Women faced with violence: A view on skin colour in Brazil

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the debate on violence involving women in medium-sized Brazilian cities. This chapter discusses the study of women who died as a result of factors not related to illness, in Rio Claro from 1980 to 1991. The authors observed an increase in rates of women’s presence in homicide, suicide and car crash. Women’s involvement in homicide is likely to take place in domestic locations where domestic utensils are used as weapons. Women are among the highest homicide risk group, alongside children and teenagers. Since the 1970s women have become an active presence in social movements such as in the remarkable movement against the increase in costs of living. In Brazil, young women are prone to diverse forms of aggression and acts of violence for which the aggressors are mostly male. Women were established in the urban labour market after the 1960s and since then, their number in the labour market has increased significantly.