O que querem as mulheres? Uma análise criminológica do feminicídio sob a ótica da mínima intervenção penal

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the limits and efficacy of Criminal Law in facing extreme violence against women, which is femicide. To that effort, this research’s methodological path begins at understanding how gender disputes are structured and maintained in society, based, in Brazil and in most western countries, upon a patriarchal point of view that exerts domination upon women by means of symbolic violence. It is analyzed how the world builds and composes an engine of mending and/or overcoming of these gender asymmetries by means of creating instruments to protect women’s human rights, following feminist movements’ struggles, and how Brazil mostly elects Criminal Law as the able mechanism to protect these rights. Following this analysis, it is discussed the limits that should be established in the process of using the criminal system as a means to protect human rights, based on studies of a minimal criminal intervention policy. “Good repute” and subsidiarity of criminal law are the main explored principles. Finally, the work presents a brief analysis of femicide’s process of acknowledgement as a social phenomenon in Latin America and how femicide was establishment as criminal law in Brazil, studying its reflections on the criminal system to discuss, from all analyzed premises, the problems with its criminalization as a way to effectively safeguard women’s rights.