Brazil: 100,000 Daisies in Defense of Working Women's Rights

Women from all over Brazil met at the Ministries Square in Brasilia on Wednesday to hold the "Daisies March," an even to defend agrarian reform and women's rights and reject gender violence and President Jair Bolsonaro.

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"Brazilian women have a broad agenda of demands which includes from agrarian reform to requests related to technology, production, social rights, education and financing," congresswoman Jandira Feghali, a politician member of the Communist Party (PCdoB-RJ), said.

"Congress will have to analyze this agenda and look at the ongoing public projects. It cannot cut funding and has to provide resources to these areas."

On the 2019 edition, the Daisies March brought together some 100,000 people, according to the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Contag), which organized the first march of this type in 2000.

Unlike previous occasions, however, women did not present a statement of requests to the Brazilian president because they do not expect Jair Bolsonaro to solve anything.

“This year's march is different from other ones where people gave their requests to the government. In this march, people did not submit petitions to an administration which is withdrawing the rights of working classes, especially those of working women,” Maze Morais, the Daisies March coordinator said.

Among the rights that Brazilians have lost, for example, is "the withdrawal of restrictions that prevented employers from assigning tasks on Sundays and holidays," the Workers' Party militant Benedita da Silva recalled.

This Afro-Brazilian congresswoman also explained that the bill currently endorsed by right-wing politicians instead allows employers to avoid compensating workers for jobs done on those days.

"We fight against misgovernment and for shared goals such as freedom from all forms of domination, oppression and violence," Adila da Mata, a member of the Movement of Community Organizations (MOC), emphasized.

"Context is not favorable in 2019... all the conquests women had already achieved are being lost. Our main challenge is therefore to defend our rights," she added.

Like other demonstrations that Brazilian popular organizations have been carrying out over the last year, the people participating in the Daisies March also advocated for the defense of the Amazon Basin and for the freedom of former President Luis Inacio Lula da SIlva, who remains as a political prisoner since April 2018.