2023-09-04 08:04:42
Karênina Silveira had to go to court to get the right, without having to drop out of college. Decision could set precedent
“We are completely alone”, said Karênina Alves da Silveira, 35, about pregnant and breastfeeding mothers within the academic environment. In an unprecedented decision, the law student at a college in Brasilia obtained a favorable injunction to attend the course classes virtually during the breastfeeding period of her 4-month-old daughter, Maria Antonella. “We don’t have to choose between being a mother or studying and working”, she defended.
The difficulty, however, was great to have the right guaranteed by the Justice. Before appealing in court, the student tried to negotiate with the college to help her during the breastfeeding period with remote classes. Karenina, however, was denied by the institution and even lost in the first instance. After an appeal, Judge Fernando Antônio Tavernard Lima, from the Federal District and Territories Court of Justice (TJDFT), ruled in favor of the student on August 22 of this year.
According to her, the fact that there is no specific legislation that protects breastfeeding mothers and pregnant women means that they are “forgotten and excluded” both from the academic environment and from the professional environment. She then asked to enter into a special attendance regime, which means having absences paid for by carrying out homework activities sent by the subject teachers.
Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília
“It didn’t enter my head that I just had to do activities. And access to content and knowledge, won’t I have it? I would have to take a test on an equal footing with my colleagues, but what if I didn’t have access to knowledge?”, he questioned.
The request for the special regime was accepted by the faculty on February 27 of this year, but until almost the end of the semester, only a few professors had carried out activities related to the content taught in the classroom. “I felt completely excluded as a student. I insisted a lot. I sent an email to the coordination, to the teachers, and there was one of them in particular who hadn’t even gone through the teaching plan where I could guide myself to study on my own”, he claimed.
The presentation of the course syllabus is usually the first contact between professors and students in college, exposing in the document what will be the main subjects and books to be used within the discipline. According to Karenina, he later passed after a formal complaint, but the student would have stated that he did not follow the teaching plan during the semester. Dismayed at the difficulties, she sought legal help to be able to attend classes remotely.
Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília
Throughout the semester, the mother faced other difficulties in taking tests, sharing content and activities on the part of the teachers and had to suspend three of the seven subjects she was enrolled in to focus on those whose students were helping more and the content would be better used. “I wasn’t asking for the EAD teaching of the course. I just wanted to have the right to attend the same classes that my peers were attending,” she defended.
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The classes would be transmitted with the resource that the college already has, however, with the refusal of the college to have access to classes through video calls, and indignant that there was no legal apparatus for the protection of mothers who breastfeed, triggered the justice in order to achieve greater dignity to study, not only for himself, but also for others who were in a similar situation both at the college where he studies and at other institutions.
“I feel like a card out of the deck, I feel like a problem for my institution arriving there with my baby, entering a classroom where I don’t have the structure to stay with her. And she’s going to cry, she’s going to disturb a class, take the attention of colleagues – and the faculty crosses its arms for that. The legislator too. Nobody is worried. Where is our space?
historic decision
With the victory in the second instance, the case became emblematic because Karênina was the first lactating mother to obtain, in court, access to remote classes due to breastfeeding. The historic decision opens a precedent for other mothers in the same context and pregnant women in recent months to have the same requests granted in court.
“If college isn’t a place I can go with my daughter, then it’s not a mother’s place. If it’s not a place for mothers, it’s not a place for women. And that has to change. If the college has the devices in the classroom, why not release them for students who are pregnant and breastfeeding?”, She reinforced. “If it was just to pass, I would have continued the same way, but I want to have the knowledge and the security that I went to a good college.”
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One of the difficulties of going to college in person, in Asa Sul, was the route to be taken with her daughter. “I felt quite victorious, and now I can breathe very calmly, because I won’t have to take my daughter out of the house at 6am, have to drive in an hour-long traffic jam with a 4-month-old baby crying in the car and share my attention within the classroom,” he said.
According to Karênina, one of the discourses reproduced within the institutions is that the effort to attend classes and participate in academic life while breastfeeding is commendable. However, for the mother, this is a romanticized view of a process that can be less painful if there are changes in favor of the infants. “Why does it have to be such a big sacrifice? We are a special audience and we need to be treated in a special way. It is my right as a mother and a baby to be treated with respect.”
Lenda Tariana, a lawyer who defended Karênina in this case, reinforced that the matter only went to the judiciary because the mother shares a feeling of several women, which is to remain invisibility. The favorable decision, therefore, is like a gift for both. “This feeling of achievement and of someone who can and wants to go further is what results in this type of action, of resignation,” she said.
“It is an achievement that goes beyond the current situation. This is actually a representation of a modification of the mother and professional woman. For a long time we dealt with the isolation of the two characteristics, being one or the other for a long time. Today what we see is the possibility of uniting motherhood with a professional career and this comes up against these requests in the judiciary, since society still has these ties, so to speak”, she analyzed.
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In Karênina’s defense, the lawyer highlights articles 205 and 206 of the Federal Constitution, which determine the principles under which the country should govern education. In item I of 206, it is highlighted that teaching will be provided based on “equal conditions for access and permanence in school”. The permanence, therefore, even in the face of pregnancy and breastfeeding, should be facilitated, according to the defense.
Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília Photo: Vitor Mendonça/ Jornal de Brasília
“The mother needs a specific structure to breastfeed and the college [neste caso em específico] does not have these structures. One of the solutions for colleges is adapting them to pregnant and breastfeeding women, which I think is extremely expensive – and honestly unnecessary – because of another tool they have, which is online transmission,” said Lenda.
The also vice-president of the Brazilian Bar Association in the DF points out that this look from the mother’s perspective can guarantee access to the law not only in this case, but in many others that may arise in the country over the years. “[Nessa modalidade remota] the mother can stay at home, in her armchair, breastfeeding her baby in comfort, which is the least she needs to breastfeed. In this specific situation in this case, this [deixar a transmissão on-line]it is not onerous”, highlighted the lawyer.
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wanted by Brasilia newspaper, until the end of this edition, the college in question had not responded to the questions raised by the report. The space remains open for future statements.
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