Resquícios de trajetória : ativismo institucional e a Secretaria de Políticas para Mulheres

Abstract

Considering the variations that the Ministry of Women’s Policy has been through since 2016, this research continues a study about institutional activism and takes advantage of the possibility of taking a closer look at this phenomenon in a scenario of political transformation. Assuming that studies about State and civil society interactions can benefit from an interpretative look about institucional activism, specially in this new context, we asked federal workers from the ministry what is their interpretation about the institucional activism concept. Starting from analysis from 12 interviews, we seek to understand not only what kind of interpretations there are, but also what these interpretations say about the concept. In the mean time, we could also rethink how we, as State-civil society relationship scholars, have been using the concept in our studies. The notion of institucional activism varied widely amongst the interviews, mainly between those that had a history in the feminist social movement and party affiliation and those that didn’t. It was also important to notice that it was recognized that institucional activism was not a practice that ended by the end of the Worker’s Party mandate, but something that still manifests inside institutions – even if grounded in different (if not opposite) ideais and values. Furthermore, we conclude that commitment to the social movements agenda is fundamental to think representation in executive arenas, once collective goals from civil society earn space to be vocalized in different spaces of political decision.