By Bianca Oliveira
SAO PAULO – In the week that the International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Brazilian Senate discussed some actions to ensure greater representativeness and security for women. Gender inequality and domestic violence are structural problems in the country and have been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a session in honor of women, some projects were approved by parliamentarians. The first of them creates the leadership of the female bench, which is now the third largest in the Senate with 12 representatives. Senator Simone Tebet’s role as leader will be to contribute with the president of the House and the other leaders to define the voting agenda.
The president of the National Congress, Rodrigo Pacheco, reinforced during a tribute to Women’s Day that the female presence is 14.6% in the Chamber of Deputies and 14.8% in the Senate. Brazil is in the 140th position among the 191 countries surveyed by the Interparliamentary Union (organization linked to the United Nations – UN) in the evaluation of the female parliamentary presence.
The Senate also approved the Law that criminalizes obsessive persecution, also known as “stalking”. According to data from the Stalking Resource Center, 76% of femicide victims were persecuted by their intimate partners, with 54% of victims reporting to the police that they were being “stalked” before they were murdered.
Domestic violence was one of the problems aggravated by the social isolation imposed by the pandemic in 2020. The Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP) registered 649 femicides during the first half of 2020, an increase of 2% in relation to 2019. To draw attention to this problem, the creation of the National Day to Combat Domestic and Family Violence was suggested. According to the proposal, the date of August 7 should be dedicated to alert society about aggressive and abusive behavior in the domestic environment against women, children and the elderly.
Finally, a Bill was also approved that makes state policy the incentive to women’s participation in the areas of science,