In an interview published in the Diário de Pernambuco, on January 15th, entitled Feminicide: eight years after the law was approved, cases increase, Leila Linhares Barsted affirms that feminicide is a serious social phenomenon.
“The rate of violence, the encouragement of firearms, these hate speeches, right? There is a misogyny and a machismo that are stronger and stronger in Brazilian society. In other words, that machismo that used to be a little more discreet is now in the newspapers, uttered by leaders of state institutions. So it is as if there was a license for men to exercise machismo in a more serious way against women.
In the ISP Women’s Dossier, which brings data from 2016 to 2020, the numbers show that most victims of feminicide are killed by their partner or former partner (59%) and inside the home (59%). Leila explains that feminicide usually involves an intimate relationship, in which the man considers himself to have possession of the woman.
“In other words, it is the machismo that does not allow the woman to escape the man’s control. So, many times these events occur exactly when women no longer want to live in violent situations and decide to separate. This machismo happens exactly in this sense, the idea that the man has the possession of the woman and when he loses this possession, he then decides to punish her.
Read the full interview at this link
