Vol.2, N.2, Maio - Ago. 2014 • www.feminismos.neim.ufba.br 53 CONTEMPORARY FEMINISMS IN BRAZIL: ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND TENSIONS Cecilia M. B. Sardenberg Ana Alice Alcantara Costa INTRODUCTION Brazil has been known for the strength and diversity of its social movements and for women having always constituted an important part of them. More importantly, over the last three decades, women in Brazil have forged and carried their own specific struggles, feminists representing a rather small segment  but a very active one  of women’s movements at large in the country (SOARES ET AL., 1996; COSTA, 2005). Contemporary feminist activism in Brazil emerged in a moment of political upheaval, playing an important role in the process of re-democratization of the country and stretching the very concept of democracy in this process (ALVAREZ, 1990; PITANGUY, 2003). Moreover, within Latin America – and even beyond  Brazilian feminisms have drawn special attention for having articulated what has been regarded as “perhaps the largest, most radical, most diverse, and most politically influential of Latin America's feminist movements” (STERNBACH ET AL., 1992:414). This recognition is certainly not unfounded. Over the last three decades, feminisms in Brazil have brought important contributions, not only in terms of a change of values regarding women’s place in society, but also towards building a more gender equitable society in formal terms (COSTA; SARDENBERG, 1994; SOARES ET AL., 1996). Indeed, feminisms in Brazil have been instrumental in the passage of new legislation towards gender equity and in the formulation of public policies for women, carving as well new spaces in state machineries and apparatuses to implement and monitor them (COSTA, 2005; SARDENBERG, 2005). This has been specially pronounced during the last fifteen years, going against beliefs that women’s movements would tend to fade in a post-authoritarian regime context (RAZAVI, 2000; CRASKE, 2000). However, despite these significant gains for women in Brazil registered in the period  and in spite of a pledge by those in power to implement “gender mainstreaming” in all spheres and levels  major changes in that direction have yet to be enacted in formal power structures, such as those of the legislative, judiciary and executive branches (ALCÂNTARA COSTA, 2008; ARAÚJO, 2003; NOGUEIRA, 2005). They have remained notoriously resistant to the inclusion of women, such that, so too in Brazil, “[…] the new wave of democratization has not, by any means, had a feminizing effect on the parliaments, cabinets and public administrations of the new democracies” (RAZAVI, 2000, p. 2). This has resulted in a major paradox for Brazilian feminists: on the one hand, the presence of a wide and well articulated women’s movement, and on the other, a notorious absence of women in decision making positions (Alcântara COSTA, 2008). One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that we still lack a “critical mass” of women to push forth the implementation of new state institutions and policies, such as those for confronting violence against women (SARDENBERG, 2007a). There is also little support in the legislative and judiciary to guarantee greater advancements insofar as women’s sexual and reproductive rights are concerned. As such, legal and safe abortions in Brazil have remained strictly limited, resulting in high rates of maternal mortality, particularly among Black young women living in poor neighborhoods throughout the major cities (SARDENBERG, 2007b; SOARES, SARDENBERG, 2008). In this paper, our purpose is to address these issues as we highlight the major achievements  as well as the shortcomings and challenges  of feminist struggles in contemporary Brazil. In so doing, we hope to show that meeting these challenges will not be an exercise free of tensions; they have been an integral part of the outstanding capacity of feminism in Brazil to “diversify,” thus the need to use always the plural and speak of Brazilian “feminisms.” Note that plurality in this case does not pertain only to the incorporation of different segments of women’s movements into the ranks of feminism; carving new