Gender violence and the field of planning and territorial studies: a portrait on violence against women in the municipality of São Paulo during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The article problematizes gender violence in the field of planning and territorial studies from a snapshot of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) in the municipality of São Paulo. The first section deals with a theoretical discussion on the thematic that considers the reflection on the practice in health and planning. In this section, we point out the territorialities of care, making use of the WHO Ecological Model. In the following section, the theoretical approach is explored in a portrait of the first year of the COVID Pandemic, based on three approaches to territorialities in the confrontation of violence against women: from the main instrument of territorial planning (Master Plan), by the network of specialized equipment to confront violence, by the social equipment that contribute to prevention and by the support to daily social relations. As a result, it was identified that the Master Plans of 2002 and 2014 did not incorporate the bases of policies to address violence, which represents a certain precondition for the territories when the pandemic period. We identified blackouts of welfare equipment and social distance that represented the decline in the confrontation of violence during the first year of the pandemic.