ABSTRACT
This essay intends to be a contribution to the studies of gender and crime, specifically those related to feminicide, through the analysis of two criminal cases of murders of structurally different women which occurred in the city of Montes Claros (MG/Brazil) in the years of 1996 and 2006. In order to do this, this paper seeks to understand how gender representations operate, how they are triggered in the discourses that circulate inside the cases and how they end up being the basis for the determination of sentences; on the other hand, it investigates how these crimes may lead us to think about the life of women in contemporary biopolitics. The disregard of justice, the lenient sentences and the attempts to trivialize the crimes and disqualify the victims shown in these cases make the precarity of these women’s lives explicit and indicate how they are of little value to the state.
Keywords:
gender; crime; power; feminicide