BRASILIA, BRAZIL – In the typical dry and hot climate of Brasília, Brazil’s capital, voices of protest, amplified by megaphones, resounded throughout the city center last Wednesday as 70,000 people – mostly women – marched to demand more rights for women who work in forests and rural areas at the Marcha das Margaridas, or March of the Daisies.
The women, or “Margaridas,” which means “Daisies” in Portuguese, wore purple shirts and straw hats – the symbol of their movement. They marched and cheered for the speakers, who gave passionate speeches on platforms in front of the Brazilian Parliament.
"What impressed me the most was their resistance, their conviction and their will to make a difference."
“The Daisies’ March is a demonstration that pressures the government for women’s rights, wage equality, land distribution for family agriculture – that is, policies that favor women and rural workers in general,” says Maria Luiza dos Santos, a rural worker from Afonso Cunha, a city in the interior of Maranhão state.
Rejane Pitanga, a congresswoman from the Federal district, says the movement benefits all women.
“Although the march is organized by and for rural women workers, their demands are at the best interest of all women and society as a whole,” says Pitanga, a member of the Workers’ Party.
She says gender equality is the key to eliminating poverty.
“In Brazil, poverty has race and gender,” she says. “The only way to combat poverty, which is one of the main objectives of our current president, Dilma Rousseff, who uses the slogan, ‘A wealthy country is a country with no poverty,’ is to combat gender inequality.”
She says women in rural areas and forests face extra hardship.
“Poverty also varies from region to region,” she says. “We have to keep in mind that the reality in the forests and farms is much more affected by lack of resources and infrastructure.”
Thousands of Brazilians converged in the capital last week to call for improved rights for women who work in rural areas and forests at the fourth March of the Daisies. They also presented a list of demands to Rousseff, who, calling herself a Daisy, promised various initiatives. Although organizers and participants called the march a success, they cautioned that reforms must be more far-reaching and efforts more consistent.
The National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture, the largest rural workers’ union in Brazil, organized the march in 2000 as homage to Margarida Maria Alves, a union leader who overcame many gender-related barriers in her generation. She was the president of the Rural Workers’ Union of her city, Alagoa Grande, located in Paraíba state, for more than a decade. She also created the Center for Rural Workers’ Education and Culture, a center that offers courses and carries out awareness campaigns about rural workers’ rights.
She was shot in 1983 at age 50. Many allege that a wealthy landowner arranged her assassination because of her activism on behalf of rural workers, but the court found the accused men innocent. Still, she has since then become a symbol for the feminist struggle for land, work, equality and justice.
Under the theme “Sustainable Development With Justice, Autonomy, Equality and Freedom,” the fourth march, held every few years, was the largest yet.
Kelly Cristina Gonçalves, a member of the Articulation of Brazilian Women, a nonpartisan feminist organization that encourages the political participation of women, says the attendees represented even more people back home.
