“Elas mentem, usam a DEAM como Disk Vingança”: a representação social dos policiais das DEAMs do Estado do Rio de Janeiro sobre as mulheres em situação de violência e gênero

Abstract

The present research investigated the Social Representations of the civil police who work in Specialized Police Stations for Women (DEAM) of the Rio de Janeiro State on women in violence's situations. The research was made in three DEAMs of the Rio de Janeiro's Metropolitan region and it was based on the Theory of Social Representations, developed by Serge Moscovici (1961), from the perspective of the culturalist approach of Denise Jodelet (1989). The methodological strategy used was the qualitative research and the instruments of data collection were semi-structured interviews. To analyze the data, was used the Thematic Content Analysis (BARDIN, 2010), following the operational steps: corpus' constitution, floating reading, codification, categorization and inferences. The analysis pointed out that women who are in violence's situations are represented, mainly, from two perspectives: "the victims and those who use the occurrence register as revenge"; determining how women use the DEAMs' space and the way police officers perceive them. Such representations were anchored and objectified in conceptions linked to the biological, social and emotional sphere. It was noticed that the policemen try to act in an impartial way and not to favor neither the women nor the men in their care. The precariousness of the police work has emerged both as a factor of work motivation, directly affecting the service to women, as well as in the perception of the DEAMs as a reception space, so that women find possibilities for a more dignified life, far from violence.