Brazil passes a new law specifically oulawing female homicide — femicide

Story here. Excerpt:

'The new law provides a legal definition for femicide — the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender — and proscribes mandatory jail sentences of 12 to 30 years. In addition, the law increases the jail time for crimes against pregnant women, girls under 14, women over 60 and people with disabilities.

"For many years, the so-called passion crimes — homicides of woman by their husbands, lovers — [the perpetrators] would use the argument that 'under stress and deep emotion, this honorable man has killed his wife because she was having an affair and thus dishonouring him and his family and his children,'” Pitanguy says.

Many, many men were let off, or subject to symbolic penalty for murder.

“It in a sense reflected values that women were the property or appendix of the man,” Pitanguy says.

This new law combats that patriarchal notion.

“Laws, they give a standard from where you walk. I think that with the femicide law there will be difficulties in implementing the legislation," she adds. "In the end, this law, its effect will not really be post mortem but be while women are alive. Men know now that if they commit a crime, the penalty will be much higher.”'