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Demographer typifies and sees feminicide as an epidemiological phenomenon

An unprecedented study in the country confirms that the highest number of deaths occurs in the domestic environment and includes victims of reproductive age

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Half of the women killed by attacks in Brazil, between 2009 and 2014, were murdered in their own home, according to data from the Notifiable Diseases Information System (SINAN), of the Ministry of Health. The number includes children and adolescents. There were more than 2,7 deaths due to violence during the period, and in more than 40% of cases the perpetrators were family members, spouses or ex-spouses. The “cases”, however, have a name: feminicide. “Deaths involving family and marital relationships must be interpreted as domestic feminicide, within the elements that characterize feminicides”, states demographer Jackeline Aparecida Ferreira Romio in her doctoral thesis “Feminicides in Brazil, an analysis proposal with data from the sector of health". The thesis was defended in the Postgraduate Program in Demography at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp and supervised by professor Tirza Aidar.

The work is unprecedented in its attempt to diagnose feminicides in Brazil, based on three categories identifiable by data from the health sector. The researcher identified what could be considered death due to gender-based violence against women, developing a new typology of feminicides, divided between domestic feminicide (in the home); reproductive (deaths from abortion); and sexual (when death results from sexual violence). She also separated the age groups of women: from 0 to 14 years old, from 15 to 49 years old and 50 years old and over.

Jackeline tabulated the data from the SINAN Domestic, Sexual and/or other Violence Notification/Investigation Sheets and information from two other health databases: the Death Declarations from the Mortality Information System (SIM) of the Health Surveillance Secretariat (SVS), and the Hospital Admissions Minutes, from the Hospital Information System (SIH). All bases are managed by the Ministry of Health.

The choice of health data aimed to treat the issue as an epidemiological one, in addition to avoiding a sometimes “sexist” bias in legal documents, as the author describes in the work. She also weighed the issue of Ministry of Health data being more accessible and corresponding to the type of documents traditionally used for demographic analysis.

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Researcher Jackeline Aparecida Ferreira Romio, author of the doctoral thesis: data from the health sector supported the work

 “My idea was to develop a range of reliable statistics that would demonstrate, at least, the minimum dimensions of women's vulnerability in relation to feminicides. The victimization profile is essential for acting on the problem”, she highlights.

But it was not a simple task to work with the health bases because, although feminicides are already recognized by Brazilian legislation as a heinous crime, there is often incompatibility between the databases which, according to Jackeline, were not designed to capture female mortality due to gender-based violence. There is also a gap regarding the identification of transgender women.

The highest number of domestic femicides found by Jackeline was in the age range of 15 to 49 years, which coincides with reproductive age. According to the author, SIM data revealed that from 2009 to 2014, 5.598 women in this age group were killed, out of a total of 7.707 femicides, which represents more than 70% of all domestic femicides recorded by SIM in the period studied. The same database demonstrated that deaths of women aged 50 and over were concentrated in homes. “In the case of adult, older and elderly women, lethal attacks occur more concentrated at home”, writes the author.

When sexual violence is the cause of death, Jackeline considers that sexual femicide has occurred. In this case, SINAM data brings higher numbers due to the base's specialty in characterizing domestic and sexual violence. The percentage of victims who are children and adolescents, aged 0 to 14, was 40% of cases. Comparing it with the percentage of women of reproductive age, which was 50%, one can understand the scale of the problem. “Children and adolescents aged 0 to 14 are affected in greater numbers by sexual femicide compared to young women and adults aged 15 to 49, who are the biggest victims of domestic femicides”, highlights Jackeline.

Sexual femicides are also related to color, race or ethnicity. According to the study, black, brown and indigenous women account for 43% of cases of deaths due to sexual assault in the period. Also noteworthy is the fact that 31% of women killed by sexual violence, according to the SINAN figures tabulated in the research, had only primary school education.

