Constructing Crimes and Engendering a Contradictory Citizenship

Abstract

This is how the evening television show Globo Repórter, produced by the Brazilian television network Rede Globo, introduced the issue of “violence against women” in 1990. Among other things, this show illustrated that by July of 1990—just a decade after feminists began mobilizing over the criminalization of violence against women, and only five years after the launching of the first women’s police station—violence against women had become publicly recognized as a crime committed by men against women. This recognition represented an unprecedented cultural transformation regarding the public perception of violence against women in Brazilian society, where “so many men,” as Globo Repórter stated, “still think that they own their female partners.”

Beautiful they are, as every woman is, because their harmed faces reveal a gesture of courage! Their stories, their fears and their revolt unveil a crime: Violence against women. Last time Globo Repórter focused on this issue, four years ago, there was only one police station specializing in crimes against women. Today, there are 64: 36 in São Paulo and 28 in other states. This week, our journalists followed the activities of the women’s police stations and noticed that violence against women is escalating. But it is also growing the number of women breaking their silence and pressing charges against their violent male partners. As we will see in this show, they [male perpetrators] have been punished according to the law. That is the only way to end the profound distortion in Brazilian society, where so many men still think that they own their female partners.

—Globo Repórter (Rede Globo, July 1990)