Homicídios de mulheres no contexto da Pandemia da Covid-19 e da antipolítica de gênero no governo Bolsonaro

Abstract

In situations of economic, health, and military crises, there is an observed increase in violence against women in all its forms: psychological, physical, economic, sexual, and femicide. Between 2020 and 2022, Brazil faced the COVID-19 pandemic amid the far-right government of former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his anti-gender political agenda. In this context, the present study aims to analyze the impact of the pandemic against the backdrop of Bolsonaro's government's gender antipolitics on the temporal trend of female homicides in Brazil and its regions between 2017 and 2022. To achieve this, we conducted an ecological time-series study, examining the behavior of monthly female homicide rates in the periods before (January 2017 to February 2020) and after (March 2020 to December 2022) the first diagnosed case of COVID-19 in Brazil. We employed an interrupted time-series analysis (level and slope change) to assess this impact. A Quasi-Poisson regression model was applied, considering the presence of seasonality and autocorrelation of residuals. In interrupted time-series analysis, the event whose impact we seek to evaluate is referred to as an intervention; in this study, the intervention is the COVID-19 pandemic within the context of Bolsonaro’s government's gender antipolitics, and the outcome is the monthly female homicide rates from 2017 to 2022. The highest average monthly female homicide rates per one hundred thousand women were observed in the North (0.78) and Northeast (0.70) regions, while the lowest were recorded in the Southeast (0.30) and South (0.38). Across all regions, age groups, and locations of occurrence (public spaces and homes), a reduction in the average monthly homicide rate was noted during the pandemic months compared to the pre-pandemic period (p<0.05). The effect of the pandemic, within the context of Bolsonaro’s government’s gender antipolitics, led to significant changes in the level and trend of monthly female homicide rates in Brazil and the Northeast region (p<0.05). Following the intervention, these areas experienced an abrupt increase in monthly homicide rates, followed by a progressive reduction. In Brazil, the initial increase was approximately 7.8%, with a long-term reduction effect of 0.5%. In the Northeast, the pandemic led to a 19.3% short-term increase in rates and a long-term reduction of 0.6% (RR=0.994). In the Southeast, South, and Midwest, the intervention resulted only in trend changes, with reductions of 0.6%, 0.2%, and 0.6%, respectively. Similar results were observed in homicides by firearms, stabbings, and cases occurring at home. The findings of this study indicate an immediate increase in female homicide rates in Brazil, particularly in the Northeast, followed by a progressive reduction in all localities. This continuous decrease in homicide rates may be related to the ongoing reduction observed after the peak incidence between 2017 and 2019.