Impact of ‘Maria da Penha Law' on female mortality due to aggression in Brazil, 2001-2011

INTRODUCTION:  In Brazil, the Law n. 11.340, enacted in 2006, known as ‘Maria da Penha Law’, created mechanisms to prevent domestic and family violence against women, including integrated measures of prevention, assistance to women victims of violence and protective measures applied to the aggressor. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the ‘Maria da Penha’ Law on the female mortality due to aggression.

METHODS:  A time series study with before-and-after design was conducted with data from the period 2001-2011, from the Mortality Information System of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The number of deaths was corrected through proportional redistribution of the events of undetermined intent. Corrected mortality rates were calculated. The Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model was used. 

RESULTS:  54,107 deaths of women due to aggression were estimated for the period 2001-2011. The deaths were concentrated in the age group 20-39 years (52.5%) among black women (55.0%) and lower education (45.4% with up to seven years of study, highlighting that there were 36 6% of missing information for this variable). The main causes were injury by firearms (52.0%) and injury by sharp instrument, sharp or blunt (30.0%), followed by suffocation (5.7%). More than a third of the deaths occurred during the weekends (35.5%), and nearly a third of the deaths occurred at home (27.0%). The corrected mortality rates were 5.28 and 5.22 per 100,000 women in the periods 2001-2006 and 2007-2011, respectively, before and after the enactment of the law. Comparing these periods, there was no reduction in annual female mortality rates due to aggression (p=0.846). 

CONCLUSIONS:  The Law that created mechanisms to prevent domestic and family violence against women had no impact on the female mortality due to aggression. The mortality profile is largely consistent with the occurrence of domestic violence against women.