Thousands of women are killed each year in the U.S., which ranks 34th in femicide worldwide. Yet the U.S. still hasn’t recognized it as a distinct crime. In this we’re behind other countries in Europe and Latin America.
For example, after a spate of high-profile killings sparked mass protests, last year Italy passed a law recognizing and criminalizing femicide. But recently, Italy’s far-right Futuro Nazionale party leader Roberto Vannacci tried to drag femicide back into normalization, calling it “an ordinary homicide like any other.”
While no homicide can be called ordinary, femicide, the intentional, gender-motivated killing of women and girls, is a hate crime in a class by itself. Unlike “any other” homicide, it manifests the most extreme forms of gender discrimination and power dynamics, gender stereotyping, and gender-based violence. Whether or not it is recognized as such, femicide is happening all over the world.
Somewhere a woman is killed every 10 minutes — and those are just the reported cases. Many femicides never get counted in news reports or statistics. For example, in the U.S. there is a growing pattern of Black femicide victims getting erased from the record.
Femicide is more openly acknowledged outside the U.S., causing recent outcry in Australia, Cuba Ireland, Kenya, Nigeria South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland, to name a few. And it tends to be more recognized in the Global North versus the South. But femicide remains underreported and underrecognized everywhere. The struggle to end it can’t succeed until it is universally recognized as a distinct crime.
It’s not just a question of more prosecution and harsher sentences for perpetrators and justice for victims; the struggle is also about prevention and the larger society, seeing the patterns and holding ourselves accountable for discriminatory norms.
Every country has unique challenges on that front. But since femicide is universal, and very little is being done to stop it, these challenges need to be faced.
The chilling thing about dismissing femicide as “ordinary homicide” is its seeming gender-blindness. It fails to see anything unusual about violence against women, which is an indication of how invisible it is. Calling femicide “ordinary homicide” not only ignores sexual and reproductive rights and justice, it implies that even the most extreme violations of them are unremarkable.
Sadly, this is only too true. Persistent global inaction perpetuates a culture of silence and passive acceptance of gender-based violence as endemic.
Even the Italian anti-femicide law failed to grapple with how deep-seated it is, recognizing femicide as criminal, but not centering measures needed to prevent it by rooting out attitudes that drive it. As awareness of femicide grows in Italy, those measures are still coming under attack. For example, comprehensive sexuality education is an evidence-based, essential school curriculum that can transform gender dynamics and prevent gender-based violence, but the Italian Senate recently passed a bill restricting it and requiring parental consent.
Failure to confront the causes of femicide is global. Around the world, patterns of abuse leading to femicide demonstrate that violence against women is rarely random, but usually an outgrowth of entrenched attitudes of control, entitlement, and gender inequality. Toxic masculinity and patriarchal norms can lead men to assert dominance over women extending to physical violence.
When inequality is normalized, women’s bodily autonomy is denied and their bodies are stigmatized, harmful stereotypes fester, sexuality education isn’t available, and there’s no accountability for any of it, femicide is what happens.
Every time a government or party official refuses to recognize this, femicide becomes that much harder to understand, measure, and prevent. Femicide is a global problem demanding a global response, recognizing it everywhere, and confronting it with honest language, evidence-based education, and a renewed commitment to end it once and for all.
We need frank, transnational conversations about patterns of gender-based violence and femicide, with more documentation and data collection. We need to use those learnings to support survivor healing and take preventive measures, for example by embracing comprehensive sexuality education instead of restricting it.
We need solidarity in the fight against femicide. Instead of platforming destructive regressive attitudes, we should elevate and cross-connect the anti-femicide movement in Argentina, protestors in Kenya, and advocates in Romania.
Denying femicide is dismissive and divisive. Confronting it, recognizing it for what it is and centering ways to eradicate it, unites us. It will only end when we all scream with one voice, “ni una menos” – not one woman fewer, not one more victim of femicide.
Maniza Habib is the Senior Research and Program Manager at the Population Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that supports reproductive health and rights.