Brazil

The lives of women in Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world, have been marked by intersections of social class, ethnicity, geography, and gender. Added interplay between conservative and liberal forces enacting economic, political, social, and cultural changes has created a diversity of Brazilian women's conditions and identities that demonstrates the rising power of the female against sexism and domination.

The Portuguese first arrived in Brazil in the 1500s, with the intent of exploiting the country's natural [Page 185]resources. By mid-16th century, colonizers in Brazil had established the practice of trading in African slaves to supply labor to increasingly profitable industries such as sugar cane. Through three and a half centuries of slavery, those African women who survived worked in the fields; as marketers ...