Juliana Guarany, Brazil, Blog Correspondent
Right after Women’s Day (March 8th), Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff enacted a law against Feminicide. Feminicide is when a woman is murdered out of discrimination — just because she is a woman. It is classified as a hate crime.
The feminicide qualification of a crime can add about one-third of the penalty to the given sentence. It is worse when the woman is pregnant or has just given birth, when she is younger than 14 years old or older than 65 years old. But why would Brazil specify a longer sentence for the murder of women over men?
Because of the sexism that exists in the country, of course.
Women are not the majority of people murdered in Brazil; just about 23 percent of all murders in Brazil have women as victims. The biggest group at risk for murder is young black men – and, of course, that is a racist problem to be addressed. But what scares us feminists the most about the murder of women is that 40 percent of them are killed at home. So, out of ten female victims, four are killed in their own house by people who were supposed to love them. That is why this law is important.
If it’s too hard to understand how insane it is to think that women are so unsafe at home, just think a bit about the macho culture that rules Brazil. Men are raised to be fearless creatures, ready to tackle anything that stands in the way of what they want: a job, for example, or a college degree, or a nice body… or a woman. Men pursue women as if they were prey. Women, on the other hand, just learn to behave as the prey and accept that. So when predator and prey get married, there is a huge confusion on whether the woman is another person or simply something the man possesses. Many believe that, yes, they are entitled to own that woman. And they demand, they disrespect, and they kill.
It is important to understand how laws are followed for women in a sexist country.
The main reason to sanction the feminicide law was to acknowledge the fact that women are being killed just by being women, out of an act of discrimination: a man decides that a woman is not playing by his rules and he kills her. But also, feminicide enhances the penalty because many of the killers have walked out of the courts with mild penalties because: “he acted passionately, out of love”, or “he won’t do it again, it was his wife, he regrets it”, or, the worst one: “she cheated on him, she had it coming”.
Brazilian law has now codified the crime of feminicide, making it harder for men to appeal to the sexist minds of the jury and judges. Let’s hope that this bias will one day be gone and the feminicide law can become obsolete.
Note: Last week, there was a talk on BBC World Radio about feminicide in Brazil and I participated in it. You can all listen to it via this link.
Juliana is a fellow from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and, together with Hamburg University, in Germany, is creating a digital campaign to connect all feminist initiatives around the globe. Read her blog Whistleblower and follow her on Twitter, @juguarany.
