Femicides in the city of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Femicide is the intentional killing of a woman or girl on account of her gender. The term allows differentiating crimes of gender violence from murders of women in other circumstances. The aim of this study is to characterize femicides, sometimes called feminicides, that occurred in 2015 in Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil. The information was obtained from death certificates of city residents whose underlying cause of death had been classified as external cause. Semi-structured interviews were held by applying the verbal autopsy method, and femicides were classified as: intimate partner, non-intimate partner, and by connection. In the year 2015 there were 582 deaths from external causes, 185 of which were homicides, and 26 (14.1%) of the latter were females. Of these, 19 were classified as femicides. Victims' mean age was 31.5 years (standard deviation 7.18). The majority of the women were white (47.4%), had complete primary schooling (52.6%), single (63.2%), and with children (84.2%). The deaths generally occurred by highly violent mechanisms in the form of physical and sexual aggression. The murders were perpetrated in the victim's domicile with cold steel weapons or firearms, with extreme violence, motivated mainly by the victim's desire for separation, jealousy, and misunderstanding with the aggressor. The mortality coefficient for femicide was 3.2 per 100, 000 women in 2015, corresponding to one death for every 31, 250 women that year. The study's results show that femicide in Campinas is the main category of murders of women. The consequences of this type of violence are enormous in terms of human rights violations.