Black women victimization of domestic violence in Brazil

In Brazil, recent researches indicate that 43.1% of women over 10 years have been victimized of domestic violence.

In the 1970s, feminism emergence as a solid and organized movement in Brazil was related in a great deal to combat battering. In the 1980’s, when Women`s Studies proliferated as a research field at Brazilian universities, they inherited the centrality of the topic from the feminist social movement. Such magnitude accounts for the remarkable production which has been developed about the phenomenon so far.

In parallel, ‘race relations’ are also a traditional and prominent research field in Brazilian academia. Theoretical and empiric investigations on the issue have contributed to the visibility of sharp disparities in social conditions and opportunities for whites and nonwhites.

However, investigations on the incidence of domestic violence which incorporates race as a control variable are almost nonexistent in Brazil.

Domestic sphere is permeated not only by the power asymmetries that are articulated in gender relations, but also incorporates other axes of hierarchy. ‘Race’ thus appears as an analytical category that may help to elucidate domestic violence against women as a social phenomenon.

On the other hand, appreciating the intersectionality of race and gender on the configuration of domestic violence against black women may contribute to the understanding that the category ‘women’ encompasses dissimilar experiences that should not follow unnoticed by academic research and public policies.