the polls albeit not enough for her to qualify as a viable candidate. The Lula team nevertheless did react to her campaign by tweaking their strategy to attract more female voters. Overall, however, rather than striving to rally women consistently throughout his re-election campaign, Lula focused primarily on mobilizing the poor by discursively drawing on his impoverished family background.
Comparing Serra’s 2002 and 2010 campaigns yields additional evidence for my argument that male candidates often try to mobilize women in inter-gender contests. The comparison is suggestive because it was the exact same candidate and party. Serra, ran mainly against other men in 2002, but in 2010 he competed mainly against two women: Rousseff and Silva. Compared to his previous presidential run, Serra promised much more PWC in 2010. He moreover employed several female surrogates that same year in order to counter-balance against his female competitors. Because my archival analysis does not extend back to 2002, I cannot say that this use of female surrogates in 2010 was more extensive than in 2002.
This chapter therefore provided additional evidence for the core constituency hypothesis by showing the diverse ways that male presidential candidates in Brazil attempted or did not attempt to target women by promising PWC, evoking women’s identities and deploying female surrogates. At certain moments that my argument expected, male candidates sought to mobilize women on the basis of gender identity. Only one male candidate—Lula—seemed to maintain ties to elite feminists. The next chapter will finish probing the core and personal constituency hypotheses by examining the extent and ways in which Rousseff and Silva tried to mobilize women on the basis of gender identity in 2010.
i See Chapter VI for a deeper exploration of “first female” framing by female candidates.
ii This definition diverges somewhat from how I identified viable candidates in Chile. I considered Alvear a viable candidate in Chapter IV’s analysis because, although she dropped out early, she was considered a frontrunner for much of 2004.
iii I analyze seven platforms: Lula 2002, Serra 2002, Lula 2006, Alckmin 2006, Rousseff 2010, Serra 2010 and Silva 2010.
iv Unlike in Chile, Brazil’s gender gaps cannot be calculated from the official electoral results.
v The secondary literature has analyzed much of these data in order to understand candidates’ constituencies (for example, Hunter and Power 2007; Zucco 2008; Peixoto and Rennó 2011), but has not fully analyzed these polls from a gender perspective (Alves et al 2012 is the main exception).
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vi I also included some evidence from Valor Econômico, another reputable national newspaper focusing on
economics and politics.
vii We might also ask: or do Brazilian women, like their counterparts in Chile, tend to vote more conservatively? However, as Samuels and Zucco (2014) point out the main cleavage in Brazil is not left-right but rather pro- and anti-the coalition in power. The PSDB should not be considered a conservative party since it mixes progressive and conservative tendencies.
viii This does not yield evidence consistent with the personal constituency hypothesis, which predicts that male candidates are less likely to network with elite feminists than female candidates. The observation, however, is consistent with my broader argument that elite feminists can influence platforms and subsequently the deployment of presidential power to effect PWC. The PT candidate therefore tried to mobilize women on the basis of gender identity by promising significant PWC—particularly in 2002. Chapter VII will further detail elite feminists’ role in shaping Lula’s PWC decision-making.
ix Some scholars believe that during his second presidency lulismo separated from petismo (Samuels and Zucco 2014; Singer 2012).
x First, in 2005, accusations emerged that the PT administration was offering monthly payments (mensalão) to deputies from several parties in exchange for their legislative support. Although never directly linked to President Lula, the revelations resulted in the resignation of several top advisors, including his Chief of Staff José Dirceu. (This later paved the way for Rousseff’s rise.) Mensalão dominated the news for much of 2005 and 2006
presidential elections, and the scandal seemed to alienate Lula’s core constituency of educated urban dwellers who tend to pay the most attention to politics and demonstrate the highest levels of political knowledge (Hunter and Power 2007).
A second factor that contributed to the transformation of Lula’s core constituency was the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfers (CCT) program. Lula sought to fulfill his pro-poor campaign promises early in his first administration. After consolidating several CCT programs started by President Cardoso, he dramatically expanded government assistance, and renamed it the Bolsa Família (Family Grant). The program offers small subsidies to families in extreme poverty on the condition that, among other requirements, their children attend school. Mothers are the direct recipients of the subsidies because women traditionally bear the burden of childcare and because policymakers view them as more financially responsible.
