São Paulo – Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) launched, early this week, the campaign #MaisMulheresDiplomatas (#MoreWomenDiplomats), with the aim of encouraging more women to enroll in the Entrance Test to a Diplomat Career (CACD, in the Portuguese acronym), to promote gender equality in diplomacy. Itamaraty has been posting videos with testimonies of diplomat women of diverse background, profile and training on its social media – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
“There will be fifteen videos in total and, in fact, I have recorded one of them,” says Adriana Sader Tescari, an adviser and head of the Levant division, responsible for the Arab countries, at Itamaraty. “The campaign came about after the finding that many women are discouraged to take the test due to prejudice; they say that this career doesn’t fit us, that it’s not an ideal life to start a family, which is not true,” states Tescari.
The adviser said that the videos depict women from diverse profiles exactly to show that there isn’t a sole profile to be diplomat. “The campaign shows women diplomats with many accents, formations, regions, with or without kids,” she says. The videos posted until this Thursday (28) bring the testimonies of First Secretary Marcela Pompeu, Third Secretary Laura Delamonica and Ambassador Gisela Padovan.
In the last decades, women diplomats have been gaining more space and visibility in the Brazilian Chancellery; in 2017, the entrance test had a record-breaking percentage of women; the class of 2017-2019 of Rio Branco Institute had 11 women or 36.7% of the total of 30 people; however, the number of women in diplomatic careers is far from reaching equality. Itamaraty currently has 360 women employees, which represents only 23% of all of Brazil’s diplomats.
The Management Committee of Gender and Race (CGGR, in the Portuguese acronym), is the body responsible for the #MaisMulheresDiplomatas campaign. It was created in 2014 as a permanent and advisory body of Itamaraty and has been coordinating programs and policies focused on the promotion of gender and race equality in the Brazilian Chancellery.
Follow the campaign #MaisMulheresDiplomatas on Itamaraty’s social media. On YouTube, click on #MaisMulheresDiplomatas, and check for daily updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
