“Merchandise”? Stigma about Brazilian women in Portugal continues to be worrying

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) warns that there still exists, in Portugal, a sexual stereotype about Brazilian immigrant women – who are often seen as prostitutes or “merchandise”.

In the 2024 World Migration Report, released this Tuesday, the IOM warned of the persistence of “sexual stereotype” about immigrant women Brazilians in Portugal.

The structure of the United Nations highlighted that, in Portugal, Brazilian women are commonly stigmatized as prostitutes.

Such a context, the report states, leads to increased risks of women suffering sexual harassment and gender violence.

One of the most well-known recent cases of discrimination occurred in 2020, at the University of Porto, when the professor at the Faculty of Economics (FEP), Pedro Cosme Vieirasaid, in a class in the Degree in Communication Science, that “Brazilian women are a commodity”.

This and other similar comments led to the teacher being fired, after the complaint signed by 129 students of Communication Science, from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (FLUP), who exposed attitudes that incited hatred and constituted harassment and discrimination crimes.

Just under a month ago, ZAP reported that there are more and more cases of hate crimes in Portugal, with the Brazilian community to be the most affected.

One of the clearest examples of discrimination occurs in the real estate sector, where cases of explicit refusal to rent to foreigners – particularly the Brazilians – are frequently reported.

The report published this Tuesday indicates that Portugal was among the 20 countries with the highest relative number of emigrants in 1995 – a value that, despite this, decreased in 2020, according to the authorities’ accounting.

With regard to the type of emigration, the Italy and Portugal are the two European countries that have more emigrant men than womenaccording to the IOM.