The Itamaraty Palace, headquarters of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brasilia, will be illuminated this Wednesday to celebrate Gay Pride Day. SERGIO LIMA (AFP)
Brazil, which introduced tuition fees for poor and black students a decade ago, revolutionizing hundreds of thousands of families, wants to go one step further. The Minister of Labor and Employment has just announced his intention to introduce specific quotas for transgender (2% of the posts) and indigenous people (another 2%) in a given opposition and to expand the posts for black and mixed race 45% are Brazilian and 6% people with disabilities. The initiative relates to public opposition to the incorporation of 900 new labor inspectors into the public administration. The Ministry of Labor and its boss Luiz Marinho are now looking for a legal formula to translate this political will into action.
Minister Marinho’s announcement came hours after International LGBTI Rights Day and just before the United States Supreme Court decided to end positive discrimination on the basis of race in universities. Like President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the minister belongs to the Labor Party. It is not known whether the President and his government support the Minister’s interest in increasing quotas for opposition parties entering government. The ministry has confirmed the initiative to this newspaper, but the executive has not responded to questions about the proposal.
Perhaps this announcement by the Secretary of Labor and the US ruling will reinvigorate the quota debate in general. Brazil introduced quotas in 2012 to increase opportunities for disadvantaged students. It is a multi-layered system that positively discriminates against students from the public network, from poor families, mestizos or blacks. For this order. Anyone who fulfills several categories has more chances of being admitted to one of the places reserved for quotas. The measure struck a chord with white families a decade ago. But over the years, the odds have normalized and the debate has died down. But student by student, it was a big step forward in narrowing the inequality gap.
In a country where mestizos and blacks make up 56% of the population, they are now also the majority among students at public universities. And on a small scale, hundreds of thousands of households have experienced a revolution: the first family departure that paves the way to prosperity.
Expect the quotas for transgender women to be the controversy between a government that has made diversity one of its flags and a reactionary right led by Jair Bolsonaro, which, like in other parts of the world, has opted for LGTBI , will exacerbate advances in general and trans rights in particular are his favorite arena to attack progressives. Several of the most important official buildings in Brazil, such as the Congress or the Itamaraty Palace, seat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, celebrated LGTBI Pride Day with multicolored lighting.
The issue of quotas in opposition parties is particularly relevant now that this government, which took office six months ago, has announced a series of public competitions to select civil servants in various fields, including labor or environmental inspectors, contracts, to contribute to the fight against contemporary slavery or deforestation in the Amazon.
The most populous country in Latin America has been the scene of important advances in transgender rights and social issues for years. Its visibility is great. In recent elections, four transgender women were elected MPs, two in Congress, one in the State Parliament of Rio de Janeiro and another in Sergipe. And some companies are beginning to show interest in hiring them as part of their diversity plans. But Brazilian transgender people still have major problems finding a job, even for something as basic and natural as reaching old age. Their life expectancy is spectacularly lower than that of their compatriots. And this country continues to be the deadliest for this minority. The latest tally by Trans Murder Monitoring, an international network of NGOs, counts 96 trans people murdered in one year, between October 2021 and 2022.