in writing, and up to 1974, women were subordinates to their fathers and husbands, with a short period of relief during the First Republic (1910-1926). Under the New State (1933-1974), an authoritarian, militant, nationalistic, Christian, and anti-modern regime was in power. Traditional family values were reinstated and supported by the Church, and women’s rights were bombed back to before 1910:
State and church definitions of gender during the New State were directed towards defining relations between men and women within marriage. Under the Civil Code, the husband was the head of the household, and a wife her husband’s legal dependent. In the Portuguese Roman Catholic church, the family was defined as based upon paternal authority, and a wife’s duty was to serve her husband.143
The 1933 constitution formalised women’s status in the notorious Article 5, which declared that everyone is equal before the law ‘except for women (due to) the differences resulting from their nature or from the interest of the family’. The Concordat, an agreement between Portugal and the Vatican established in 1940, made a Catholic wedding the only one with full legal effects and prohibited civil divorce. Contraception was also illegal and abortion harshly punished. In 1950, family desertion was made a crime punishable by prison, and women could not obtain a
passport without their husband’s permission. The regime also put an end to coeducation, which had been implemented during the First Republic.144
After the fall of the New State, women’s legal situation was changed overnight. Researchers have described the new constitution as one that, in one stroke, took Portugal from a medieval model of women’s oppression to the most modern gender equality regime seen in Europe. Divorce and contraception were legalised without as much as a rumour of opposition in a country in which the overwhelming majority of people are Catholic.145 Women did not have to become mobilised to achieve this new state of affairs - equal rights were seen by the political elite as a necessary part of the process towards democracy and integration in the EU. Thus, Virginia Ferreira describes the Portuguese gender equality as a ‘top-down’ legislation:
The way equality was institutionalised left deep marks on the social situation of women in Portugal. As one prominent activist stated recently, ‘In Portugal there is a missing link, perhaps because the law changed before we emancipated ourselves’. Portuguese women confront a misogynist barrier much stronger than the one found in more advanced countries: the assumption of their inferiority. The institutional-juridical order that governed women’s lives until the 1970s defended that assumption, and was based on it. That order,
furthermore, was not gradually corroded by the rise of new values or by changes in social practices associated with urbanization and industrialization, as it was in other countries (...) Industrialization was diffuse, indeed, it can be characterized as a process of industrialization without modernisation. These characteristics preclude the spread of individualistic lifestyles, as well as the emancipation of women. 146
This unmediated contrast between traditionalism and modern equality from above, in a still predominantly rural country, may be one reason for the low engagement in women’s issues, and another may be the general satisfaction with a situation in which the situation of women had enormously improved compared to their condition during the New State.
Another reason for the unease with the topic may be an ambiguity in Portuguese gender culture connected to the contrast between women’s actual power in the household in rural Portugal, and the traditional Catholic view of women as ‘daughters of Eve’: ‘weaker, more prone to sin and bearing the burden for the destructive power of sexuality’,147 a sinfulness which must be
kept under control in marriage with male authority. Anthropologists describe rural Portuguese households as ‘matrifocal’, which is defined as a cultural emphasis on the maternal role. This position of women may have been stronger in Portugal compared to other Latin countries, as it is a coastal nation with men at sea for long periods. Large-scale emigration may also be a factor.148 In both cases, women have been left in charge of the household. In this matrifocal
143 Cole, S. (1991). Women of the Praia: Work and lives in a Portuguese coastal community. Princeton, Princeton University Press. p.102.
144 Under the New State, women were also restricted in their economic activities and in their access to property. The husband had the right to insist that his wife remained in the home. A man could be granted legal separation if the wife committed adultery, while a wife could apply for separation only if her husband’s adultery had created a public scandal or if he had brought his mistress to the family home. When the constitution was revised as late as 1966, the authority of the husband was emphasised even more: ‘The husband is the head of the family and, as such, he is to decide and direct on all
matters concerning marital life (...) It is the father, as head of the household, who directs the children’s education and governs them according to their sex, defends and represents them even before they are born.’ (as quoted in Guimaraes, E.
(1987). Portuguese women - past and present. Lisboa, Portugal Commision on the Status of Women. p. 34-35). 145 Ferreira (1998).
146 Ferreira (1998):162-63.
147 Dubish (1995), as quoted in Gemzöe (2000).
148 Between 3.5 and 4 million Portuguese are residents abroad. 65% of these are men (Vincente, A. (1993). A brief look at women in Portuguese history. Lisboa, Commision for Equality and Women's Rights.
society, however, the ideology of male dominance is still maintained, resulting in what the Portuguese-British social anthropologist Joao de Pina-Cabral has described as the intensively felt ‘conflict between man’s right to rule and women’s effective power’149. This leads to a tension in
which women and men constantly challenge each other’s power by quarrelling, or mocking and ridiculing each other (often using terms with sexual connotations). An anthropologist who analysed the many popular adages on gender in a Portuguese coastal village found they formed three sets:
...The first set identifies woman as the controlling power within the household; the second suggests that men are in a more privileged position than women; and the third set of expressions suggest that people recognize that gender relations are problematic and not ideal (...) Third parties are advised not to interfere in the business of a husband and a wife, because gender relations in the household are fragile and potentially violent.150
Cole writes that the idealisation of men, not of women, may signify that men’s privileged
position is not secure and guaranteed, but must be decreed and enforced ideologically through a myth of male dominance. It may be that this cultural heritage of a ‘normal’, ongoing gender battle takes the air out of the gender equality question – and also, as we shall see later, puts tension into interaction. Why talk about women’s rights if they already have more power than they actually should have had? 151 The private tension between men and women may also have more modern roots in this society in which the state expects equality to be constructed on the basis of private confrontations, while social institutions, to a large degree, remain unchanged.152