By Marina Motta – Promundo-Brazil Researcher
When opening the newspaper on the first day of 2014, Brazilians were faced with three reports of extreme violence against women committed by a husband and two ex-boyfriends.
The traditional New Year's Eve in Copacabana, one of the most beautiful and peaceful celebrations in the country, was marked by a man who, out of jealousy, tried to hang his wife. The military police intervened, the man grabbed a gun from one of the police officers, fired numerous shots, injured eleven people – including a seven-year-old child and a fifteen-year-old teenager – and only stopped when he was shot by the police. The shooting caused panic among families nearby. The police reported that when trying to get the man to stop attacking his wife, he argued angrily: “I'm not going to stop hitting him because she's my wife”.
In São Gonçalo, a municipality neighboring Rio, upon returning home after a New Year's party, a 24-year-old woman was brutally beaten and then thrown from the terrace of her apartment, which resulted in her death from head trauma. Everything indicates that the perpetrator of the crime was her ex-fiance, who broke into her house in the early hours of January 1st and called the firefighters to inform them of her death. Three days later he surrendered to the police claiming innocence. The murder left a two-year-old girl orphaned.
On the morning of January 3, arriving to work at a shopping mall in Tijuca, a 21-year-old woman was stabbed numerous times by her ex-boyfriend. She was seriously injured and had to be rushed to hospital. Two days later, the perpetrator of the violence surrendered to the police, confessing to the crime and claiming in his defense that he “uses controlled medication” and that he became out of control after being humiliated by his ex-girlfriend.
Year after year we are confronted with these stories: always brutal, always shocking. In the best of cases, the press reports, the police arrest, the judge sentences, researchers record it in their analyzes and statistics. But none of this changes the context in which violence committed by an intimate partner against his wife is inserted, none of this prevents these tragedies from continuing to happen on a daily basis.
Even though the entry into force of the Maria da Penha Law in 2006 was a huge step forward in legislative terms, a survey by Ipea (Institute of Applied Economic Research), published in September 2013, showed that the legislation has not yet significantly reduced the homicide rate of women in Brazil is significant.
This same research showed that every year, on average, 5,600 women are killed by gender conflicts in the country, that is, a woman is killed every hour and a half for the simple fact of being a woman. A third of them are murdered in their own homes and 40% of these murders are committed by intimate partners, such as boyfriends, fiancés and husbands.
Protection and reporting mechanisms are extremely important, laws and their rigorous implementation are essential, but countless research shows that we will only be able to PREVENT violence against women before it happens and REDUCE the number of cases that reach the extreme of lethal violence when the government, civil society and the Brazilian people in general look with the necessary attention to the way we raise and treat boys and men and the type of masculinity that contributes to so many men committing violence against women.
Men who, as in the case of New Year's Eve in Copacabana, state without any embarrassment that they feel entitled to beat their wives; men who, as in the case of São Gonçalo, deal with a crisis of jealousy by beating their partners to death; men who, as in the case of Tijuca, when they feel humiliated by a woman, express their anger with violence, by stabbing them.
We all have to confront the type of masculinity that is historically dominant in our country and in the world: a misogynistic, homophobic and extremely violent masculinity. As long as men continue to expect their partners to be submissive and obedient, to take care of all the domestic and childcare tasks alone and to be beaten by their husbands on a daily basis, the rates of violence against women will not decrease.
It is urgent to transform masculinities in the country, promote equitable, respectful and non-violent gender relations from childhood, in children's socialization spaces such as daycare and schools; during adolescence, in recreational sports and party spaces; until adulthood, forging marital relationships based on dialogue and conflict resolution through peaceful means.
The first month of 2014 began with these three emblematic cases of violence against women – and certainly with many other cases that did not make the headlines – but Promundo works and counts on all its supporters so that we can spend the next eleven months challenging the model of masculinity dominant and promoting equitable and non-violent masculinities, so that more Brazilian women can reach the end of 2014 with their lives and dignity preserved.
Collaborate, promoting gender equality and non-violence in your daily life!
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