femicide

Between 2017 and 2022, 564 women were 564 women victims of femicide in Bahia. The data were revealed in the 2023 edition of the Feminicides in Bahia study, released by the Bahia Superintendence of Economic and Social Studies (SEI) and the Bahia Public Security Secretariat (SSP-BA). This is the third year of disclosing the theme and marks the commitment of the bodies with the struggle of women on March 8, International Women’s Day. The data are published through a summary infographic that follows a historical series from 2017 to 2022.

The study deals with an essential work for the qualification of the public and political debate on the gender violence suffered by women and, consequently, subsidy for the development of effective actions in the face of this type of violence. “[Isso] facilitates the creation of more effective actions to safeguard the lives of women in Bahia”, recalls Jadson Santana, an economist at SEI.

The work was built from the records of the Police Reports (BO), registered in Civil Police Stations of the State of Bahia (PCBA) and systematized by Siap (Superintendence of Integrated Management of Police Action) in the 417 municipalities of the state of Bahia.

Results

From 2017 to 2022, there were 564 women victims of femicides in Bahia. This number represented an average increase of 6.3% per year. Specifically in the year 2022, 107 feminicides were recorded. The increase compared to 2021 was 15.1%. This means that a woman was murdered in Bahia for gender reasons every four days. Or even that, of every 5 violent deaths of women in Bahia, two were feminicides.

The crime of femicide presents a pattern of occurrence: women in adulthood, between 30 and 59 years old, and black were the main victims of this type of crime. For Larissa Neves, a researcher at the Security Observatory Network and the Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy, the target profile of feminicide crimes demonstrates selectivity in gender violence, which is caused by social contracts that have roots in the legacy of slavery.

“Race, gender and class inequality will allow the extermination of these women. More and more, we need to expose who these women are and what place they occupy. If the majority of murders due to gender violence affect certain women, something must be done done,” he points out.

Among the instruments used, bladed weapons stand out with 47.8% of the total number of cases between 2017 and 2022. That is, almost half of the women victims of femicide in Bahia were murdered with a bladed weapon. In turn, firearms are the second most used instrument group: 27.8%; and it is possible to observe an increase of 50.0% in cases with this type of instrument in 2022.

The victim’s intimate partner (partner, former partner and boyfriend) was the main perpetrator of feminicides in Bahia, that is, of every 10 femicides, in 9 of them the perpetrator was the victim’s intimate partner. When the boyfriend or intimate partner was not the author of the crime, relatives were responsible, indicating that the criminal is always part of the victim’s cycle of trust. In turn, the main motivation for femicides was passion (61.3%), followed by intra-family fights (25.8%).

According to SEI economist Jadson Santana, crime authorship data are even more alarming compared to other states. “That was a ratio [de autoria do crime de feminicídio] higher than in other countries and states. And as an aggravating factor, in most cases, the feminicide took place inside the victim’s home, for passionate reasons and by means of a melee weapon”, he points out.

Another characterization for this type of crime is that the majority occurred in the interior of the state: 77.87%; against 16.8% in Salvador and 5.3% in the Metropolitan Region (RMS). According to Larissa Neves, this increase in cases in the interior of Bahia may be linked, among other factors, to machismo linked to coronelismo. “These are relationships in which the man maintains a certain dominion over the family of the aggregates. [Essas] relations still very strong in certain places, mainly in the interior of the state”, he says.