Introduction

Abstract

In the late 1970s and mid-1980s, pressure from social movement actors, such as women’s and feminist groups, forced the military regime, established by the 1964 military coup, to initiate a process of redemocratization in Brazil. At the time, diverse social movements mobilized to end the regime and to expand the rights of oppressed groups, including workers, women, blacks, Indians, homosexuals, and transvestites. This political and social climate allowed for the creation of the world’s first women’s police station in 1985.

Last year in São Paulo, there were 5,470 sexual crimes, and during the first three months of this year, there were 1,400. Only 10 percent of women victims sought police assistance. That is why a women’s police station was created. It is the first of its kind in the country. Everything in this police station is different. The environment is calm, and even the staff—from police clerks to the police delegate—are women.

—Police delegate Rosmary Corrêa (quoted on TV Manchete, August 6, 1985)¹

Over the past ten years, the number of complaints of violence against women has increased dramatically. According to police, this is due to the expansion of women’s police stations, which encourage victims to report. But policewomen say that the situation will only get better when there is no need for women’s police stations. They say that by then discrimination against women will be over and women will be perfectly integrated into society, fully enjoying all their rights.

—TV Cultura (August 4, 1995)