It is around half a century since the idea of femicide was introduced by feminists. It is, wrote the activist and scholar Diana Russell, who was key in its development, “a term that specifically points to and politicises the sexist, patriarchal, misogynistic killing of women and girls by men”. The point was not merely to identify a problem: it was to challenge people to recognise and act upon it.
The concept was rapidly taken up by campaigners globally. Although men are the most common victims of homicide, women are far more likely to be killed by men than by other women. Most frequently they are killed by current or former partners, often after sustained domestic abuse or coercive control. As of this week, in the UK alone, at least 50 women have allegedly been killed by men this year.
That stark figure comes from the Guardian project Killed women count. Throughout this year, we aim to report on every case in which a man has been charged over a death, drawing on the work of campaigns such as Counting Dead Women, the Femicide Census and Killed Women. Keotshepile Naso Isaacs, 33, described by friends as “a beautiful soul”, was found dead in North Berwick on New Year’s Day. Each month, the toll has mounted. The count does not include girls under 16, and some cases which have reached the headlines may not, or not yet, have resulted in charges. The criminologist Jane Monckton Smith has also suggested that a significant number of killings are not even investigated as homicides.
Chitsidzo Chinyanga, Sam Varley, Kanticha Sukpengpanao, Olivia Wood, Pauline Sweeney – to their families and friends, the loss must be incalculable. Yet most of these names will be unknown to the wider public, in many cases their deaths barely noticed outside their families and communities. Their lives span the length of the country, and the breadth of society. Lauren Evans was just 22; Emma Finch was 96. Each case is different. But together, individual stories add up to profound and entrenched tragedy.
Information from cases resulting in murder convictions unveils patterns. In far too many cases of femicide, the victims or their loved ones had already warned police that they were at risk. In a striking number, victims of abuse or stalking had reported their abusers breaching protection orders before their deaths.
While some police forces have made strides in handling domestic abuse, others are falling far short. Some victims report officers being dismissive. Systems that look good on paper often fail to work in practice, so that repeated reports of abuse or harassment are not properly logged. Civil society groups working to protect women need long-term, consistent funding. Tackling misogynistic attitudes requires, among other things, more consistent application of the healthy relationships curriculum in education, and addressing online spaces which draw in boys and poison their attitudes to girls and women.
In recent years, one woman in the UK has been killed by a man every three days on average. But ubiquity must not be mistaken for inevitability. The persistence of these crimes reflects not only their deep social and cultural roots, but also the failure to fully take heed of them and work harder to tackle them. Identifying the scale of the problem allows us to see the scale of the loss. That recognition must now spur further action.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
