Violência estrutural de gênero: do patriarcado colonial ao contrato sexual

Abstract

Gender violence is a particular form of violence directed at women, constituting a dilemma present in all societies and, in recent years, the subject of specific public policies and legislation, especially in Latin and Central America. In this dissertation, I propose to investigate gender violence from a decolonial perspective, reconstructing the history of precolonial Brazilian patriarchy and highlighting the visible transformations that occurred with the arrival of Europeans on the South American continent, in a modern/colonial patriarchy, based on the works of authors Rita Laura Segato, Julieta Paredes Carvajal, and Lélia González. First, I examine how European colonialism transformed interpersonal and social relations through the “creation” of racial and gender categories in America, impacting the lives of indigenous and African-American peoples. Secondly, based on these authors, I analyse the interrelationship between gender violence and the differentiated status between men and women, mainly impacting violence that becomes daily routine involving Afro-indigenous women, such as rape, prostitution, the rental of enslaved women for breastfeeding and domestic services. Subsequently, the project of coloniality continues in a “modern” patriarchy that is consolidated through the formation of institutions and the republican state in America. I analyse the interrelationship between gender violence and the differentiated status between men and women, mainly impacting violence that becomes routine involving Afro- ndigenous women, such as rape, prostitution, the renting of enslaved women for breastfeeding, and for domestic services. Mirrored in the social contract and its Eurocentric modus operandi, which operates according to a sexual contract in which women were unable to enjoy the same conditions asmen, exemplified through the marriage contract, this patriarchy takes on violent dimensions justified by law. Furthermore, after the marriage contract, other non-explicit contracts are observed, such as the maintenance of a legal system that seeks to safeguard the law as a prevailing system occupied by white men, while continuing to marginalise feminised bodies, in a process that I call structural gender violence.