thumb|250px|Declaration of the enactment of the law against femicide in [[Chile, 2010]]
Femicide or feminicide is the intentional murder of women or girls in which they are exclusively targeted because of their gender or murder in which women or girls are disproportionately targeted. It is frequently committed as a method of population control. Causes of femicide include jealousy, general hatred, revenge, male entitlement, harmful gender roles, gender stereotypes, cultural phenomenons such as so-called "honor killings" or female genital mutilation (particularly Type 3), as well as coercive control, stopping a pregnancy, social beliefs such as sati, and masculine hegemony that perpetuates the unequal power between men and women.
A spouse or a partner is responsible for almost 40% of femicides, or homicides of a female victim. Additionally, femicide may be underreported due to insufficient evidence. Femicide often includes domestic violence and forced abortions. Some cultures use gender-selective infanticide and geronticide to perform femicide.
Until recently, femicide was not considered a visible phenomenon, but awareness of it is gradually increasing.
History
Development of the term
The term femicide was used in England in 1801 by John Corry to signify "the killing of a woman". In 1848, the term was published in Wharton's Law Lexicon.
The current usage arose with Second-wave feminism, which aimed to raise female class consciousness and resistance against gender oppression. The term has been used to call attention to violence against women. US author Carol Orlock is credited with using the term in her unpublished anthology on femicide.
Femicide may also be 'intimate.' Intimate femicide can be identified as such by using "severity of violence, such as access to and threats with firearms, forced sex, threats to kill, and strangulation" to determine whether a case can be considered an act of femicide or not.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization as "the removal of part or all of the external female genitalia and/or injury to the female genetic organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons". Female genital mutilation results in femicide when women and girls die, due to unhygienic practices of FGM that result in infection or death, as well as the increased likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS because of FGM.
Contemporary definitions by feminists
Definition by Diana Russell
South African feminist author Diana Russell narrows the definition of femicide to "the killing of females by males because they are female". Russell emphasizes that males commit femicide with sexist motives. Russell believes her definition of femicide applies to all forms of sexist murdering, whether motivated by misogyny (the hatred of females), a sense of superiority over females, sexual pleasure, or the assumption of ownership over women.
She includes covert murdering of women as well, such as the mass murder of female babies due to male preference in cultures such as India and China, as well as deaths related to the failure of social institutions, such as the criminalization of abortion or the prevalence of female genital mutilation. They argue that motive cannot always be determined, and so must be removed from the qualification for femicide to gather data.
Feminists Desmond Ellis and Walter Dekesedery take a different approach, viewing the definition of femicide as "the intentional killing of females by males". They require that femicide be intentional, unlike the inclusion of covert femicide in Diana Russell's definition.
These definitions distinguish femicide from non-gendered descriptions of murder and homicide. Instead, femicide exemplifies that women are murdered for different reasons and motives from those associated with typical descriptions of murder. Globally, femicide has seldom been investigated separately from homicide, and the goal of many of these authors is to make femicide a separate category.
Canada includes more than females under the term Femicide, including "women and girls, 2 Spirit, trans women and gender non-conforming individuals because of their gender"
From femicide to feminicide
Feminicide is a variant for femicide that can be found in official documentation of the United Nations. This term was first introduced in Spanish, when Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos translated the term femicide as feminicidio in conversation with Diana Russell: <blockquote>Cuando traduje el texto de Diana Russell, me tomé la libertad de modificar el concepto, ella lo llama femicide y entonces yo lo traduje desde hace ya varios años como feminicidio, precisamente para que no fuera a confundirse en castellano como femicidio u homicidio femenino; no, yo quería que fuera un concepto claro, distinto, para que entonces viniera junto con todo el contenido del concepto, que es, como ya lo expliqué, muy complejo. Diana Russell me dio permiso de usarlo así, traducido como feminicidio. Ella dice estar muy asombrada porque en ningún lado ha tenido el éxito que está teniendo en México y en América Latina su propuesta... The author points out that Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso was the first to introduce the concept of femicide to name the violence that was taking place in Ciudad Juarez and how Lagarde moved the term forward by introducing it into Mexican legislature in 2003 and working until creating a law against feminicide in 2012:<blockquote>In the process of her legislative work, Lagarde y de los Ríos built on the significant theoretical shifts introduced by Monárrez Fragoso in which feminicidio means both the killing of a woman or girl for gender-related reasons and also the linking of those killings to human rights violations and to the climate of impunity created by state inaction. to point out the how authorities participate in this crime by neglecting and silencing the situation in different moments of the process. This variant and the theoretical contributions from Latin America have been later incorporated into English by diverse authors as "activists, journalists, and academics based in the United States and Canada have taken note of the work on femicide and feminicide by their Latin American counterparts and traveled some of these concepts back into the English language". and Lauren Klein and D'Ignazio include it in their book Data Feminism.
Causes
As defined by Diana Russell, femicide includes intimate partner femicide, lesbicide, racial femicide, serial femicide, mass femicide, honor killing, dowry-related murder, and more. Any act of sexual terrorism that results in death is considered femicide. 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,
Different areas of the world experience femicide varyingly, i.e., the Middle East and South Asia have higher rates of honor killing: the murder of women by their family, due to an actual or assumed sexual or behavioral transgression, such as adultery, sexual intercourse, or even having been raped. and low crime clearance rates have been associated with femicide.
