Neves was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but a Brazilian judge gave him his freedom for as long as it took for him to fight his sentence at the higher courts.

In Brazil men hold 90% of the seats in the 500 largest Brazilian corporate boardrooms and 93% of seats in Congress. Women's wages are 30% lower than male wages.

But at the same time a woman named Dilma Roussef heads Presidetn Lula's most powerful cabinet office. Roussef is the Chief of Staff. The Brazilian Chief Justice is a woman. A woman also heads Lula's Environment Ministry. During the 90's, female educational indicators improved significantly. Today women are better educated than men.

These are the two sides of Brazil's reality of gender: Violence against women on the one hand, and female empowerment on the other.

It is hard to say whether these two phenomena are connected. It is a fact that concern about violence against women is growing in Brazil. A poll conducted by Brazil's largest public opinion institute, Ibope, together with a feminist NGO called Instituto Patricia Galvao found that 51% of those polled knew at least one woman who had been victim of male violence, and that three out of four reckon punishment for violence against females to be too soft in Brazil. A majority of the population thinks that the Courts don't consider violence against women important enough.

Perhaps there is a connection between female social progress and male violence toward women. Perhaps emerging female empowerment in Brazil has become a threat to less educated, more insecure males.

Women are still midway toward changing their status in Brazil. For now, let us recognize the tension caused when males reach to female progress and work to minimize the associated risks. Cases such as Neves's will become ever more intolerable while women assume more leadership positions in the future.