Gender, social security, and decision-making process: an analysis of the legislative debate on Constitutional Amendment No. 103/2019
Social security reform in Brazil is already an old acquaintance and has been debated for almost 30 years: on one hand, demographic issues have changed the profile of elderly Brazilians, but on the other hand, social rights have been suffering neoliberal attacks since the enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988 and have returned, govenment after government, to the federal legislative agenda, constituting what can be considered a still unfinished cycle of reforms. The last proposal made by the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), PEC nº 06/2019, draws attention due the deepening of neoliberal ideals and economic bias, especially regarding the right to female aging: it lists several reasons why retirement eligibility requirements should be made equal between men and women. This research aims to investigate the retirement of Brazilian women, starting from the development of the social security system with focus on the gender issue until the enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988 to eventually verify how women's right has been affected with each reform since the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) to Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The analysis concentrates efforts on the decision-making process of PEC nº 06/2019, since it’s the last approved reform and was the only one to change the minimum age for retirement with the aim of equating the sexes. For that matter, it initially seeks to present and confront the arguments in favor of the reform from the intersectional theoretical framework on the interpretation of the principle of equality and the sexual division of labor, to then identify how the political-institutional actors were organized during the debate of the proposal in the National Congress, as well as to examine how it was processed and the role of women parliamentarians in its approval.