Global News by Region: Brazil
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Gabriella Gomes, 24, is in nursing school. But she says she didn’t always enjoy being a student when she was younger because she was bullied.
For years, she says her childhood peers teased her for being intelligent. She says they also made fun of her body type because she was not as thin as the other girls. Students were verbally aggressive, calling her names such as “whale.” Sometimes, the words escalated to actions.
CARUARU, BRAZIL – Maria Fernanda da Silva, 39, is a traditional midwife from Caruaru, a city in the interior of Brazil’s Northeast region. She has been working as a midwife since she was 12. She started helping her mother, who is also a midwife, at age 9.
“My mom called me her ‘little assistant,’” da Silva says.
She says she became more than an assistant at age 12 when a woman in her community needed help and her mother was out of town.
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.
RECIFE, BRAZIL – Luisa, 20, was 18 when she had an abortion in a clandestine clinic. She says she didn’t want to but felt as if she didn’t have any other choice.
Luisa, who declined to give her full name for privacy reasons, is the eldest of three daughters in a lower-middle-class family in Recife, a port city in northeastern Brazil. Her father worked in a factory and earned a decent wage, which was enough to provide the whole family with everything they needed.
RECIFE, BRAZIL – Monica, 22, who requested her name be changed for safety reasons, lives in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, a state in northeastern Brazil. She got married at age 21, but says she recently divorced because her husband was verbally abusive and controlling after just a few months of marriage.
“Our marriage lasted six months, but it feels like it has been 10 times longer,” she says.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Jacauna Medeiros is a teacher in São Lourenço da Mata, a city in northeastern Brazil. But lately, his work has extended beyond the private school where he teaches. In response to low test scores and a lack of government funding, he has single-handedly taken on the task of educating thousands of adults and children here outside of school.