Domestic violence against women and feminicide in the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Abstract

Femicide is one of the qualified forms of the crime of homicide and configures itself when the offense is committed in the domestic and/or family sphere, or when the motivation is due to the fact that the victim is female. This qualifier was established by Law 13,104/15 and as a consequence allows the quantification of femicide cases since its enactment. The present study aims to answer the following issue: did the social restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic lead to an increase in femicide rates in Brazil? For this purpose, it uses an inductive methodology, through bibliographic and doctrinal study and research reports carried out in Brazil in the years of 2018, 2019 and 2020.