“The people elected speak”: Councilors and Communists, the political performance of PCB women (1946-1948)

Abstract

In 1947, in municipal elections, three communist women were elected councillors of the Federal District, Rio de Janeiro. They were Arcelina Mochel, Lia Corrêa Dutra and Odila Schmidt. The purpose of this article is to analyze their profile and political performance during the short period of time in which the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) was legal (1946-1948). From the perspectives of women's history, gender relations and social history, the aim is to understand how these activists built an agenda of specific demands for women within the political party struggle. Thus highlighting the importance of the discussion about motherhood, domestic work, family care, equal pay, labor laws, among other topics. By analyzing the daily political life of the councillors in the Town Council, the article shows how they created strategies to address these issues inside and outside the Party and parliament, boosting the organization of women in the peripheral regions of the former federal capital. Based on the analysis of the Momento Feminino periodical and the documentation of the political police of Rio de Janeiro, we argue that the relatively democratic environment made possible by the fall of the Estado Novo dictatorship (1937-1945), the end of the Second World War and the 1946 Constituent Assembly, opened paths for the participation of women in politics, especially the female leaders of the PCB. In addition, we show how the communists, although influenced by Stalinist social policy, formulated women's demands in line with the ongoing labor policy in the 1940s.