To classify reproductive femicide, which includes deaths from abortion, Jackeline evaluated information on 1.134 deaths, according to the SIH, and 832, according to the SIM. Both sources showed the very low number of deaths from abortions carried out for medical reasons, which may indicate that the termination of pregnancy, when carried out within medical procedures, practically does not cause deaths. “The lack of guarantees for legal abortion ends up being an indirect factor that contributes to the increase in reproductive femicides in the country”, observes the author.

Regarding the occurrence of feminicide in different regions of the country, the researcher states that domestic aggression is a phenomenon that affects the entire national territory. Reproductive femicide was recorded in greater numbers in specific cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Manaus. Sexual femicide appears more frequently in the capitals of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in addition to some border regions.

The comparison of data on feminicide with violent deaths in men is often done incorrectly, considers Jackeline. “The statement is commonly made that women die less than men from violence. This argument creates the invisibility of female deaths due to violence”, states the author.

The researcher emphasizes that the thesis work is not opposed to studies of male mortality due to violence, “but seeks to consider this cause of death as a challenge to be overcome also for women if we are guided by objectives other than just establishing the focus at the highest incidence, transferring the focus to singularities and trends, and applying endogenous denominators to each population group studied”.

According to the researcher, male mortality from external causes explodes between the ages of 15 and 49, which is why there is more similarity between the deaths of men and women under 14 and over 50 years old. “When studying mortality by sex and gender, it is essential to understand the relevance of each cause within the total female mortality itself and, after that, compare the male mortality, to look for sex differences with a look at gender inequalities”.

The work also seeks to take a feminist look at health data. “I went through all of feminist theory to be able to observe female mortality in relation to gender oppression. Society cannot see all the violence that women suffer, but some of this violence ends in deaths”.

According to the researcher, the number of homicides against women is recurring. There was a jump in registrations shortly after the enactment of the Maria da Penha Law, in 2007, but today the rates remain stable. On the other hand, the mortality of black women and indigenous women has increased.

Jackeline mapped variables that suggest the chances of a woman's death being due to feminicide. The thesis pointed out that, when violence is repeated, the chance is five times greater for domestic feminicide, four times greater in cases of male perpetration and twice greater if the marital situation is ever united. Women who live in border municipalities also have their chances increased by one and a half times, and black or indigenous women have their chances increased by one time.

For sexual femicide, if the variable is male, the chance increases three times. Drunk perpetrator increases once, and victimization is greater if the woman is black or indigenous.

In the thesis, the author makes recommendations for improvements in the records of assaults and violent deaths of women so that the data exposes the problem more clearly in order to contemplate public policies. Jackeline recommends that SINAN data collection is improved, especially in relation to race/color and type of relationship with the author, in addition to expanding registration coverage in the national territory. She also mentions the need for integration of health systems with “special attention to recurring cases of aggression, which increase the chances of death”.

 


Law and history

- Law No. 13.104, of March 9, 2015, amended the Penal Code to provide for femicide as a qualifying circumstance for the crime of homicide. Increasing the sentence for intentional homicide into qualified homicide increases the sentence to up to 30 years in prison.

- The art. 1st of Law No. 8.072, of July 25, 1990, was amended to include feminicide in the list of heinous crimes.

- According to the thesis, the concept of feminicide emerged from the mid-1970s, from the feminist movement, “as a new way of naming the deaths of women by homicide due to their social condition as women, and opposing the apparent neutrality of the term homicide, which designated deaths by murder without observing sex and gender differences in these deaths”.

- The term was first used during the First International Tribunal for Crimes against Women, in Brussels, Belgium, in 1976, regarding the deaths of women in the United States and Lebanon. Feminist activist Diana Russell argued that the deaths “would be a consequence of misogynistic actions and, as such, should be presented and judged as femicide”.

- 17 countries in Latin America already use the terminology within the criminal code as a way of aggravating the criminal nature of homicides, according to the thesis.

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Protesters during the “Flower Walk”, which took place in Brasília last year | Photo: Wilson Dias - EBC

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