Between Punishment and Care: Twenty Years of the Maria da Penha Law and the Limits of a Narrative of Progress

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the twenty years of the Maria da Penha Law (Law No. 11.340/2006) that departs from both the linear discourse of progress and the narrative of implementation failure. It argues that the law's trajectory is structured by a constitutive tension between a punitive logic, centered on criminal accountability, and a logic of care, oriented toward mediation, listening, and the transformation of gender relations. Drawing on a four-phase periodization, from the dispute over constitutionality to educational expansion, the article reviews Brazilian Social Sciences scholarship on the law and mobilizes a theoretical framework articulating symbolic violence (Bourdieu), the recognition-redistribution distinction (Fraser), and the ethics of care (Gilligan; Tronto). The comparative discussion with the Portuguese case, based on secondary literature, suggests that this tension is not a Brazilian particularity. The article concludes that understanding the law's twenty years requires asking less whether it succeeded or failed, and more recognizing that its trajectory has, from the outset, registered an unresolved dispute over what it means to confront domestic violence against women.