by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin:
Since the fall of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1984, social movements and the Catholic Church have shaped daily life in Ibiraiaras, a small town in southern Brazil. Many local women work on family farms and shoulder all of the household tasks, only leaving the house to go to church or attend meetings of the Brazilian women’s movement.
In a rural Catholic town with strong patriarchal traditions, joining the women’s movement means taking bumpy rides to meetings on buses that only run on certain days of the week; it means leaving lunch on the table for husbands who sometimes forbid their wives to attend meetings; it means a chance to break away from rigid gender roles and discuss legal rights for women – and who should do the dishes in rural households.
Ivone Bonés, who helped form the women’s movement as a teenager, sees a clear line between activism and religion. Bonés believes in God, but not in “a Catholic or male God.” Although she goes to church and considers herself Catholic, after spending her life fighting for women’s rights, Bonés struggles to identify with the patriarchy in the Church. She believes that women who work in their homes and on the family farm should have recognition for the work they do and rights to maternity leave and pensions. For years, she has stopped at each house in Ibiraiaras not to convince women to change their religious beliefs, but to encourage them to re-think the community’s gendered hierarchies.
Catholicism often gets in the way when she goes door-to-door to persuade women to join the movement. Many residents of this devout town find Bonés’ progressive religious beliefs difficult to swallow. “Because people know I think this way,” Bonés explained, “because I won’t say what I don’t believe . . . right at that moment people distance themselves from me, and that destroys a bit of the work I do.”
For Bonés, Catholic doctrine mirrors gender inequality in Ibiraiaras. But she understands that faith is important to the women around her. “God functions as a way to explain yourself to yourself and know what you’re feeling,” she said. In fact, it was through religious youth groups that Bonés and her counterparts began to envision a different, fairer world, joining landless workers and anti-dam movements before ultimately forming their own women’s movement. To liberation theology priests in the 1980s, religion and the fight for social justice went hand-in-hand. Using their power as representatives of the church, priests visited rural houses to convince young women’s parents to let them take part in the vibrant activism taking place across the country.
When Bonés returned to the same towns to persuade women to join her women’s movement, however, religion stood in her way. Bonés holds firm to her faith and her commitment to women’s rights—but some of her neighbors believe she must choose between the two.