Rights advocates denounce gynaecological tests for women applying to teach in Sao Paulo state as an invasion of privacy
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Women seeking jobs as teachers in Brazil’s most populous state are being asked to undergo pap smears or prove their virginity, according to media reports.
The requirement has provoked outcry from women's rights advocates who condemned the tests as an invasion of privacy and a violation of women's rights.
Since 2012, the education department of Sao Paulo has required female job candidates to submit to pap smears to prove they are free of cancer and other cervical diseases, or to obtain a doctor’s note verifying that they have not been sexually active.
The department said the tests are needed to show that candidates for long-term teaching jobs are in good health and would not take extended or frequent absences because of health problems.
In a statement, the public management department for Sao Paulo said the tests, which are also required by other Brazilian states and federal agencies, followed the standards and recommendation of the Health Ministry for public servants.
The education department also requires other health exams for prospective employees, including a mammography for women and a prostate test for men over the age of 40.
But the gynaecological tests required for women are deemed particularly invasive by critics, including Brazil’s Special Secretariat for Women’s Rights.
In a statement, the national agency said such mandates violated constitutional protections of human dignity and the right to privacy. “The woman has the right to choose whether to take an exam that will not affect her professional life,” it said.
“It violates women’s rights. It’s very intimate information that she has the right to keep. It’s absurd to continue with these demands,” Ana Paula de Oliveira Castro, a public defender of women’s issues, told the Associated Press.
The bar association of Sao Paulo said the practice was unconstitutional. The group Catholics for the Right to Choose also issued a statement saying, "We are living in the Middle Ages!”
After a similar outcry last year in the state of Bahia, where female candidates for police jobs were required to under gynaecological tests or prove their hymens were intact, the government asked that such tests be eliminated.
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