Femicide
From the burning of witches in the past, to the more recent widespread custom of female infanticide in many societies, to the killing of women for 'honor,' we realize that femicide has been going on a long time.
[13] Russell says: "Femicide is on the extreme end of a continuum of antifemale terror that includes a wide variety of verbal and physical abuse, such as rape, torture, sexual slavery (particularly in prostitution), incestuous and extrafamilial child sexual abuse, physical and emotional battery, sexual harassment (on the phone, in the streets, at the office, and in the classroom), genital mutilation (clitoridectomies, excision, infibulations), unnecessary gynecological operations (gratuitous hysterectomies), forced heterosexuality, forced sterilization, forced motherhood (by criminalizing contraception and abortion), psychosurgery, denial of food to women in some cultures, cosmetic surgery, and other mutilations in the name of beautification.
Feminists Desmond Ellis and Walter Dekesedery take a different approach, viewing the definition of femicide as "the intentional killing of females by males".
Covert femicide also takes form in the criminalization of abortion in cases where the mother's life is at risk, intentional spread of HIV/AIDS,[13] or death as a result of female genital mutilation.
[25] For example, a 2020 examination from media and internet sources of every single murder of an elderly woman in Israel committed between 2006 and 2015 revealed that all the cases of female geronticide were intimate partner femicides, and perpetrated in the domestic arena.
[26] Acts of incest, sexual harassment, rape, battering, and other forms of violence are also found to escalate over time within a familial relationship, possibly resulting in femicide.
[27] Argued by Jacquelyn Campbell, a common motive that causes men to murder their intimate partners is jealousy, a result of male efforts to control and possess women to display ownership and reinforce patriarchy.
There is considerable debate over whether men or women are more likely to commit intimate violence with studies from the US and UK finding large variations across race, age, and income.
[36] According to Diana Russell and fellow writer Jill Radford, "Racism interacts with violence against women, and shapes both femicide itself, and the ways it is addressed by the local community, the police, the media, and the legal system.
"[18] Russell and Radford assert that when looking at femicide within the United States specifically, one must consider the politics of both sexism and racism in the murders of black women and the little justice that is often served.
Jaime Grant writes on the murder of 12 young women in Boston, Massachusetts, and exposes the "racism in media coverage, which virtually ignored these killings initially, and later depicted the victims in racist and sexist stereotypes, such as runaways, drug addicts, or prostitutes.
[38] According to political scientist and women's studies scholar Susan Hawthorne, corrective rape is a hate crime that constitutes forced sexual activity with a person who is either a woman, gender non-conforming, or identifies as something other than heterosexual e.g lesbian or asexual.
[62] Once a perpetrator is arrested and brought to court, it takes an average of 1900 days for a case to be concluded and the suspect sentenced, not encompassing appeals that might lengthen the process even further.
[59] Female infanticide was common in traditional China, where natural hardships such as famines reinforced cultural norms favoring sons, and encouraged hard-pressed families to abandon or kill their infant daughters.
[65] An expert from the City University of New York, however, disagrees with the tendency to characterize female infanticide as "the unfortunate consequence of Chinese population control and modernization policies".
[69] For example, while the Penal Code of India now specifically prohibits dowry, the reported number of dowry-related deaths of women has almost doubled from 4,836 to 8,383 over the past twenty years (1990–2009).
According to a report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), published in 2014, Japan, together with Hong Kong, top the ranking—with women comprising 52.9% of the total homicide victims—followed by South Korea at 52.5%.
[76] Thus the rates of filicide(siblicide, fratricide, sororicide, matricide) are regarded higher than the statistics because of Japan jurisdictions' prosecutorial discretion system without preliminary hearing.
In 2019, The South Korean government released the 2019 Domestic Violence Survey Study that found that only 27.6 percent of women over the age of 13 feel society is safe for them.
Olivia Shieber, a senior program manager of foreign and defense policy studies, describes Korean courts as lenient with sex crime punishments.
Also, while male victims of homicide have been in a sharp decline in recent years, the number of women murdered in Europe, not necessarily at the hands of a partner or family member, remains constant, with a slight increase from 2013 to 2015.
[121] According to Julia Estela Monárrez-Fragoso of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte based in Ciudad Juárez, victims are often blamed for being out late at night, or for hanging around "questionable" areas, such as discotecas or nightclubs.
Guatemala's historical record reveals a long history of acceptance of gendered violence, and the military, government, and judiciary's role in normalizing misogyny.
[120] Various activists and scholars, such as Monárrez, have argued that connections exist between the femicides and neoliberal policies, namely North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
[125] Other scholars, such as historians Steven Volk and Marian Schlotterbeck, hypothesize that there may be a "macho backlash" behind these killings: "Certainly male egos, of fathers and would-be boyfriends, must suffer some deflation from this dramatic change in the economic influence of these young women.
[131] On the other hand, despite the increased rigor of criminal law, in a survey carried out by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, in 2019, there were 1,310 murders resulting from domestic violence or motivated by gender, characteristics of femicide.
[153] To understand these statistics in Canada, an intersectional approach must be considered, to recognize the historical and ongoing effects of colonialism that disproportionately target Indigenous peoples within the country.
In the mid-twentieth century, Indigenous women and girls were forced and coerced into undergoing sterilization procedures as an act of femicide, as well as genocide, at fourteen different Indian Hospitals across the state that were federally operated.
[8] The scattered reports of femicide in Canada indicate a lack of understanding of how various acts of gender, race, class, and sexuality all intersect to create the environment of violence Indigenous women are subjected to.
[164] Attempting to prevent femicide could include implementing laws that would specifically work to improve the safety of women and address the risk factors mentioned.
