Panel SA: Crater on subway line-6 ​​turns gender debate

The crater opened on the Tietê waterfront, in São Paulo, due to the collapse of a stretch of the work on line-6 ​​Orange of the Metro, turned into a discussion about female representation in the infrastructure sector.

Infra Women Brasil, a women’s group founded in 2020 to defend gender diversity in the sector, met to express solidarity with professionals who were personally offended by a video that circulated on social media in recent days blaming women engineers and assistants for the open crater. this Tuesday (1st) on the Tietê waterfront.

The video that circulated on the internet used clipped excerpts from another original video produced by Acciona itself —the company responsible for the work— with testimonies from professionals praising the female presence in the work of line-6. The images of the women are exposed with captions that point to names and positions, and the fake video brings messages that mock their speech as if they were responsible for the collapse. Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of President Jair Bolsonaro, was one of the people who shared the video on his social media.

There is still no definitive information about the cause of the accident. The chairman of Acciona is a man.

Isadora Chansky Cohen, president of Infra Women, says the video mocks the professionals and exposes them.

“We cannot remain silent in the face of this. We are an association that precisely gives visibility to women working in infrastructure. Infra Women was born from some women who were at the sector’s seminars. And we were always the only ones at the table between 20 and 30 men. seeks to talk about how to promote this representation. And today we are 700”, he says.

Cohen says that the women’s group defends that diversity in the sector contributes to improving the construction of public policies. “Diversity is plurality and it is the delivery of better services to a population that is diverse. If the population is diverse, so must decision makers. A video like this, which associates this tragedy with the fact that women are involved, is a disservice in the construction of the work. It’s slanderous, defamatory, it’s a setback”, says Cohen.

The Bahia Engineers Union also expressed its rejection of the video, as did the Engineering Institute, which said that it was “inadmissible for this type of message to be shared by anyone”.

“It is a disservice to society, evolution and a real DISRESPECT and DISCRIMINATION to the professionals involved, whether engineers or not”, says the institute, in a note.

After the repercussion of the video, Acciona also published a note of rejection. “The company considers the content to be misogynistic and extremely disrespectful to our female employees.”

with Andressa Motter and Ana Paula Branco