Covid-19 and Patriarcais Gender Relations in Brazil: women in danger
Laiany Rose Souza Santos[1]Joana das Flores Duarte[2] and Carla Apenburg Trindade[3]
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the affliction of the life felt by women reveals that, apart from the virus, we coexist with multiple expressions of violence rooted in sex/gender inequality. This is a situation that puts the lives of thousands of women (boys and girls too) on the brink every day. To give an idea of the Brazilian reality, only in the year of 2019, every seven hours a woman was a victim of feminicide, totaling in the year 1.314 women, an increase of 12% compared to the year of 2018, according to the report of the Brazilian Public Security Forum in partnership with the Núcleo de Estudos da Violência da Universidade de São Paulo (2019). This second document, the increase in deaths of women due to hate crimes due to gender conditions, is in the opposite direction compared to the number of murders in Brazil in 2019, which remains at 19% compared to the previous year (2018).
Feminicídio is typified as a crime of a stinking nature, and its motivating substance is hatred of female sex/gender. If we think about the fundamentals of the criminal action, we will see that the unequal relationships between sex/gender are established. And, therefore, its materiality says respect for the set of social, moral, economic, cultural, racial and gerational values that it attributes to capitalist sociability or place of lesser value, to women, given that the parameter of comparison is the sovereignty and supremacy of sex/masculine gender, consolidating these relationships. patriarchis – ou seja, a social system in which men exercise and maintain power and sovereignty in all spheres of social life.
Feminicídio by definition is discrimination against women due to their sex/gender condition. In this way, women who are victims of this crime are killed by their exes or their companions, who within the attempt to seek to justify such an act, allege that they do not agree to the relationship or be motivated by their companions. This crime is intrinsically related to violence in the private sphere, or even within their homes. Assim, or domestic environment for these women denotes risk of life, is the report of the Brazilian Public Security Forum in partnership with the Núcleo de Estudos da Violência da Universidade de São Paulo (2019). In the year 2018 alone, there were 263 thousand registered cases of intentional corporate injuries in the corruption of domestic violence and 66 thousand statutory rape (this last one without distinction or local).
For Heleieth Saffioti (2004, p. 136), gender relations are embedded in power relations, because gender in patriarchal society tends to be oppressive, given that it is associated with the sex/gender system. Still, the author emphasizes that the idea is not impeding equitable relations, but the way in which these relations are (re)produced. Ainda, second to the author, the concept of gender is broader than that of patriarchy, because the latter is a more recent historical phenomenon, not which is “implanted in a hierarchy between men and women, with masculine primacy”, as it first accompanies humanity from its existence.
Starting from the reading that gender is not a neutral concept, more corresponding to patriarchal ideology and the power that it exercises, it is necessary to go through history and find the ruptures and continuities in two directions reserved for women and minority groups. Regarding the trajectory of women, especially of workers, Silvia Federici (2010) affirms that the transition of the feudal system to the capitalist system was not only a response to the crises of the system in force at the time, but, substantially, the propagation of a society founded on the principle of equality.
An equality substantiated no direito à propriedade, à freedom and the power of selection, very much articulated to the very development of the system, which was constituted by the social and sexual division of work, the separation of two methods of production and reproduction of socially produced goods. This implies directly the process of monetization of the female labor force that, according to Federici (2010), follows the feudal order of submissão.
Clarifying this point, Saffioti (2013, p. 230) states that the social position of women, undervalued and restricted to private space, is still present in contemporary discourses, has a direct relationship with the senhorial escravocratic system. The unequal relations between men and women and, consequently, the position of women in general society, “constitute part of a broader system of domination.” The way power is organized and distributed in the Brazilian society is a determining factor in the formation of a social structure marked by “myths and preconceptions, through two quais the society still seeks to justify the exclusion of women from certain tasks and maintain it, in this way, there is no exercise that is exclusive to their traditional fathers and mothers. reconnoitrely feminine occupations”.
