Women in the World Summit Kicks Off

Tina Brown kicked off Newsweek and The Daily Beast's first-ever international edition of the Women in the World Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Tuesday, welcoming women from around the world who gathered to talk about crucial issues ranging from sex slavery to revolution in the Mideast.

At the first panel of the day, called “Brazil's Top Cops: Women Take Back the Streets,” two high-profile law-enforcement officials joined journalist Gloria Maria to discuss combating crime in Brazil. Both women agreed that the lack of a strong public health-care system contributed to crime in the country. Domestic violence, for one, is an epidemic.

“I joke a lot: Police aren’t from Mars. They aren’t from Venus. They are from the fruits of our society,” said Major Eliane Nikoluk Scachetti, commander of the fifth Military Police Battalion in Vale do Paraíba, São Paulo state, where she commands 800 men. Noting that crime has been reduced by 70 percent in the past decade in São Paulo state, she said, “Family is the core to solve these problems, and women have a very important role in this.”

She was joined by Major Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo, the coordinator of Strategic Programs for the Public Security Secretariat in Rio de Janeiro.

Newsweek and The Daily Beast took the summit to Brazil this year to highlight the fact that a female firebrand is president of the country, and the number of women breadwinners has doubled in a decade. Twice as many women hold top executive positions than they did a year ago. More Brazilian women earn Ph.D.s every year than men do. But electoral politics remains mostly a men’s club. And equal pay for equal work, a distant dream.

In a series of a dozen panels, the summit is addressing these issues both at home in Brazil and abroad, with speakers including Condoleezza Rice and Diane von Furstenberg offering their perspective.