Brazil prepares to celebrate March 8 amid growing violence against women

As always during the week of 8 Marchthe date on which the world commemorates the Women’s dayThe celebrations are accompanied by assessments and questions: where are we going, what do we want, how do we intend to protect – and possibly improve – our place in the world. Although each country has its particularities in this regard, certain issues are the same everywhere, such as the violence.

Brazil is not to be outdone and it is moreover striking that in the space of a few hours two reports whose data clearly show the schizophrenia of our time. On the one hand, in the land of the samba, the the homicide rate has dropped as it had not done since 2008, and on the other hand, the femicides are on the rise. In summary, we kill less, but when that happens, it is mainly women who fall.

According to data from Brazilian Forum on Public Security published last week, the number of homicides in 2022 fell by 1%, with 40.8 thousand people murderedthe lowest number since 2007.

However, another report by the same Forum published around the same time, titled “Visible and Invisible: Women Victims in Brazil», photographs a disturbing reality.

In 2022, almost 51,000 women per day – the equivalent of a full football stadium – suffered violence, in its most varied forms: from assassination attempts to threats with weapons, through beatings, but also verbal insults. In 2021, a femicide every seven hours in Brazil. The most vulnerable are black women (48%), with a low level of education (49%), with children (44.4%), divorced (65.3%) and in the age group of 25 to 34 years (48.9%). Almost half of victims admitted that they had not reported the crime to Lack of trust in the police. A new social pact is therefore necessary to restore the relationship of trust with the institutions. One of the recommendations of the Brazilian Public Security Forum is to implement a law passed in 2022 which requires that 5% of the budget of the National Public Security Fund be allocated to the fight against violence against women.

in the government of Jair BolsonaroTHE money assigned to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights for the protection of women went from 100.7 million reaisnearly 20 million dollars, in 2020 to 30.6 million reais, six million dollars, in 2021.

In his electoral program, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed that the State must “guarantee the integral protection of the human dignity of women, as well as develop public policies for the prevention of violence”. On March 8, the Minister of Justice, Flavio Dinowill announce a series of measures in favor of the defense of women. Among them, the return of “Liga 180”, a phone number that will allow them to report their attackers and ask for help. “We will strengthen the policies of the Ministry of Women in various areas,” the minister announced, “and it will be March 8 with many new features, including the expansion of Women’s Houses in many Brazilian cities.”

The Brazilian Woman’s House was created by the government of Dilma Rousseff in 2015 as part of the program “Mujer: Vivir sin Violencia”, a project for the integration of public policies for people who are victims of domestic violence. The centers offer psychological, legal and even medical advice to the hundreds of women who are almost always threatened within their family nucleus.

Also on March 8, Lula will announce a bill to guarantee the equal pay for men and women. According to Brazilian census data IBGE and some Annual Social Information Report (REIS) black women in Brazil earn 71% less than white men. A situation, that one, which only widens the already wide social gap. The labor reform approved in 2018 included a fine for companies that paid men and women differently for the same work. However, the value of the fine was minimal and the result ended up being the opposite of what was intended. In 2021, a bill increasing the fine to five times the value of the difference in salary paid by the employer was blocked in the Chamber of Deputies. According to Simone Tebet, Minister of Planning, “we need high fines, the law is only a first step, but we know that discrimination is cultural and structural. World Bank studies claim that it is possible to eradicate poverty in the world by equalizing wages between men and women.

Since his inauguration, Lula focused on building a government with as many female voices as possible. Eleven of his ministers are women, so did the recently appointed presidents of Brazil’s two state-owned banks, Caixa Econômica Federal and Banco do Brasil. Among the women nominated, she also stands out as Minister for Racial Equality Aniella Francosister of Marielle Franco, adviser to the left-wing Socialism and Freedom (PSOL) party and human rights activist murdered in 2018 in Rio de Janeiro. Although the principal was never discovered, investigators arrested a group of militiamen as the material perpetrators of the murder. The fact that one of them, Ronnie Lessa, lives in the same building as Bolsonaro has raised more than one question in the Brazilian press. Minister Dino opened a new investigation by the federal police in February, hoping to arrest voters and bring justice to a woman who has become a symbol of the defense of human and minority rights in Brazil.

However, despite good intentions, Brazilian women continue to see their rights violated. A few days ago it was in the news arrest in São Paulo of a 40-year-old woman to undergo a clandestine abortion.

It’s a problem that affects at least one million women, according to data presented at a public hearing in Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2018. A woman dies every two days from an illegal abortion in the country. The victims are typically low-income and black who lack access to the security of the clandestine clinics used by the more affluent. In Brazil, you can legally abort only in case of rape, risk to the life of the mother or if the fetus is headless. In all other cases, women risk a sentence of one to three years in prison. Last June, a document on abortion prepared by the Secretariat of Primary Care of the Ministry of Health caused controversy by stating that “legal abortion does not exist” in Brazil, contradicting what the legislation establishes. The text also spoke of the possibility of criminally investigating rape victims and pregnant women who abort in the event of a risk of death.

In February, Cida GoncalvesMinister of Women, a ministry recreated by Lula (previously he was associated with Family and Human Rights), said in an interview with the news site UOL that the discussion on the subject does not occupy a preponderant place in the agenda of the president: “It is a discussion for the Congress. It is Congress that can debate, alter and modify the existing law”. And when asked what she thought as a woman, the minister replied that her opinion was irrelevant. “When you become a minister,” she said, “you represent your government and you have to put your personal opinions elsewhere.” In fact, the issue of abortion is thorny because it could deprive Lula of the political support of the so-called evangelical bench in Congress, which has supported Bolsonaro for years, but could be indispensable when voting on his government’s new economic measures, already criticized by many orthodox economists.

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