CSGGE Lunch Series: Thais Zappelini

Thank you for your interest in the lunch series on "Gender Equity in an Inequitable Era".  On Thursday, February 25th we will hear from Thais Duarte Zappelini, Post Doc with the Brasillinois Initiative at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her talk, "Transnational Feminisms, Democracy, and Gender Justice in Brazil: Legacies and Challenges of the 1988 Constitution" will be in-person and also offered virtually through Zoom.  Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. 

During Brazil’s 1987 Constituent Assembly debates, congresswoman Rose de Freitas declared: “Women demand compliance with the Charter of Rights that the country signed with the United Nations. Either Brazil honors this commitment or withdraws and breaks ties with the United Nations.” Her statement reflected a broader feminist strategy that linked domestic constitutional reform to international human rights commitments. Freitas was one of only 26 women elected to the National Constituent Assembly and had recently returned from the Moscow Conference, which brought together more than 2,300 Latin American women to discuss shared legal and social struggles. Rather than aligning strictly with party agendas, Brazilian women parliamentarians formed the Lipstick Lobby, a cross-party coalition that prioritized gender equality. Their activism contributed to the inclusion of gender-sensitive provisions in the 1988 Constitution and unfolded within a broader context of global feminist mobilization shaped by the United Nations Decade for Women (1975 1985) and the rise of transnational feminist mobilization in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. 

This series is co-sponsored by the LAS Office of Inclusive Excellence.