Presidency of Dilma Rousseff

The presidency of Dilma Rousseff began on 1 January 2011 with Dilma Vana Rousseff's inauguration as president after defeating PSDB candidate José Serra in the 2010 elections, and ended with her impeachment on 31 August 2016, already in her second term.

The period was historic because it was the first time a woman had held the Presidency of the Republic in Brazil. Initially, the government had 37 ministries in the first term and 39 in the second term, the largest number of ministries since redemocratization in 1985.

In her first months in office, Dilma contradicted the desire of sectors of her own party to regulate the press and declared that "a free media is essential for democracy". Dilma's second term was marked by a serious economic and political crisis in the country, with GDP per capita shrinking by more than 9% between 2014 and 2016. In the year of her impeachment, the unemployment rate stood at 12%, while in 2010 it was 6.7%. Even after her departure, the unemployment rate remained in the double digits for more than five years, falling only in March 2022, during Jair Bolsonaro's presidency.

The Democracy Index, drawn up annually by the British magazine The Economist, ranked Brazil as the 47th most democratic country in the world in 2010, the beginning of the presidency of Dilma; in the 2013 ranking, it appeared in 44th place. According to the survey, 11% of the world's population lived in "complete democracies", which was not the case in Brazil, still considered an "imperfect democracy".