Between Subordination and Protagonism: Violence Experience of Young Women through Biographic Narratives

The involvement of women in violent actions and criminal activities is growing in Brazil. Even though, sociologists are not given an adequate attention to this issue. This paper discusses the relation between young women and violence in Brazil, stressing the main interpretations available in Brazilian sociology, which mostly emphasizes, on the one side, the secondary position of women, dominated by their male partners and peers, and, on the other side, the structural conditions of the Brazilian society – for instance, inequalities, uncertainty in work market, drug uses and school evasion – as the main reasons for this phenomenon. Besides this, the literature stresses the position of women as victim in violent actions, almost monopolizing the analysis when violence and women are connected. Another emphasis seen in the most influential approach in Brazil is the approach that stresses the disruption of norms and legal rules, neglecting this way another component of the practice of violence, that means, a subjective interpretation of reality. Biographic narrative approach permits to offer other possible interpretations to the engagement of young female in violent and in criminal activities. Based on preliminary findings of a research that are investigating direct and indirect experience of violence of young females, the paper presents the main antagonist positions founded, that means, between the subordination to dominant males and a more relevant and protagonist role played by women. The results show that using this kind of “insider” approach is possible to obtain new elements for the interpretation of the experience of violence, in which the women’ role as victims and perpetrators are not always well defined.