Homicides in Brazilian women and the covid-19 pandemic in the context of anti-gender policy in the Bolsonaro government
Female homicides; Far-right, Gender; Moral Panic; COVID-19
In economic, health, and war crisis, violence against women increases in all its manifestations: psychological violence, physical violence, property violence, sexual violence, and femicide. From 2020 to 2022, Brazil experienced the COVID-19 pandemic alongside the far-right government of former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. His political agenda included an anti-gender policy, which led to the closure of the Special Secretariat for Women's Policies. At the same time, it reinforced a conservative view of the family by creating the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights under the direction of former Minister Damares. In this context, on one side, we have women, blacks, indigenous people, and the LGBTQI+ population fighting to stay alive and maintain their individuality. On the other side, conservative groups want to uphold social norms through death, not just symbolic death but the physical extermination of anyone who dares to challenge the patriarchy. Given this, the present study aims to analyze the impact of the anti-gender policy during Bolsonaro's administration and the rise of the far-right in politics in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic on female homicides in Brazil and its regions from 2018 to 2022.
An ecological trend study will focus on female homicide deaths in Brazil and its regions from 2018 to 2022. Death records and population data will be obtained from the Informatics Department of SUS for women aged 10 to 80. Due to limitations in the quality of the mortality information system, corrections will be made to "garbage codes" (Y10 to Y34) and underreporting of deaths. Once corrected, age-specific, crude, and standardized mortality rates will be calculated. The temporal trend analysis will be conducted in two stages: (Stage 1) exploratory analysis, using the autocorrelation function and the Durbin-Watson test to evaluate the autocorrelation of the time series, and (Stage 2) evaluation of the impact of anti-gender measures on female homicides using an interrupted time series. After confirming spatial correlation, STI modeling will be implemented. Segmented regression will verify the trend of female homicides in Brazilian regions after the pandemic's onset. To examine the level change, the digit 0 will be assigned to the "pre-pandemic" period and 1 to "during-pandemic." In the modeling, level change and trend change will be included in the segmented regression in addition to the dependent rate variable. Lastly, graphs of the autocorrelation function (ACF) and partial autocorrelation function (PACF) will be inspected to visually explore the existence and number of possible lags in the autoregressive process. All analyses will be conducted using the R statistical software, considering statistically significant values of p≤0.05.