All the new president’s men: 23 males fill Brazil’s cabinet after Rousseff is suspended

Hours after Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman president, was suspended by a Senate vote to put her on trial for breaking budget laws, the man who took her place unveiled his cabinet: an all-male line-up of 23 ministers.

The significance was not lost on feminists in the Latin American country, especially after a male-dominated Congress voted to remove Rousseff amid shouts of “Goodbye, dear!”

“Fifty-two per cent of Brazil’s population has been ignored,” said Rachel Moreno, coordinator of a group that seeks to combat violence against women.

“We have suffered an attack from conservatives on the achievements of the feminist movement,” she said in a telephone interview from a women’s rights conference in Brasilia that Rousseff attended this week.

A former member of a leftist guerilla group during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Rousseff has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. She said last month that the impeachment process was marked by “a large amount of prejudice against women.”

After the lower house voted to impeach Rousseff on April 17, the Senate suspended her on Thursday for the course of a trial that could last six months. Her vice-president, Michel Temer, 75, was promoted to interim president, ending 13 years of rule by Rousseff’s Workers Party.