October 20, 2020

Violence, rape, murder: women’s reality in Brazil

topic:	Women's rights
located:	Brazil
editor:	Ellen Nemitz

Violence against women is on the rise in Brazil. This is what the last report from Brazilian Public Security Forum indicates. In the first semester of this year – of which three months we have spent amid the pandemic and, in some cases, under stay-at-home measures – the number of police calls rose by 3.8 per cent, totalling more than 147,000 occurrences. At the same time, though, the registrations of domestic violence in police stations have dropped by almost 10 per cent, possibly because women are more afraid of retaliation if their husbands and boyfriends stay free.

Inside or outside, women are in danger of being raped, too. Every 8 minutes another sexual violation happens; 85.7 per cent of the victims are female and around 58 per cent are under 13 years old, according to statistics regarding 2019. In the same year, there was a significant increase in the number of femicides, that is, the murder of a woman due to her gender: there was a total of 1,326 victims, representing 7.1 per cent more than the previous year. Nearly 9 of 10 were killed by their own partner or ex-partner, and more than 66 per cent were black. And the tendency goes on: from January to June 2020, the rising in the number of cases is already by 1.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2019.  

Data is always a portrait of reality, of course. They must be read through the special glasses of political, economic and moral conditions. Over the past years, Brazil has been witnessing a rise of all kinds of hate, including against women. Four years ago, when the ex-president Dilma Roussef was impeached, her pictures were used in ways that urged sexual violence. In 2014, the now president Jair Bolsonaro, then deputy, insulted a colleague with words referring to rape. Although feminism is not at all a movement from this century, it has been treated as a threat to a widely propagated 'traditional family' – a heteronormative and patriarchal one. Even some women accept this fallacy of a dangerous feminism while the very basic principles of equality is being distorted.

The Public Security Forum shows that gun registrations to collectors, sport shooters and hunters have increased by more than 120 per cent between 2019 and 2020. More guns inside houses and more female murders is a very possible correlation, even more so when associated with the naturalisation of hate speech.

Quoting the famous statement of activist Audre Lorde, "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own,” we may also say: We are not safe until every woman is safe and alive.

Image by jorono 

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