Maria José Araújo, Brazil

Photo by Ken Berg

"I always say that I've been a feminist since birth, but I really found myself after medical school when I was studying women's and infants' health in Paris. It was then that I decided to leave pediatrics and begin working with women. When I returned to Brazil and founded O Coletivo, my friends thought I was crazy. The first house we rented was on a street so polluted and noisy that we'd find soot in locked drawers and couldn't hear each other over the buses. But I was absolutely certain that things would work out. I wanted to show that we could empower women and create a more humane model of health care, and that we could do it without a lot of money. Of course I didn't know that it would end up being a model for Brazil as a whole, but somehow I knew that it was a very worthwhile path to follow."

About Maria José

Maria José Araújo currently heads the women's health division of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. In the early 1980s, she co-founded O Coletivo, which began offering clinical services, education, and training to low-income women in São Paulo, Brazil in 1986. Beyond providing invaluable services to the community; O Coletivo is also a powerful political organization, and its groundbreaking integration of service and advocacy serves as a reference point for the women's health movement and a model for the Brazilian government. Maria José served as the director of O Coletivo for over fifteen years, and as national coordinator of Rede Feminista de Saúde, the National Feminist Health Network, for six. Prior to her appointment within Brazil's Ministry of Health, she also coordinated the Women's Health Program for the city of São Paulo. Says Eduardo Jorge Martins Alves Sobrinho, São Paulo's former Secretary of Health, "I think that the presence of the women's movement and particularly of Maria José in these 15 years has had very visible, concrete results at the executive and legislative levels in our country."

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