Mulher no espaço público: caso da participação feminina nos tribunais da cidade de Maputo

Abstract

This work analyzed the criteria that condition the access of women to public life in the City of Maputo, taking here one of its dimensions: the Judiciary, specifically in the Court. We were especially interested in understanding how female participation is admitted in this sphere, and how their performance is evaluated in terms of those that are considered the fundamental elements of a judgment; rationality and impartiality. Therefore, we interviewed essentially the personnel involved in this area, such as judges (men and women), lawyers, support staff (among them clerks), who made it possible to understand the logic operated by the interveners with particular emphasis on the judges. The research referred to some aspects of the debate that contemporary feminist theory establishes, on the one hand, with feminism centered on the fight for equal rights and, on the other hand, with authors who, in the search for emancipatory structures, turned to the defense of unrealized political ideals from the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, the ideals of freedom and equality were, for centuries, the flag of the feminist movements, which identified the liberation of women, with the expansion of their civil and political rights. Its assumption was that the exclusion of women from public life contradicted the liberal promise of universal emancipation and equality, thus seeking to claim the entry of women, under conditions of equality, in public life dominated by men. In fact, preliminary results of this research point to the fact that both men and women, that is, both judges and judges present themselves as possessing natural characteristics that, necessarily, determine their way of apprehending reality and specifically for cases. of the crimes they are going to judge.