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DOWNPLAYED AND DETRIMENTAL: THE REALITY OF FEMICIDE IN THE UK

Ellie Wilder

By Omolara Okunoren  (she/her)

Content warning: discussions of violence against women, racism, homophobia, FGM, sexual assault, domestic violence, harassment, and abuse

PREFACE 

When I suggested ‘black femicide’ as my possible essay topic, I was shocked by the response of my university lecturer. The lecturer, who specialised in crime and criminal justice, replied with, ‘What is femicide?’ with confusion plastered on their face. I was shocked by this question as the topic of femicide was widely discussed within my criminal justice course. However, I realised that the term ‘femicide’ itself is rarely used. I explained the concept to the lecturer, and they acknowledged how important femicide is and were appalled by their lack of knowledge on the subject, literally noting down the term on a sheet of paper. This incident inspired me to write this informative piece to help bring attention to femicide in the UK. The malicious and inhuman offence has embedded itself in society due to misogynistic and other discriminatory institutions, norms, and cultures, which allows this dreadful violence against women to continue.  

 

THE HISTORY OF THE TERM  

The term was first coined in 1801, in England, by writer, John Corry, and was described as ‘the killing of a woman’ in his book, A Satirical View of London at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century. Over the past few centuries, the concept has developed due to social and political changes, such as the emergence and rise of the feminist movement. Feminist writer and activist Diana E. Russell defined femicide in 1976 at the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women as the killing of women by men because of their gender (Grzyb et al, 2018). This is significant as it popularised and politicised the term. This definition also addresses the unequal gender dynamics and misogyny that occurs in this crime. 

Femicide can be used more extensively to describe violent acts against women that eventually lead to the misogynistic killing of a woman. Female genital mutilation (FGM), intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, or lack of criminal justice intervention can be considered acts of femicide as these types of slow and sustained violence against women can quickly escalate to femicide. Therefore, the definition of femicide has developed over time and now addresses the misogyny which underpins the crime. 

AN INTERSECTIONAL VIEW 

Intersectional feminists have applied intersectional frameworks to expand on the definition to include marginalised victims, who are often overlooked due to their identity and are at higher risk. Intersectional feminists have expanded on the terms racial femicide, which is the killing of women of colour because of both their gender and race, and homophobic femicide, which is the killing of queer women because of their gender and sexuality. Socially vulnerable victims of femicide are often ignored by discriminatory institutions, such as the media and criminal justice system, who prefer certain types of victims. For instance, the ‘missing white middle-class woman’ is perceived as an ideal victim as their victimisation is perceived as media-worthy. Women of colour endure similar barriers of misogyny as white women but are further disadvantaged by racial discrimination. Therefore, marginalised victims of femicide are often disregarded and face secondary victimisation as deep-rooted structural and systematic oppression and violence creates a hierarchy of victimisation. Intersectional feminists have used analytical frameworks to highlight the neglect of socially vulnerable victims and prejudiced bias within unequal power gaps and systems.  

 

FEMICIDE AROUND THE WORLD 

Femicide is a global pandemic that continues to be ignored, unacknowledged, and downplayed in society. UN Women (2023, pg 1) found that ‘globally, nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2022, the highest yearly number recorded in the past two decades.’ Although femicide is a global issue, this crime varies and has a different prevalence among countries. For example, the femicide rate in South Africa is five times the global average and Poland has the highest rate of femicide in Europe in 2022/23 (WomanKind, 2022). It is essential to avoid imposing a global north and euro-centric gaze of femicide on other countries that experience their distinctive prevalences due to cultural and social differences. Patriarchal violence is a taproot that is influenced by individual societies’ institutions, norms, culture, organisations, and beliefs. The overall rate of violent crime and unequal power dynamics and structures will vary for different countries and results in varied rates of femicide. 

 

FEMICIDE AND OPPRESSION 

Femicide is an extreme form of oppression and the World Health Organisation (2012) highlights how femicide is ‘the far end of the spectrum’ of violence against women. It is not just interpersonal conflict or violence - it is a gender violence-based crime that aims to make an example of women and maintain their suppressed status in society - humiliate, debase, degrade and scare them. It is preceded by patriarchal acts such as catcalling, rape culture, the use of slurs like ‘bitch, cunt, slut, whore,’ physical violence, victim blaming, the male gaze, femicide and more. This violence against women weakens women and their social status and is ignored and unpunished by the state (Hefti, 2022), maintaining patriarchal, capitalist and white supremacist domination in society. Femicide is often mistaken as simply murder and the power imbalances and dynamics between the victim and perpetrator are often ignored, it is a gender-based violent crime that has misogynistic roots. Male violence and abuse against women exploit the power gap in our racist, patriarchal, homophobic and other discriminatory dynamics to maintain and exploit that unequal power imbalance and invoke a culture of fear, humiliation, and dehumanisation of women and other minority communities.  

