Opinion – Cida Bento: Reforms in Spain can serve as an inspiration to tackle inequalities in Brazil

At the beginning of 2022, still under the heavy effects of the pandemic, several important institutions have been debating ways to face the worsening of inequalities in the world of work, which is expressed, among other indicators, in unemployment or underemployment rates and in the expansion of informality to social segments most vulnerable to violations of rights, such as the female, young and black population of the country.

One-off but growing initiatives by public, private and civil society organizations have been taking place in equity and diversity programs, which, however, do not address such a challenge.

In fact, as the economist and professor at Unicamp Marilane Teixeira and the researcher Rogério Barbosa, from USP, drew attention, already in 2020, the main impacts of the pandemic affect the work of women and blacks.

According to them, the most intense impact occurs for women because they are the majority in domestic work (Brazil suffered the biggest loss of domestic workers in nine years) and because they are a minority in most essential services. We cannot forget that black women represent the largest contingent of domestic workers in the country.

In the case of the black population, the most intense impact is due to their greater participation in informality, which is home to the first work positions to be affected in the crisis. In both cases, the effects of the health crisis are compounded by the chronic effects of a historical situation of discrimination at work.

In this sense, the tripartite agreement signed last year in Spain between the government, trade unions and business entities is encouraging, as equity for young people and women was placed at the center of this agreement, and the initiative can serve as an inspiration for confronting racial inequalities and of gender in Brazil.

As sociologist Clemente Ganz points out in an article recently published on the website Poder 360, in recent decades Spain has adopted several labor reforms that have dramatically impacted inequalities, hitting young people and women harder.

In the Brazilian case, I would add that the dialogue should be quadripartite to include the social movements that are a fundamental driving force in the field of the struggle for equity.

The agenda of the Spanish consultation is extensive, dealing with remote work and telework, equal pay between women and men, measures to ensure labor rights in the field of digital platforms to increase the minimum wage and policies for job creation, among many other fundamental initiatives.

Clemente draws our attention to how relevant this agreement is, as it focuses on an ambitious socio-environmental, economic, political and cultural development project that aims to recover the meaning of decent work and the sharing of its results by society. It revitalizes and gives meaning to democracy, since the dialogue between the different parties involved is the basis for the commitments that are being assumed.

These debates between different social segments are fundamental to bring about another way of negotiating and structuring the necessary and urgent reforms that Brazilian society needs to carry out.

It is in recognizing the plurality of groups that make up society with their needs, interests and diverse positions that solid and secure foundations can be created so that the agreements we need to make, particularly in the world of work, are marked by justice and equity.

And who knows, in 2022, we may be able to advance in the construction of public and private policies that incorporate affirmative actions centrally in all work plans, to accelerate the true democratization of Brazilian society, with a view to universalizing the right to decent work, without more than half of the Brazilian population outside of new development models.

This column was co-authored with Flavio Carrança, journalist at Cojira (Commission of Journalists for Racial Equality)