Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 44

Some of the determining factors for this are parental alcoholism, family disintegration, physical
aggression, and domestic sexual abuse, all of
which contribute to psychological illnesses of
girls and, perhaps, of homosexuals. Adolescent
girls take on a psychosocial profile of oppression,
domination, and submission; they also display
primary and secondary cognitive difficulties.
Studies reveal that tourists who go to Brazil are
lower middle-class workers for whom it is a big
deal to be able to vacation there, a place where
they are interested in black and mulatto girls. This
causes the girls to begin to believe that these men
are their ticket away from their poverty. Most of
the girls end up going to Germany, but instead of
ending up as home-owning housewives, they become domestic servants who continue to serve as
sexual objects. This is the topic of the documentary film “Zito” (2007). Complicating this matter
is impunity and an absence of social policies or
the kind of sexual attitudes one sees in modern
societies. These are the principal factors responsible for the “Brazilian problem” (PSI, 1997);10
this situation has remained unchanged for 17
years.
Racism was made or kept invisible in any and all
attempts to solve the problems of women in Brazil and verify how the World Cup affected them.
It is from this perspective that UNEafro (2011)
cites its concern over statistics regarding poverty
among black Brazilian women. According to Ana
Caroliona Querino:
“Policies for fighting poverty must evaluate the
consequences of gender and racial discrimination
in the lives of women; and they should not only
study gender and race, either.
In Brazil, statistics show that black women make
up the majority of those who suffer from extreme
poverty. According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), black and
brown women are 70% of the 8 million women
who are in that situation.”11

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The gover