No case of the pandemic, or COVID-19 shows the limits of capital and the neoliberal theory of the Minimum State, and at the same time publicizes brands of inequalities between sexes/genders, which antecedem its origin, but rather confirms the amount of the “women's place” in the society constituted between new and new, or seja, at the same time as they incorporate a large quantitative gives a responsible face in combating the pandemic, not that it says respect for health care, a considerable part of the population in forced confinement, runs the risk of death. It is the paradox of a world in which embora sejam reconhecidamente úteis ao capital e sua reprodução, são também passíveis de execução por sua condição de gênero.
In opposition to the fact that most of the two chefs of state in the world see us endowing, and what he proposes to the World Health Organization does not combat and prevent Coronavirus, the president of the Republic of Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, nationally and internationally known for his positions of defense and health in civil, military and business administration in Brazil For more than three decades (1964-1985), of reduction of the Social State, of privatization of public companies and of being an anti-feminist, he alleged that the coronavirus was just a “flu", and that the economy could not stop by itself. Given the lack of discursive argument to legitimize such irrationality, Bolsonaro made political-partisan use of gender violence, whose purpose was either to take as a reference a real fact - or that women are victims of violence in them. Private sphere – to reinforce the discourse of re-entry of the working class into the labor market, in the midst of the epidemic peak. “Tem mulher apanhando em casa.
Jair Bolsonaro sought to correlate social isolation as an aggravating factor for occurrences of violence against women in the private sphere, however, it is known that the president himself hinders in terms of affirmative actions and government policy guidelines, social policies to combat and confront sex/gender inequalities. In fact, two previous governments have combated violence against women and are extinct within the current government. A guideline that comes with a perspective of fighting and combating violations of human rights, based on historical documents such as the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women, known worldwide as “BELÉM DO PARÁ CONVENTION (1994)” was replaced in the current administration by a ministry with Pentecostal principles, under the command of Minister and Pastor Damares Alves.
That said, it is important to clarify that violence against women in public and private spaces is a reality that is still facing and combated by public power. The forced confinement was instigated by various feminist fronts in denouncing the lack of public care equipment and services for this purpose. The risk of possible cases of violence and death in the private sphere of women places us in a situation of alert regarding virus prevention measures.
As the authorities guide the quarantine, we ignore that for many of us this measure is also a risk. In this case, it is necessary, together with the fight against viruses, to draw up and strengthen public policies for mapping and monitoring risk situations, such as complaint records for domestic violence, monitoring of the protection measures provided for in Law 11.340/06 – Maria da Penha -, articulation with the Social Assistance and Health policies. territory, both in the provision of services related to emergency benefits and income transfer programs, when providing care to women's health in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak, given that for many or access to the care network it is late, we will be responsible for the care of the family. It is necessary, therefore, to contribute to the fight to eradicate viruses and multiple forms of sex/gender violence.
[1] Professor in Geography at the Federal University of Sergipe, Professor at the Department of Geography of Itabaiana/UFS, Researcher at the Laboratório de Estudos Rurais e Urbanos (LABERUR/UFS), at the Laboratório de Estudos Territoriais (LATER/UFS) and at the Grupo de Trabalho CLACSO Feminismos, Resistências e Emancipação.
[2] Feminist Professor Doutora em Serviço Social. Member of the CLACSO Feminisms, Resistances, and Emancipação Work Group. Integrates the Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas em Violência (NEPEVI). There are articles on the topics: Justice, Gender, Penal Seletividade and Criminalization of the Poor. The publication of the books: Para Além dos Muros: as experiências sociais das adolescents na prisão (REVAN, 2017) and Meninas e Território: criminalização da Pobreza e Seletividade Jurídica (Cortez, 2018). In organization the book: Expressões de Violência: experiências de intervention e pesquisa em Serviço Social (Appris, 2017).
[3] Feminist, Graduate in Geography at the Federal University of Sergipe, researcher at the Laboratory of Rural and Urban Studies (LABERUR/UFS). CLACSO Work Group Feminisms, Resistances, and Emancipação.
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