Being a ‘terribly Christian Minister’: populism, gender, and anti-feminism in Damares Alves’s ministerial performance

ABSTRACT

Aiming to contribute to the debates on the entanglements among the far-right and anti-feminism Latin America, this article seeks to shed light on the performance of Damares Alves as Brazil’s Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights. Regarding Alves’s conservatism along her political career, particularly during the 2018 presidential run, this study provided an analysis on the reasons behind her prominence to the ongoing bolsonarism, and on how she contributed to building the gender knowledge that anchors the populist narrative in Bolsonaro’s political project. Concerning anti-feminist project’s foundations, as well as Alves’s performance as a Christian-conservative woman, a set of her speeches in the first 19 months of her term was scrutinised, by adopting the FCDA as methodology and using the thematic analysis as a method. The pointing of Alves’s discursive strategies revealed her attacks on feminisms, and the aim of legitimising herself and Bolsonaro’s political project as pro-women.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-feminism
• gender
• neoconservatism
• populism
• Damares Alves
• Jair Bolsonaro

Acknowledgments

I thank Renan Viani for proofreading this article, also the editors and the reviewers for their constructive criticism, which enabled me to improve this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The ‘gender ideology’ rhetoric as conceived by the Holy See will be referred to in quotation marks to emphasise the understanding of it as a strategic part of a political project that seeks to delegitimize Gender and Feminist Studies, as well as the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements’ agendas.

2. Non-Partisan School Movement was founded by Miguel Nagib, as a joint initiative of people allegedly worried about the ‘ideological and political contamination’ happening in Brazilian schools in all grades. The movement gained more visibility in 2010, becoming the base of bills reasoned in the so-called ‘gender ideology’ (Leite 2019).

3. School Without Homophobia was designed and implemented in a partnership between international networks, NGOs and Brazilian LGBTT Associations based on research conducted in Brazilian schools. In the project’s scope, the plan was to distribute an educational material consisting of a booklet regarding sexuality, sexual diversity and homophobia, and audio-visual materials to different ages. It served conservative actors as a trigger for controversies (Leite 2019).

4. Although this campaign best fits into youth policies, it addresses the issue of sexuality and reproductive health, which is why it has been considered in this dataset.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based upon PhD research supported by Fundação para Ciência e Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/133503/2017].