domestic violence

Domestic Violence Domestic violence is a violent or aggressive behavior within the home, typically involving the violent abuse of a spouse or partner. This is an important topic that has been going on in the United States and around the world for a good length of time now. This was an important topic that I thought needed to be talked about more in the world today. Domestic violence happens all around the world and it makes you wonder why the victim stays with, or returns to their abusers after a period of time being away from them. The country that I chose to do my research on is Brazil. I wasn’t sure which country I wanted to focus on going into the project so choosing Brazil just kind of happened. I never really knew how bad the domestic violence was there until I Google’d their countries domestic violence statistics and they really caught me off guard seeing how bad it was. In the introduction of our “Women’s voices, Feminist visions” book I found an interesting statistic that I found to be very shocking. On page 516, under “Battering and physical abuse” it reads “although women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are 5 to 8 times more likely to be victimized by an intimate partner.” Which was very shocking to me because didn’t expect it to be that high. One statistic from the United States that totally blew my mind was that every day, about four women die in the united states as a result of domestic abuse and if you do the calculations that is approximately 1,400 a year. Seeing those kinds of numbers makes you wonder why the punishments are worse or what is wrong with people when they allow their significant other to get away with the abuse.
In Brazil, it doesn’t get any better. The reason why I chose to pick Brazil to talk about as my part of the group was because of a few statistics I seen that had me curious about country. Social Watch is an international NGO (non-governmental organization) watchdog network

Cited: Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. "Ch 10: Battering and Physical Abuse." Women 's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Page 516. "Brazil: Domestic Violence Affects Four in 10 Women." Social Watch. Inesc. 13 July 2011. Web. Hider, James. “Real men don’t beat women.” The Times. N.p. 02 August 2013. Page 33. “Violence against women in Latin America: Everyday aggression”. The Economist. Buenos Aires. 21 September 2013. Web. Analysis Domestic violence is a scary thing to begin with and after doing my research for this paper I found it to be terrifying. There is too many bad things going on in the world already and domestic violence shouldn’t be one of them. I learned a lot about the problems going on in Brazil with domestic abuse. The statistics alone had me amazed with how bad they were. I was astounded to read that 43.1 percent of women have suffered some kind of violence throughout Brazil in their homes compared to just 12.3 percent of males. I couldn’t believe it was that big of a difference. When I read that the main cause of death to Brazilian women from the ages 16 to 44 was domestic abuse, which also came as a shock to me because it shows us that this violence is leading to a lot of deaths among women that should be living a valuable life and living it happy. I also learned that in Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds, which disgusts me in so many ways. One last statistic that really was the one took it way over the edge was that only 70 men were arrested when there were over 1,800 rapes reported in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It really just seems like they’re letting the men do the crime and if they get caught red handed then that’s when they get in trouble for their offense but if they aren’t getting caught in the action of doing it then they will never be arrested for their crime. It’s terrible how ruthless men are in Brazil and with the amount of crimes they are getting away with it’s almost telling them that it is okay to be doing it. Brazil’s government is attempting to put a stop to this and their latest action might be able to really help. In the “Violence against women in Latin America: Everyday aggression” they noted that the national and local governments in Brazil have handed out panic buttons to women with restraining orders against abusive former partners. When triggered, the devices use GPS technology to help the police track down the victim quickly. I think that is a large step in the right direction for the Brazilian government because it is showing that they are trying to put a stop to these actions. I believe that the panic buttons can actually do a justice in catching some of these offenders and handing out the punishments that these criminals deserve. I wasn’t sure what I was going to learn when I chose to do my research on Brazil but it was more interesting than I thought it was going to be after I kept finding such good information on how bad things really are down in Brazil. I’ve always thought Brazil was an interesting place and finding that domestic violence is so bad down there, makes me want to look into their country more to see just how much crime is going on.