UNLIKE numerous existing studies of excellent quality, this survey attempts to investigate not only domestic violence, as it is known, but also the various types of homicide - attempted or consummated - committed against women from all age groups. We investigated and endeavored to compare how this kind of crime was treated: 1. by the media - in particular, 1991 and 2000 newspapers, radio, and television; 2. in police reports filed in 1998 at precincts of the city of São Paulo; and 3. in judicial lawsuits, according to a representative sampling of the five jury courtrooms in the city of São Paulo in 1997. We sought to learn how the media, so resistant at first, dealt with violence towards women at the onset of the 21st century, what the police reports recorded and how the murderers of women were sentenced. The complexity of our results reveals changes in certain segments and a simultaneous mechanism that feeds back and advances age-old violence in gender-based social relations. We conclude by propounding the implementation of transversal gender policy to counter this violence.