Maria da Penha is an educated woman who met her husband while working on her graduate degree. After they married and had children, her husband turned violent. Twice he hired someone to kill her and make it look like a robbery. Although Maria survived both attempts on her life, the second attempt left her as a paraplegic. Sadly, her husband was originally acquitted of the crime. Only after several years of legal struggles was her husband finally convicted and sentenced to jail.
Unfortunately, Maria’s story is not unique. In the 30-year period between 1980 and 2010, the number of women murdered in Brazil rose by 230 percent. Each year, roughly 4,500 women are killed in Brazil. Luckily, thanks in part to Maria da Penha’s efforts to bring awareness to the violence against women in Brazil, those numbers may soon go down.
President Dilma Rousseff recently signed into effect the Maria da Penha law in an attempt to prevent what has been termed femicide. Femicide is the killing of a woman by a man simply because of the woman’s gender. The new Brazilian law will impose jail sentences of between 12 and 30 years for those convicted of femicide. There will also be stiffer jail sentences for those convicted of crimes against girls under 14 and women over 60, as well as pregnant women and those with disabilities.
Although the exact reason for the rise in violence against women is unknown, Brazil is not the only Latin American country with a femicide problem. Countries in the Americas account for more than half of the top 25 countries for femicides.
Of course, enacting the Maria da Penha law does not automatically guarantee violence against women is going to end in Brazil. Implementing the law will require extra effort on the part of law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and forensic experts. At the very least, the new law requires crimes be investigated with the gender perspective taken into account.