 

FAILURES OF THE UK GOVERNMENT AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM 

Even though there have been significant social and political changes in the UK, such as the Equality Act of 2010 and strategies to tackle violence against women enforced by the government, there’s still resistance to change as intersecting forms of social oppression (i.e. the patriarchy, ableism, capitalism, racism and more) are ingrained.  Systematic, institutional, and organisational violence continues to ignore and contribute to femicide. The Metropolitan Police has been criticised for its misogyny, racism, and homophobia (Casey, 2023), and for contributing to violence against women. Institutional misogyny within policing has created a culture that ignores or belittles potential victims and their fears of safety, mishandles the cases of femicide victims, or perpetrates the crime itself. Sarah Everard, Dorothy Cherry Groce, Fawziyah Javed and more women were all victims of police actions, failures, and omissions contributing to their deaths. 

The justice gap caused by police failings, misconduct, and violence is often downplayed as a few ‘bad apples’ in the system despite more than 1,100 officers under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse in England and Wales (Townsend, 2023). It is otherwise dismissed as canteen culture that helps police officers to banter and cope with their excessive roles and responsibilities (Waddington, 1999) or austerity cuts that have destabilised policing and created backlogs with cases. However, a major limitation of these arguments is that it does not address how women’s victimisation is often ignored due to a culture of misogyny, racism, and other intersecting discriminatory violence that maintains institutional corruption and systematic failures within the justice system. Women struggle to find justice and protection within the criminal justice system as its misogynistic attitudes and practices against victims have led to unjust outcomes in their cases. How can women expect to feel safe, when the police and justice system that is intended to protect society from violence, defends, excuses, and partakes in violence against women?  

 

According to the Femicide Census (2022), ‘at least 147 women were killed by 144 men in 2021’ in the UK with 53% killed by a current or former intimate partner. Despite legislation developing and changing over time to become more entrenched and tackle brutal crimes against women, The Femicide Census (2022) also found that men kill one woman every three days in the UK  and this is a statistic unchanged across the 10 years studied. This reflects that the legal implementation taken by the government is not effective and femicide continues to prevail in the UK. Unlike in the US and Australia, gender-based crimes are not considered hate crimes in the UK. There have been attempts and protests to make misogyny a hate crime in legislation in the UK. However, Members of Parliament and the Law Commission have rejected proposals of making misogyny a hate crime in England and Wales. This demonstrates the ongoing misogyny which protects predators and a need to address misogyny on a broader and functional level by addressing the misogynistic violence that is deep-seated within femicide and violence against women. 

 

CONCLUSION 

Femicide is the killing of women due to misogynistic violence. It is a complex crime that continues to be downplayed and detrimental. Marginalised victims are often at risk of suffering from femicide as their intersecting social characteristics leads to them frequently being ignored or perceived one-dimensionally by discriminatory systems and institutions, further increasing their risk of becoming victimised. The UK’s Government and criminal justice system continues to fail to address violence against women including femicide as their implementation does not tackle or address the taproot of the crime, which is misogyny.  

How many more women must suffer, be killed or live in terror for femicide to be recognised for what it is? Misogynistic murder against women.  

 

 

REFERENCE LIST 

  • Grzyb, M., Naudi, M. and Chaime Marcuello-Servós (2018). Femicide definitions. Bristol University Press eBooks, pp.17–32. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv8xnfq2.7. 

  • Hefti, A. (2022). Conceptualizing Femicide as a Human Rights Violation. doi:https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803920443. 

  • Reis, C. and Meyer, S.R. (2024). Understudied and underaddressed: Femicide, an extreme form of violence against women and girls. PLOS Medicine, 21(1), pp.e1004336–e1004336. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004336. 

  • Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Journal of Women’s History, 15(3), pp.11–48. 

  • Townsend, M. (2023). More than 1,100 officers under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse in England and Wales. The Guardian. [online] 23 Dec. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/23/more-than-1100-officers-under-investigation-for-sexual-or-domestic-abuse-in-england-and-wales. 

  • UNODC (2023). GENDER-RELATED KILLINGS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS (FEMICIDE/FEMINICIDE). [online] Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/gender-related-killings-of-women-and-gi rls-femicide-feminicide-global-estimates-2022-en.pdf. 

  • Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). POLICE (CANTEEN) SUB-CULTURE: An Appreciation. The British Journal of Criminology, [online] 39(2), pp.287–309. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23637974. 

  • Womankind Worldwide (2022). A Femicide Factsheet: Global Stats & Calls to Action. [online] Womankind Worldwide. Available at: https://www.womankind.org.uk/resource/a-femicide-factsheet-global-stats-calls-to-action/ [Accessed Jun. 2024]. 

 

FURTHER READING SECTION:  

  • Barker, T. (2020). Aggressors in blue : exposing police sexual misconduct. [online] Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/york-ebooks/reader.action?docID=6023383# [Accessed 25 May 2023]. 

  • Freiburger, T.L. and Marcum, C.D. (2015). Women in the Criminal Justice System. Oakville: CRC Press . [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.1201/b18726. 

  • Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory : From margin to center. New York ; London Routledge. 

  • Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Journal of Women’s History, 15(3), pp.11–48.