The roots of femicide: an epidemic threat to the lives of women.

Written By Amy Hutchinson

Equality in a modern-day world is a paramount consideration in most legal jurisdictions, as the Rule of Law is centred on egalitarian principles. Whilst common law does protect against murder, present legislation fails to bear due regard to gender-based killings. This is a particularly concerning notion when this year saw the highest number of total intentional female homicides. Femicide is not only a modern-day epidemic, as the ritualised killing of women has held a prevalence in society for centuries; this may be evidenced through the targeting of witch hunts in England during the sixteenth century to the burning of those who practised lesbianism in France during the fifteenth century. Misogynistic interpretations of the Bible fostered sexist beliefs that women were inferior to men, and therefore, more susceptible to the devil’s temptations; the presumption was that women were far more susceptible to magic and demonic control than men. Ultimately, women have been at an additional risk of being killed for centuries, simply for being women. This article will explore the epidemic nature of femicide; by 1) contextualising its prevalence through discussion of feminist theory, 2) honing in on the offence of intimate femicide, 3) drawing parallels between the motives spanning decades of case examples and 4) it will set out the current and inadequate legal protections for women.

The origins of Femicide

Femicide can be defined as intentional killing with a gender-related motivation; this may be driven by stereotyped gender roles, discrimination towards women and girls, unequal power dynamics between women and men, and harmful social norms. Statistics emphasise that femicide is a global issue, in 2022 around 48,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. Though historic cases, such as Jack the Ripper, illustrate the prevalence of gender-based killings dating decades back, the term femicide was first coined by Diana Russel in 1976 (a feminist writer and activist) during the proceedings of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Brussels. She fought to eradicate perceptions of homicide being inherently gender-neutral, instead advocating that misogynistic beliefs can facilitate violent killings of women. 

Though men are more likely to be murdered than women, they are rarely murdered simply because they are men; violence against women is often employed as a punishment tool, in order to force them to adhere to certain behaviours. Russells realised this, and sought to challenge, respond to and prohibit femicide by mobilising a stagnancy in the law. If gender-based killings were nameless and therefore invisible, how could the deaths ever be truly recognised? The lack of legal recognition naturally translates into an absence of justice. The killings are fuelled by malice and discrimination, yet the murders are rarely recognised for what they are as a result of legal neglect.

The motivation of Russells can therefore be underpinned by the “politics of naming” theory. This theory outlines how words give meaning to the world, shape reality and produce social and political changes. Social and political change can incite realisations, with acknowledgment being a pivotal weapon in the battle against archaic patriarchal structures that incite discrimination. 

Intimate Femicide

For some women, home can be the most lethal place. Intimate femicide is the most prevalent form of femicide and falls under the remit of lethal domestic private violence. Out of 147 women killed by men in the UK in the year of 2021, 53% were killed by a current or former intimate partner. Reinforcing my earlier point that violence is a tool used by men to force women to adhere to certain behaviours, 33 of those women were taking steps to leave, or had left the relationship- here the goal is subordination and control. In this way, intimate femicide can be premised on societal gender expectations formed by the patriarchy, more specifically, a woman’s supposed duty to obey their male counterparts. Perpetrators of physical abuse often reside or enter the home and as women cannot predict with certainty which man will treat them with violence, they are inclined to greet all men with trepidation. 

Domestic private violence has been historically punished less severely than other forms of violence; this phenomenon is recognised as the “domestic discount”. Up until 1993, marital rape (sexual intercourse with one’s spouse without their consent) was legal in the UK. Sexual intercourse within a marriage was regarded as a male spouse’s marital entitlement and the wife being could be seen as a possession. Criminalising marital rape was an essential preventative step in reducing intimate violence, nonetheless, it was an overdue reform in an epidemic of violence against women, coming into force just over 30 years ago. 

Another historical example of the domestic discount in practice is the provocation defence; this partial defence was developed into common law in 1706 and allowed defendants to avoid the death penalty after committing a murder in particular circumstances. Adultery was considered a qualifying circumstance, “for the jealousy is the rage of a man and adultery is the highest invasion of property”; this demonstrates how women’s rights were infringed under this defence; they were commodities, ultimately considered a male’s property. The courts sought to limit the defence in following centuries, altering the threshold to: “ something which might naturally cause an ordinary and reasonable-minded man to lose his self-control and commit such an act”. Though this narrowed who could pursue the partial defence, a gap in the law remained,  permitting the killing of a wife guilty of inconveniencing their husband to result in a manslaughter conviction as opposed to murder. Intimate femicide has historically been regarded as a lesser offence than other forms of homicide, more specifically it has been justified on the basis that women who stray from the conventions of a “good wife” can provoke their husbands into causing their untimely deaths. 

Risk Management for Women

There is an acknowledgement that the risk of femicide for women is currently ever present, but how is such a risk responded to?  Women often engage in, due to social conditioning and fear of violence, an approach of cognitive mapping; this approach can be defined as determining who and where the perceived threats to safety are located and altering everyday decisions to reduce vulnerability. The precautionary behavioural adjustments for women has become a social norm; such alterations include: not going out or walking home at night, avoiding lonely areas, sharing their location with friends, and carrying alarms. Such measures are very much embedded in society and are taught to girls from a very young age, demonstrating that the increased risk of femicide has become widely accepted as a norm. Humans all instinctively fear crime and the threat of violence, yet women bear the additional burden of fear of crime being prefaced on a fear of men. 

