The protests were the result of social unrest caused by brutal crimes in a very short period of time. These were not just statistics, but horrors that exposed the most violent face of misogyny.

Tainara Souza was dragged for a kilometre along one of the busiest roads in São Paulo simply for saying no. On the same day, Isabele Gomes and her children were burned alive by her partner in Recife. On top of these were the murders of Layze Costa and Allane Souza in Rio de Janeiro by a colleague who refused to accept female leadership, and the attempted femicide of Evelin de Souza, motivated by refusal to accept the end of a relationship. These cases brought the total number of femicides in 2025 to a record 5,582, the highest since the crime was classified.

The protests showed that such events are not isolated, but reflections of a cultural and political context saturated with ultra-conservative values. Under a predominantly male and conservative legislature, women’s rights face constant threats. The protests sought to show that femicide is the culmination of a cycle rooted in the normalisation of control over women’s bodies.

The violence that culminates in physical crime is fuelled by a structure that tolerates harassment, validates male superiority and criminalises female independence. Femicide is preceded by a culture that teaches that no is negotiable and a woman’s life is disposable if she challenges the imposed submission. The streets have called for radical change in the mindset that transforms hatred into political and everyday practice.

Civil society has been fundamental in creating counter-narratives and transforming mentalities through cultural production and the occupation of spaces for dialogue. Collectives and organisations of women, academics, artists and communicators form networks using art, audiovisual media, literature and digital platforms as pedagogical tools to deconstruct the normalisation of violence.

This movement responds to the rise of radicalised discourses by promoting new models of masculinity and reinforcing female autonomy. Projects rescue the memory of victims and give voice to survivors, transforming pain into educational and political power. Documentaries, investigative podcasts and social media campaigns explain that femicide is not a sudden event, but the culmination of invisible violence.

Faced with the state’s limitations, women’s movements are also building alternative routes of protection, particularly in peripheral and rural areas. Support groups, grassroots legal advocates and solidarity networks offer emotional support and legal guidance that precede official institutions, operating with a logic of welcoming that does not re-victimise women. Despite bureaucratic rigidity and institutional requirements that ignore their realities, these networks save lives, produce practical knowledge and articulate academic knowledge with community experiences. ELAS+ supports projects led by women, recognising them as indispensable parts of the protection network.

Increasingly, organisations have to address gender-based violence facilitated by technology. In 2025, one in 10 women – almost nine million Brazilian women – suffered this type of violence. Recognising this urgency, ELAS+ created the ELAS+ Digital Citizenship Call for Proposals to support organisations that combat digital violence.

From monitoring the organisations we support, we have learned about the threat of stalkerware, a tool used to subject partners to surveillance and intensify domestic violence, victimising mainly LGBTQI+ people and women. Under the guise of care, these technologies perpetuate dynamics of control.

However, most of these organisations face financial constraints that prevent expansion. In the face of this, ELAS+ embodies a vision that replaces bureaucratic control with strategic solidarity, focusing on long-term sustainability. By basing their support on radical trust, organisations exercise autonomy to decide the most effective paths to take.

Law 15.334 creates a National Day of Mourning in memory of Eloá Pimentel, a 15-year-old teenager held hostage and murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2008, in a case that shocked Brazil. The law carries weight that goes beyond legislative formality. The problem cannot be solved if it is not officially recognised as a public emergency.

Even though this is symbolic in nature, it works as an important political signal, indicating that institutions are attentive to social movements’ historical demands. The recognition of lives violently cut short becomes a collective responsibility. The right to memory is an essential pillar, as gender-based violence is not only manifested in the final act of femicide; it originates in symbolic places with material consequences.

Before physical aggression, there’s moral, patrimonial and psychological violence that promote women’s social death, removing them from public spaces, undermining their autonomy and preventing them fully exercising their citizenship. The commemoration removes this violence from invisibility and names the process of dehumanisation that precedes the crime.

For this not to remain purely symbolic, it must be a starting point for tangible actions. Whether mourning is transformed into public policy determines whether it’s merely a tribute or an instrument for preserving lives. By formalising the memory of Eloá, Brazil is forced to confront past mistakes, since this was a case surrounded by media spectacle, where the aggressor was humanised while Eloá was dehumanised and blamed, and called on to ensure that society and institutions are not complicit in more women’s deaths.

I wouldn’t say there was direct resistance, but the law was passed amid a legislative environment that wasn’t very receptive to women’s demands. Congress, composed mainly of men, reflects a barrier to representation that affects the priority given to gender issues.

This legislature often passes symbolic measures but shows disengagement or opposition when the debate involves expanding women’s autonomy and rights. An example of this was its resistance to a law known as the ECA Digital, which extends the protection of the Statute of the Child and Adolescent to the online environment.

This stance reveals a contradiction: it is acceptable to honour past victims, but there’s failure to protect women in the present, neglecting support structures or reducing rights that have won recognition. There’s a noticeable effort to promote agendas that restrict women’s citizenship, transforming Congress into a space of contention.

The law is a step forward in the memory of feminist struggles, but it coexists with the urgent need for change in political culture. Women’s rights cannot be secondary issues, and this needs robust female representation and the strengthening of civil society.

Ensuring the sustainability of women’s organisations is a prerequisite for democracy. They are the ones on the front line, preventing achievements from becoming dead letters. Investment in their financial autonomy allows social transformations to resonate and remain.

An intersectional, holistic and strategic approach is needed to reduce femicides, with the strengthening of laws and mechanisms that are fragile and unable to deal with social disparities.

Femicide isn’t colour-blind: Black women represent between 63 and 68 per cent of victims, highlighting how racism makes them more vulnerable. This vulnerability is exacerbated when class, gender identity, location and sexuality are added to the mix.

According to the Notifiable Diseases Information System, between 2016 and 2024, cases of violence against lesbian women increased by 50 per cent. The relationship between femicide and the killing of lesbian women exposes a complex layer where gender hatred merges with hatred of lesbian women, revealing a cruel spectrum that encompasses so-called ‘corrective rape’ – the attempt to punish and ‘correct’ dissident sexuality – and culminates in murder.

Statistical invisibility is an aggravating factor for Indigenous women, trans women and transvestites, whose experiences are obscured by classifications that ignore their identities. Trans people face barriers because legal definitions of femicide tend to focus on ‘female sex’, but we need to be clear that when a man kills his partner out of jealousy, it is a femicide, whether she was a cis or trans woman. The high rates of murders of trans women are partly due to their status as women.

Indigenous women suffer from institutional racism and territorial conflicts. Geographical distance and language barriers result in the erasure of data that compromises the struggle against these issues.

It is urgent to implement protocols that combat racism, hatred of lesbian women, transphobia and institutional sexism in police stations and the judiciary, ensuring women’s voices are not silenced. It’s also necessary to ensure adequate funding and accessible services, focusing on the specific vulnerabilities of locales that face greater barriers to accessing reporting and shelter.

This reinforces the importance of local women-led organisations that know the territories and their challenges. However, less than two per cent of global donations go to women and girls’ causes, in a context where the rights of minority populations are under threat. The sustainability of the women’s ecosystem is a matter of democratic survival. That’s why ELAS+ operates on the basis of radical trust, offering flexibility for people at the grassroots to decide priorities. Strengthening these movements financially is the way to turn the crisis into a culture of protection and reverse alarming rates of femicide.