Faith-Based Organisations as Welfare Providers in Brazil: The Conflict over Gender in Cases of Domestic Violence

Abstract

What does the growth of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in social welfare mean for women’s rights and gender equality, especially within advocacy services for women experiencing domestic violence? Through empirical research within a Catholic-based organisation providing welfare services to abused women in São Paulo, Brazil, this article argues that FBOs can negatively impact the provision of women’s rights when conservative and patriarchal views towards gender and women’s roles in society are maintained. A heavily matrifocal perspective, where women’s identity and subjectivity are mediated through their normative roles as wives, mothers and carers of the family, appears to offer little possibility of change for abused women, who are encouraged to forgive violent husbands and question their own behaviour. Mediation between couples is promoted, undermining women’s rights upheld through Brazil’s domestic violence law (Lei Maria da Penha no 11.340). Furthermore, the focus of family preservation, supported by a patriarchal state, means that violence against women (VAW) appears to be subordinated to a focus on family violence and violence against children. In this case, faith-based involvement in social welfare rejects the feminist analysis of VAW as a gender-based problem, viewing it as a personal issue rather than a collective or political issue, making women responsible for the violence in their lives.

Conservative Christianity and Intimate Partner Violence in Brazil

“…There is a largely negative view of religion in the literature on organisations combating domestic violence (Beecheno 2019;Bradley 2010;Dobash and Dobash 1998;Lewy & Dull 2005;Merry 2001;Nason-Clark 1997, 2004Nason-Clark and Holtmann 2013;Nason-Clark Fisher-Townsend et al, 2017;Pagelow and Johnson 1988;Plesset 2006;Vilhena 2011), suggesting that religion is presented as a mechanism through which violence against women (vaw) is supported and legitimised. Women with strong religious belief are more likely to stay in an abusive relationship for longer and work harder at saving the marriage than secular women because they believe that a marriage vow made in front of God cannot be undone (Nason-Clark 1997, 2004.…”

Exhausted Women, Exhausted Welfare and the Role of Religion

“…It also highlights the challenges and is in this respect an important contribution to a discussion of how religious organisations in the welfare sphere can or can't focus on their core mission and collaborate with other organisations and authorities, as well as also providing important examples of how general strains on the welfare system manifest themselves in social inclusion or exclusion at the local level. Beecheno's (2019) contribution also lifts this issue of competing logics for faith-based welfare providers in her study of "Faith-Based Organisations as Welfare Providers in Brazil: The Conflict over Gender in Cases of Domestic Violence". Her article based on ethnographic research in Brazil shows the constant negotiations that are ongoing between organisations providing welfare and the state or legal system, but also between care-givers and providers as well as the internalisation of these tensions by individuals.…”