Legislation and policing have exacerbated, and often at times encouraged this fear. A notable case that highlights this is the response to the Yorkshire Ripper in the 1970s; this was one of the most prolific cases of femicide in the UK. Peter Sutcliffe (known as the Yorkshire Ripper) was a male serial killer who, fuelled by a hatred for prostitutes,  killed 13 women. Police at the time pushed the narrative that women would be safe from the killing, as long as they adopted behaviours similar to cognitive mapping; six of the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes and it was perpetuated that those women took additional risks by engaging in sex work and straying from safety conventions. It was only when the Ripper began to kill women who were not prostitutes, that police truly began to act. They implemented curfews for women and encouraged them to change their behaviour, such as walking accompanied by a man. Now that they perceived “innocent” girls and women being killed, they engaged in risk prevention. When women who were deemed to be reckless and seen to be undertaking additional risk were killed, police attributed them a partial responsibility in their own deaths. Women were forced to adopt additional safety measures when behavioural restraints should have been targeted at men.

The adoption of cognitive mapping has become a subconscious behaviour for women but this has led to a conscious rejection of such ideals in the 21st century. Sarah Everard was walking home from a friend’s house at about 9pm on March 3rd 2021 when she disappeared from Clapham and her remains were found days later in Kent; she had been abducted, raped and kidnapped by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens. A public vigil was held to honour Sarah and to express public outrage at the notion that a woman could be targeted and exploited in such a way simply because she was walking home alone. During the vigil, police dispersed crowds under the impression that they were breaking Covid 19 laws, resulting in the police physically restraining people during a vigil centred around violence against women. This vigil demonstrates an explicit exasperation from women, a rejection of cognitive mapping evident through rebellion. Developments in societal ideas surrounding equality have led to a realisation that though the risk of femicide is as pertinent as ever, the threat need not be blindly accepted. 

Current legal protections - do they go far enough?

There are no current legal protections that address femicide specifically; though the term is acknowledged in theory, it is yet to be recognised in a legal capacity. The law is a historically patriarchal structure, therefore developments will take time, but there is more to be acknowledged before we reach a justice system that truly encompasses equality. Caputi asserts that serial murder should be seen as a “ritual of male sexual dominance”, perpetuating how our patriarchal culture succeeds on the basis that women are inferior, weak and loathed by the other members of society holding greater importance-men. 

Particularly in the 21st century, legislation has grown to address the unique plight of violence against women in certain provisions nonetheless; a notable example is the abolition of the “provocation defence” mentioned earlier in this article.  The Coroners of Justice Act 2009 replaced the common law defence of provocation, which largely favoured men and failed to protect women who were victims of abuse. Provocation was replaced with the Loss of Control defence, which still operated as a partial defence and introduced the need for a “qualifying trigger”. This development was drafted with the view to block any gaps in the law where abusive men were being shown leniency, and where abused women were not receiving justice. A notable provision that ensured this was the notion that sexual infidelity could not be considered a qualifying trigger, unless integral to the case. This meant that the aforementioned jealousy killings reduced to charges of manslaughter, as per the former provocation defence, would no longer qualify under the reformed defence. Though this defence is not a perfect solution, it operates to actively deter those attempting to defend their killing on the basis of patriarchal constructs. 

As previously mentioned, intimate femicide is the most prevalent form of the gender-based killing of women, this often stems from domestic abuse. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, increased awareness of domestic abuse was raised as there was a spike in reports. This led to the enactment of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which introduced new criminal offences, including: a non-fatal strangulation offence,an offence prohibiting threats to disclose intimate images to cause distress and, breaching a domestic abuse order. This act was drafted to recognise the gendered nature of domestic abuse, whilst still seeking to address domestic and sexual abuse of men and boys. It aims to condemn all forms of domestic abuse, and this non-specificity covers a broad range of circumstances. The Domestic Abuse Act is a fairly new piece of legislation and not all of its provisions are in force yet, therefore only time will tell how effectively it operates and there is not sufficient case law as of present to indicate whether or not it will lead to prosecutions. Nevertheless, I believe that the legal recognition of domestic abuse in an act is a positive instrument to combat gender-based killings, as it may work to reduce femicide at the root cause. 

To conclude, femicide operates as an unfortunately timeless epidemic, although legislation appears to be moving in the right direction to combat this. However the misogynistic foundation of the offence demonstrates that motive is embedded so deeply in society, that it requires a shift that is not only legal but also attitudinal. Instead of focusing on preventative measures for women and girls, education on violence against women should be implemented in schools to encourage men to observe their own patterns of behaviour. The most efficient way to combat femicide is to target its root cause and unravel a patriarchal structure that has dominated for centuries; risk management should not begin with the victim but start with the people inciting the risk. 


Isabella Sanderson

Bibliography

Statutes

  • Coroners of Justice Act 2009

  • Domestic Abuse Act 2021

Primary Sources

  • Femicide Census, 2021 report (2021)

  • Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law (1st edn, Penguin Books 2011)

Secondary Sources

Amy Hutchinson
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