Decentering a Mulher popular? Gender-Class and Race in Early and Contemporary Latin American Popular Feminisms

• Author: Nathalie Lebon
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015325
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211015325

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 239, Vol. 48 No. 4, July 2021, 49–68

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015325

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

49

Decentering a Mulher popular?

Gender-Class and Race in Early and Contemporary

Latin American Popular Feminisms

by

Nathalie Lebon

Although 1980s popular feminisms were crucially concerned with the (gendered) class

interests of women from the popular sectors, the concerns of racialized women were gener-

ally obscured. In the context of the new millennium, contemporary forms of self-identified

popular feminisms such as the World March of Women are broader, cross-class, and mul-

tiscale coalitions that create new challenges for representation in decision making beyond

the local. These contemporary coalitions also aim for greater systemic change, explicitly

embracing anticapitalism and feminism, but have generally maintained the primary gen-

der-class focus of earlier popular feminisms, hindering their attention to antiracism and

sexual identities.

Embora os feminismos populares da década de 1980 estivessem extremamente preocu-

pados com os interesses de classe (de gênero) das mulheres dos setores populares, as preo-

cupações das mulheres racializadas eram geralmente ofuscadas. No contexto do novo

milênio, as formas contemporâneas de feminismos populares auto identificados, como a

Marcha Mundial das Mulheres, são coalizões mais amplas, entre classes e multiescala, que

criam novos desafios para a representação no processo de tomada de decisões além do local.

Essas coalizões contemporâneas têm também como objetivo uma maior mudança sistêmica,

abraçando explicitamente o anticapitalismo e feminismo, mas de uma forma geral, manti-

veram o foco primário na articulação gênero-classe dos feminismos populares anteriores,

o que impediu a devida atenção no que se refere ao antirracismo e identidades sexuais.

Keywords: Popular feminism, Gender-class, Intersectionality, Antiracism, World

March of Women

The organizational strength of popular feminisms in Brazil in the new mil-

lennium is illustrated by the following vignette:

March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day: Three thousand women, hailing

from all corners of Brazil, in a lively and colorful purple cortege, initiate the first

of their 10 day-treks to São Paulo. They march for about 12 kilometers each day,

sharing, chanting, singing, and drumming their call for action against poverty

and violence against women. A 16-minute video records the journey and inter-

views women rural workers, union leaders and rank-and-file members, women

Nathalie Lebon is an associate professor in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at

Gettysburg College. She is coeditor (with Elizabeth Maier) of Women’s Activism in Latin America

and the Caribbean: Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship (2010) and De lo privado a lo

público: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América Latina (2006).

1015325LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211015325LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESLebon / GENDER-CLASS AND RACE IN LATIN AMERICAN POPULAR FEMINISMS

research-article2021

50 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

community activists, students, social workers, teachers, and many others. This

Brazilian contribution to the World March of Women’s third International

Action joins those of 60 other countries in protest around the world.

This new moment in the development of women’s activism is particularly

important for social justice in that it involves large sectors of the population—

the majority working-class and working poor sectors—and raises awareness of

their rights and agency (DiMarco, 2011). Yet not all participants in such move-

ments originate in the popular classes, and in addition the popular sectors in

Latin America are hardly homogeneous, be it in terms of race or sexual and

gender identity, among other vectors of identity and inequality. In particular,

scholars have now solidly documented the injuries of racism in the lives of

women of African and indigenous descent throughout Latin America and in

Brazil, where over half of the population is of African descent and people of

African and indigenous descent are overrepresented among those experienc-

ing hard living or poverty (Caldwell, 2017; Lebon, 2007). Yet, racism’s role in

the perpetuation of poverty and violence in the lives of materially marginalized

women has often been obscured in Latin American popular feminist discourse

and analysis as explored in these pages. Investigating popular feminist move-

ments’ practices and discourse around race therefore seems key, especially

today, as black and indigenous women’s movements are growing in the region

and often spearhead the fight amidst tremendous adversity. Ultimately, my

hope is to facilitate alliances across racial/social justice movements by provid-

ing stronger intersectional analytics pointing to common interests.

In this paper, I explore the reasons behind the partial and only recent atten-

tion to antiblack racism in the agenda of self-identified popular feminisms. To

do so, I analyze popular feminisms’ practices and discourses around gender-

class and race over time and seek to understand how the lineage at work since

the 1980s popular feminisms may have influenced contemporary forms of self-

identified popular feminisms in these matters. This analysis starts with how

gender and class have been framed by popular feminist movements such as the

World March of Women in their own terms. It reveals a collective identity with

a strong identitarian orientation around the unitary concept of “woman” and

a gender-class dual-systems framework with a focus on collective rights and

livelihood issues that connect women’s concerns with those that affect “every-

one” in the popular sectors.

In the context of the new millennium, these contemporary popular femi-

nisms are now broader, cross-class, and multiscale coalitions that create new

challenges for the representation of popular-sector women (in terms of class,

race, etc.) and their perspectives in decision-making instances beyond the

local. These contemporary coalitions aim for greater systemic, counterhege-

monic change than earlier instantiations, explicitly embracing anticapitalism

and feminism. However, I hope to show that the continued primary focus on

class and gender of earlier popular feminism and a concomitant race-blind

legacy may help explain why contemporary forms of self-identified popular

feminisms have only recently engaged with antiracism. I trace this race-blind

legacy to the hegemonic Latin American racial formation and to the secondary

status afforded race in Marxist and feminist ideologies and scholarship and in