An Atrevida Is Best Avoided (2024)

On April 25, 1974, a left-leaning military coup overthrew Portugal’s 48-year dictatorship. The uprising, known as the Carnation Revolution, represented the country’s pivot to democracy after decades under António Salazar’s oppressive rule and a boost for women’s rights. In 1976, a new constitution afforded equal rights to men and women. More recently, in 2011, Portugal signed the Istanbul Convention, a treaty addressing violence against women and domestic violence; it was ratified in 2013. But as is often the case with gender, Portugal’s laws and norms do not sync up. “Some things are the same as they were before the 25th of April,” journalist Fernanda Câncio said. “Machismo is one of them.”

As a Portuguese American woman, I’ve rubbed against that machismo for as long as I can remember. During a visit to Lisbon last summer, I was reminded yet again of the country’s confining gender roles as I hosted a visiting American. During lunch one day, an older friend described the ex-girlfriend of a mutual acquaintance, saying, “Ela é muito atrevida.” The American, who didn’t speak Portuguese but had a keen ear for gossip, asked what was said. Here I fumbled: The direct translation is, “She’s very sassy,” but “precocious,” “bold,” and “cheeky” were also trotted out. Though all are technically correct, they missed the point. Finally, I offered “boundary-pushing,” but even then my translation failed.

Part of the problem is that atrevida means something different when applied to a woman than a man. For a man, as with the word’s English counterparts, the gendered atrevido easily serves as a compliment. But any Portuguese speaker would have known the comment at lunch was not kindly meant. The woman we were discussing, my friend had intimated, was a troublemaker who pushed against norms, perhaps even for pleasure. As such, she is best avoided.

I asked Anália Torres, a sociologist at the University of Lisbon and the director of its Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, to articulate my misgivings. “The word atrevida for a woman is not positive,” she said. “It is different when applied to a man. For a woman, you’re implying that she is too forward, that she has a flirty personality. It means she says things that are a little provocative, in the sense that she is offering herself. It has a sexual implication.” For a man, Torres said, “it is not negative. It can mean he says things that are provocative but he is amusing. It implies he is bold, has a sense of humor, and is open.”

In considering the negative connotations of atrevida, and especially its sexual dimensions, I wondered if concern over the label might help explain why the #MeToo movement has floundered in Portugal. Since the movement took off seven years ago, very few Portuguese women have put their names on sexual harassment allegations that detail abusive acts while naming the perpetrators outright.

Perhaps because of this, few investigations have run in the Portuguese press. While one could assume there aren’t many #MeToo stories to report—as a Portuguese man suggested to me—a host of anonymous complaints have surfaced that suggest otherwise. In fact, Câncio said, she was recently investigating sexual harassment claims against a famous media personality. Despite looking into credible allegations for months, she gave up on the story when none of the five women interviewed were willing to go on the record. “If I didn’t,” she said, “I’d be at risk of defamation.” The reason for their silence? Fear.

Last spring, Câncio helped break Portugal’s most significant #MeToo story yet with an article that named Boaventura de Sousa Santos as the professor accused of sexual harassment by anonymous former students at the prestigious University of Coimbra. Santos admitted to Câncio that he had been accused but said the allegations had no merit. Days later, two other women—one from Brazil and one from Argentina—went on the record and shared their stories in detail. No Portuguese women joined them in speaking out with specifics. (This year, the university released a report on its investigation into allegations within the department where Santos served as director emeritus.)

In my own #MeToo reporting in the United States, I’ve also encountered reluctance from women when it comes time to go public. But the explanations I’ve received pertain mostly to concerns of professional blacklisting or legal jeopardy. While the process is not simple, I never felt that any woman was concerned with being thought of as atrevida in the Portuguese sense. I have spoken to well over 100 women, and societal perceptions were not raised. That is not the case for Câncio. “Of course I think women are worried about how they’re going to be perceived by society,” she said. “They don’t want to be talked about.”

She understands their reluctance. For 36 years, Câncio has reported on gender issues in Portugal, and she believes that women’s silence around #MeToo reflects their standing within the country. “The feminist movement never really took off here,” she said, “especially compared to what’s happened elsewhere in Western Europe or even right next door in Spain.”

One reason for the lag may relate to Salazarism, which, until the 1974 revolution, was enshrined in the nation’s laws. Anne Cova, who, along with António Costa Pinto, co-wrote the chapter “Women and Salazarism” in Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women, explained that the ideology is based on the motto “Deus, pátria e família” (God, Fatherland, and Family). Women, she and Pinto wrote, had limited freedoms when Salazar was in power, and only a few—such as widows and heads of family—had suffrage. Married women, Cova wrote in an email, were especially powerless and were “prohibited from working in the judiciary, in diplomacy, and in public administration.”

According to the European Institute for Gender Equality’s 2023 Gender Equality Index, Portugal still ranks below the average European Union member state. A separate 2014 survey, conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, found that from the age of 15 onward, 24 percent of women in Portugal experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and 9 percent reported stalking.

In 2017, the same year #MeToo took off in the United States, a different story made headlines in Portugal. That year, a male and female judge in an appeals court in Porto, the country’s second-largest city, upheld a light sentence—15 months of suspended jail time and a fine—for an assailant who violently beat his ex-wife with a nail-spiked club. The Washington Post reported that he coordinated with the woman’s former lover, who kidnapped and held her down during the attack. In their ruling, the judges wrote, “Adultery by a woman is a very serious attack on a man’s honor and dignity,” adding that “society has always strongly condemned adultery by a woman and therefore sees the violence by a betrayed, vexed, and humiliated man with some understanding.” Reuters, which also reported on the case, provided context: “Ultra-orthodox patriarchy—one of the cornerstones of the fascist dictatorship of Antonio Salazar up until the 1974 revolution—still survives in parts of Portugal.”

Fifty years have passed since the Carnation Revolution and seven since #MeToo forced an international reckoning on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in the workplace. To ensure that the goals of Portugal’s democratic revolution come closer to actualization, perhaps it is time for atrevida to finally serve as a compliment, just as it does for men in Portugal. After all, change requires boldness, and it won’t come for Portuguese women until the descriptor is embraced.