BRAZIL: Women Live Longer and Study More than Men

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 2 1999 (IPS) - Brazilian women can celebrate the new year in the knowledge they have a statistically more promising future than their male compatriots, as they are better educated and live longer.

Women make up 55 percent of the population aged more than 60 years old, head a quarter of all families and are advancing in education far faster than males, according to the Annual Survey of Homes recently published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Some 11 percent of boys aged between 10 and 14 years old are illiterate, while for girls this age the figure is only 6.4 percent, and girls attend school more regularly, partly because most of the 2.6 million working children (aged under 14) are boys.

In 1997, 18.1 percent of women had already completed secondary school, compared with 15.9 percent of men. Five years early, the indices were 14.7 percent and 13.4 percent respectively, showing females upping 3.4 percent to the males’ 2.5.

Female life expectancy is seven years higher than that of men, meaning women make up an increasing majority of Brazil’s old people.

And this fact led President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to draw attention to a contradiction in the nation’s pensions system – a factor which also affects other nations, saying; “Women live longer, but retire (five years) earlier.”

This declaration was made to stress the need for reforms in order to reduce the public deficit, but provoked heated reactions from feminists and female members of parliament.

The president ignored the “double workload” women are submitted to, dealing with housework and the bulk of child-rearing on top of their paid employment, stated government official, Rosiska de Oliveira, chair of the National Council on Women’s Rights.

The president’s wife, anthropologist Ruth Cardoso, however, spoke in his defence. She said the statement made was an “irrefutable” fact, adding that women must combat discrimination instead of defending this sort of favouritism.

One sort of discrimination is the lower pay they receive compared with less well qualified male co-workers. In 1997, the year with the latest available statistics, salaried women earned 65.7 percent of male pay rate.

But this data shows an improvement, as in 1992 women earned only 61.6 percent of male rates, and the future bodes well for them, as the employment market shows a tendency to prefer better educated employees.

Work in the formal sector is increasingly difficult to find for those who have not completed secondary education.

Lower salaries are particularly discriminatory for female heads of household, and 24.9 percent of all Brazilian families are now in this situation. This percentage has risen from 21.9 percent in 1992 and is growing as the marriage break-up rate climbs.

Women’s longer lifespans are due to biological and lifestyle factors also seen in the rest of the world, but compounded here by violence. Violent deaths increase the imbalance as they generally affect young males.

Brazil is one of the countries with the highest proportional death rate amongst 15 to 24 year-olds, at 48.6 per 100,000, according to the World Health Organisation, outdone only by Colombia, with 147.3 and Venezuela, with 66.1.

But a study by the United Nations Education Science and Culture entity (UNESCO) showed that for young people the cities of Brazil are more dangerous than those of Colombia.

In Vitoria, capital of Espiritu Santo state, murders, traffic accidents and suicides kill 220.7 of every 100,000 young people. In Recife, in the northeast, the rate is 207.7 per 100,000, and Rio de Janeiro, 190.2.

This study was based on research into 24,409 cases of young people aged between 15 and 24 years-old who died from such causes in Brazil in 1996. 62.4 percent were murdered, a figure which has doubled since 1979.

Narcotrafficking, other types of crime, executions at the hands of the police and informal “death squads” are all behind this loss of life. Women make up only a tiny minority in these macabre statistics. They suffer the consequences, but keep on living.