The Bolsa Família’s success seemed to motivate recipients to electorally reward Lula in 2006 (Hunter and Power 2007; Singer 2009; Zucco 2008). Many of these beneficiaries had low levels of political knowledge and seemed either unaware of or unconcerned by the administration’s corruption scandals (Hunter and Power 2007). xi Lula’s public persona could help explain this gap. In 1998, the PT conducted qualitative research to understand Lula’s difficulty in attracting women. Some women interviewed in the study implied that they did not support Lula because he “seems a lot like my husband” (José Alves 2015). Folha de São Paulo pointed out that Lula’s image was associated with the common, everyday men that women “have at their side” (Delgado 2006). This image contrasts sharply with 1989’s “hearthrob” presidential candidate Fernando Collor de Mello, who defeated Lula in part thanks to his success among female voters. “PT leaders considered the 1989 Lula had a more aggressive image, strong voice impostor,” Folha wrote. “In 2002, remember, Lula was sweating a lot in the campaign and successively changed shirts” (Delgado 2006). According to some in the PT—and perhaps Lula himself—women did not support the PT’s presidential candidate because he did not display qualities that attracted women. A different explanation for Lula’s failure among women—and success among men—relates to the PT’s masculinism. USP political scientist Teresa Sacchet observed that a masculine culture has predominated the social movements and unionism that gave birth to the PT. “At that time (about 30 years ago), even more than today, political spaces were especially occupied by men,” Sacchet said in 2010. “So it doesn’t surprise me that Lula has always had greater appeal among the masculine public” (Folha De S. Paulo 2010f) Whether due to gendered aspects of Lula’s public image or the masculine culture within his party, Lula’s core constituency has consistently been among male rather than female voters.
Lula’s common man image and the PT’s masculine culture may better explain Lula’s gender gap in 2002 rather than in 2006. What is particularly striking about the gap in 2006 is that Bolsa Família recipients seemed to constitute Lula’s new core constituency and women comprised about 90% of the program’s recipients. Demographer José Alves (2012; personal interview March 11, 2015) argues that Lula’s inability to attract the votes of as many female as male beneficiaries could be because the program’s conditionalities overburden female recipients. Bolsa Família fathers do not have to do anything, but at the same time, these men are at least partially relieved of financial duties to their families. As a result, beneficiaries who are fathers may support Lula more than the mothers.
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xii In the context of the unfolding mensalão scandal, Alckmin continued to attack Lula on the radio and present himself as an honest administrator.
xiii In the last Datafolha poll she enjoyed 12% of vote intentions.
xiv In an August 2006 interview with O Globo, Helena again linked her female identity to honesty and authenticity. “I have always maintained what I believe and I do not lie I will defend everything I believe it is possible to do,” she said. “You are voting for a woman who says what she really thinks. I'm 44 years old and, as Oscar Wilde said, any woman who says age is able to say anything.” Helena furthermore described herself as a typical woman in order to directly connect with female voters. “I'm like most women…Tenderness and fury,” she said (Pizarro 2006). xv He highlighted his commitment to SPM in September by claiming that only an “extraterrestrial factor” would prevent him from fulfilling his promises. Moreover, those who wanted to eliminate the Secretaries of Racial Equality, Human Rights and Women were “insensitive” (Scolese and Dias Leite 2006).
xvi According to Folha, the 2006 version discussed a range of PWC achievements—including the Maria da Penha law—and generic proposals concerning employment and food safety for women. Yet, the PWC issue that caught the most attention and generated the most controversy concerned abortion. The document read “The State and Brazilian legislation must guarantee the right of women to decide about their lives and their bodies. For that, it is essential to promote conditions to exercise the autonomy with guarantees for sexual and reproductive rights.” Folha pointed out
that women were historically a difficult (or “refractory”) sector of society for Lula to capture. He therefore looked to mobilize them by promising a series of measures to extend abortion access (Zanini 2006).
Folha reported that the document “Commitment to Women,” stating that women’s rights should not be
decided by “belief or religion,” was a subtle critique of the Catholic Church and Evangelical Groups (Zanini 2006). Lula during his first term created a commission that sent a bill to Congress concerning broadening abortion rights, which at the time were restricted to cases of rape or health issues for the mother. The bill was unsuccessful because of religious opposition. Vera Soares, one of the document’s coordinators, said that Lula’s commitment to
broadening abortion rights was “renewed.” “This was the administration that did the most for women. But maybe there have been faults in communicating those acts,” she commented.
xvii An exploration of these other factors is beyond the scope of this dissertation.
xviii In a direct rebuttal to Serra’s attacks, the Health Ministry issued a press release that highlighted the ministry’s progress on family planning spending and the stagnation of teen pregnancies from 2003-2009 (O Globo 2010j). xix Taken by itself, the accusation of Rousseff depending on men for her political career appears sexist, in that it taps into stereotypes of women’s passivity. Following this, another reason why Serra may have used a woman to launch such a sexist critique could be that a female representative attacking a female candidate is better buffered from criticisms than if a male launched the same sexist criticism. This logic rests on the premise that the public has a harder time believing women rather than men are sexist.
xx Part of Lula’s and Serra’s high number of PWC promises is explained by the fact that Brazilian campaigns tend to be more policy-oriented than Chilean campaigns (Boas 2016). However, this “constant cause” cannot fully account for the within-country variation.