Sueli Carneiro Summary

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Sueli Carneiro is the only author cited still alive. According to the 500 Women Collection, she is the oldest of seven brothers and she grew up in Lapa, São Paulo (one of the most populous states in Brazil). Her mother was a seamstress and her father worked in a railroad and was semi-illiterate. Carneiro, however, graduated in philosophy at the University of São Paulo (USP), where she also became a PhD in Education. In 1983, the State Council of the Feminine Condition (CECF/SP, in Portuguese) was created, which had 32 counselors and among them, no black women. Sueli Carneiro was part of the struggle for representativeness in that space and for the creation of the Black Women Commission. After this moment, the Carneiro’s struggle walked in the direction to the intersectionality of race and gender. Currently, she is a member of the Brazilian Women Articulation and one of the founders of Geledés – Black Women’s Institute. The work of Sueli Carneiro helps us to understand the strategies of the black movement of the 80s. To begin, the author says that one of Brazil’s problems is the inability of blackness to self-classify. In the slavery …show more content…

Thus, when women’s movements claim the ‘right to leave home and work’, they forget that there are women who have always done this, but not as an achievement, but to not to starve until the death. The result of this forgetfulness, in Brazil, was the advancement of the white woman in the labor market based on the exploitation of the black woman's domestic service (she went on to 'wash dirty panties' of the white/rich women, for they work 'in the office'). Therefore, Sueli Carneiro points out the feminism cannot be linked to a single form of oppression. It must fight against all forms, looking to gender, race, class, etc. (Carneiro, 2002; Carneiro, 2003a; Carneiro, 2003b; Carneiro,