Students, academics and activists came together to hear about an inspiring new book which gives insights to the many different forms of violence against women and the ways women have found to resist.
Gendered Urban Violence among Brazilians: Painful truths from Rio de Janeiro and London is a new Open Access book aiming to uncover and understand the harsh realities of widespread, normalised gender violence from the perspective of Brazilian women. It acknowledges the unequal power structures women face and looks towards the ways they have found to resist.
Based on research conducted between 2016 and 2023 (see more below), the collaboratively written book focuses on women living in the favelas of Maré in Rio de Janeiro and Brazilian women living in London. It makes clear that gendered violence is not unique to Brazil’s urban peripheries nor does it exclusively affect Brazilian migrant women.
Although the book has uncovered many harrowing testimonies, it also compiles positive stories of the lives of Brazilian women living in the favelas in Rio and as migrants in London.
The content of the book is painful but also full of hope. It aims to better understand the ‘painful truths’ of gendered violence in cities, bringing to light the stories of many women on the receiving end as victims and survivors and the ways in which women challenge violence through resistance and creative practices as agents. Definitely worth a read and available to download through Open Access.
Gendered urban violence among Brazilians: Painful truths from Rio de Janeiro and London
Authors: Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans, Paul Heritage Miriam Krenzinger, Moniza Rizzini Ansari, and Eliana Sousa Silva
Edited by Rebecca Wilson
Published by Manchester University Press. Order a copy or access the book for free online.
eISBN: 9781526175663
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526175663
A creative book launch
The book was launched at the Science Gallery London in September, bringing together students, academics, and activists at the start of the new academic term. It was sponsored by the Visual Embodied Methodologies Network at King’s College London, reflecting their participation in some of the arts-based research discussed in the book.
The event began with a creative introduction to understanding acts of violence against women. A rehearsed reading by theatre- and filmmaker Gaël Le Cornec set the scene with a segment from her verbatim theatre play Efêmera, based on the research from the book. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it depicted a compilation of Brazilian migrant women’s stories of the violence they have experienced, presented in the figure of the main character, Ana. This was followed by a spoken word performance from Simone Azevedo, an activist from MinA (Migrants in Action theatre group), titled Resistance and Resilience.
Co-authors of the book Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans, and Moniza Rizzini Ansari (who dialled in from Rio de Janeiro) came together for a panel presentation about the book and the research which it is based on.
The event ended with drinks and nibbles and a creative workshop run by Adriana Pereira from MinA with Carolina Cal and Renata Peppl. In this artistic group activity, participants drew visual interpretations of something that had impressed them during the presentations and they expressed their thoughts and feelings on gender violence affecting Brazilian women in London and Rio de Janeiro.



MinA said of the event:
Last night was truly special as we gathered to celebrate Cathy’s incredible work on our community.
Our Simone shared her beautiful poetry, and alongside Adriana, they led a powerful creative activity where attendees expressed their thoughts and feelings on gender violence affecting Brazilian women in both London and Rio de Janeiro.
It was an evening of reflection, creativity, and connection. Thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed to this important conversation.
Together, we can create change.
Background to the research
During the panel, Cathy McIlwaine introduced the research process for this book, which was a collaborative project consisting in six projects and involving three Universities (King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) and seven civil society organisations – who also brought together artists, film editors, and graphic designers. Knowledge and data were gathered from 1,220 people through interviews, surveys, focus groups, and workshops. The participants were also creators and there was a blurring of boundaries as the project progressed with women transitioning from victims to protagonists through different solidarity actions.
Yara Evans from Imperial College explained how the research did not aim to compare the situation of Brazilian women in London and the favelas of Rio in Maré, but to capture ideas from each reality.
Evans explained how this new book is part of a wider body of work that she has been involved in with the Latin American community in London. This work has resulted in the groundbreaking and influential reports No Longer Invisible (2011) and Towards Visibility (2016), research led by Cathy in partnership with the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS).
Yara reflected that this earlier research, and the report We Can’t Fight in the Dark (2018), also with LAWRS, identified a “Pandora’s box of pain and suffering of Latin American women who were interviewed”, revealing a spectrum of different forms of violence and the normalisation of violence against them. The report led many migrant women to become aware that the situation they were going through was ‘violence’. The immigration context is very important as lack of documentation limits the help available and the barriers for migrant women getting support and being scared to report violence due to fears about being deported.


Moniza, a postdoctoral researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a lawyer with Redes da Maré, spoke about the methodologies used in the research in Maré, where they used creative arts as well as more traditional approaches to gather the information.
Their research aimed to show the women as active agents reacting to different forms of violence. As the project progressed, they uncovered conscious and unconscious acts of resistance by the women participants as they became more aware of the layers of violence they lived with. Conscious resistance could include actions like community organising and advocacy efforts by civil society groups. Unconscious resistance might involve personal behaviours like altering routines or avoiding certain areas in urban settings to manage safety, or expressing yourself artistically to subtly challenge violence or oppression.
These methodologies developed as a result of the women’s protagonism and their interaction with the project. Moniza also explained the collaborative ways they went about documenting knowledge, like in observational drawings created by Mila de Choch during the workshops, which gave a visual representation of the women’s body language when discussing violence and resistance; and body-territory mapping exercises that helped women to identify and locate the physical and emotional impact in their bodies of the violence they experienced. It also helped women reflect on where violence takes place within the places they live. Territorial maps and story maps were also used to make women’s strategies more visible and helped with the development of policies on safe spaces for women.

Moniza also reflected on their collaboration with Museu da Pessoa which entailed filming the testimonies of ten women artists from Maré about their experiences of resistance. These ‘digital stories’ appear in an online exhibition and this part of the work will continue in Maré through a new project with Redes da Maré (and their Casa das Mulheres da Maré) and the WOW Foundation in London, with a focus on feminist activism among young women.
The book also includes discussion of the Women Resisting Violence podcast, produced by Louise Morris in a collaborative project between LAB and King’s College London in 2021.
For more, take a look at the book online here.