Among intimate partners
Intimate partner femicide, sometimes called intimate femicide, or romantic femicide, refers to the murdering of a woman by her intimate partner or her former intimate partner. Intimate partner femicide is often proceeded by intimate partner violence. In South Africa, a female prostitute that is killed by her client is also classified as intimate femicide irrespective of the duration of their sexual relationship.
5–8% of all murders committed by male perpetrators are cases of intimate partner homicide. 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.
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. 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. claims a structural system is to blame for the murder of women rather than violent individuals. It is cross-cultural structure on a mass scale, and is suggested to be considered as a human rights violation by the Women's Studies International Forum and considered a "crime against humanity." While authors acknowledge "crimes are committed by individuals and not by abstract entities",
Risk factors that increase the likelihood of intimate partner femicide include: when a male suffered physical abuse as a child, when a male has previously threatened to commit suicide or murder the woman if she cheats on him or leaves him, when there is elevated alcohol or drug abuse by either partner, or when a male attempts to control a woman's freedom. Two-fifths of intimate partner femicide is related to the use of intoxicants. Access to guns therefore plays an important role in this. On average, 70 American women are "shot and killed" by their intimate partner every month.
Racially motivated femicide
The Hope Movement defines racist femicide as the racially motivated murdering of women by men who are members of a different race. 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." and it can also lead to more victimization of the woman who is murdered/abused due to not aligning with the vulnerability which is typically expected of female victims. Manshel also traces the history of assaults of Black women, and she makes the distinction that "the circumstances" of white victims were "wholly different" from those of "enslaved women" in the 19–20th century, and she proposes that anti-racist frameworks about sexual violence should be put into writing.
Sexually motivated (lesbophobic) femicide
According to Diana Russell and Jill Radford, lesbicide, also known as homophobic femicide, conducted in 2014 analyzing multiple anti-LGBT cases of violence suggests that crimes like lesbicide can, in part, be explained by existing hyper-masculinity theories that observe the "accomplishment of gender" and that "constructing masculinity is relevant to bias crime offending". Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and Thailand. Corrective rape has led to death in some cases.
Eudy Simelane was a famous soccer player who played for the South Africa women's national football team and an LGBTQ+ rights activist; her murder in 2008 was a highly publicized instance of simultaneous corrective rape and lesbicide in South Africa.
Transfemicide
Transfemicide or transfeminicide is defined as the killing of a trans woman motivated by transphobic, misogynistic and transmisogynistic hatred that has its origins in cissexist cultural and political norms. Journalists and academics alike believe the prevalence of transfemicide to be vastly underreported. Journalists Emma Landeros and Joel Aguirre argue that, as hate crimes, transfemicides constitute a 'silent epidemic' in Mexico, with many deaths receiving little or no media coverage.
Under Transgender Europe, or TGEU, the Trans Murder Monitoring project reported 281 trans and gender-diverse people murdered in 2025 alone, with 90% of those killed being trans women. Notably, sex workers comprised 34% of these deaths, with most of the overall deaths occurring in Latin America.
The Human Rights Watch, in their report on violence against LGBT people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, note that Central American governments have long excluded transgender women from preexisting legal structures meant to prosecute femicides. Guatemalan officials have justified this by stating that transgender women are not "biological women" in their eyes and therefore their murders are not covered by such laws.
In the case of Vicky Hernández v Honduras, tried before Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization and Red Lésbica Cattrachas successfully argued that the government of Honduras held responsibility for the death of trans activist and sex worker Vicky Hernández. The result of the case was seen as a landmark ruling establishing a powerful precedent for the defense of transgender women and LGBT Latin Americans broadly.
Tendency in serial killings
Serial femicide is defined as "the sexually sadistic killing of women", also called "sexual terrorism". Over 90% of serial killers are male.
Male serial murderers tend to use more brutal methods of killing, such as suffocation and beatings. In contrast, women use poison or less violent measures. In addition, while a large percentage of male serial killers focus on women as their targets, female serial killers are less likely to focus exclusively on males. Some male serial killers focus on males as targets, such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Wayne Williams. The ways serial murderers are portrayed in the media reflect the views on femicide and gender in society. Often, murders of prostitutes, low-income women, and women of color by serial killers receive less attention in the media than the killings of younger, prettier, more affluent women, usually married, engaged, or in relationships with much handsome, affluent, younger men their age.
Feminists such as Diana Russell and believe in a link between the rise of serial murders and the advent of pornography. Specifically, the advent of films that eroticize violence and murder of women has been correlated to the desires of serial killers. Numerous serial murderers filmed their victims as they violently killed them. It is found all over the world regardless of a country's sophistication. A common misconception is that it is only related to abortions, but it also includes "girl-child murders".
Similarly, female geronticide refers to the killing of elderly females, and "this may be because they are elderly or because they are women, or for both reasons." One challenge of characterizing female geronticide is defining age; in other words, who can be considered an elder. This changes according to culture which itself is a critical factor within research.
Worldwide
Every year around the world, one woman or girl is killed on behalf of her gender by an intimate partner or someone in their family at approximately every 10 minutes. An average of 66,000 women are violently murdered globally, accounting for approximately 17% of all victims of intentional homicides. In 2022, the number of women and girls murdered globally was nearly 89,000. According to a 2000 report by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), approximately 5,000 women are murdered each year in honor killings and a girl dies to female genital mutilation yearly every 12 minutes The rates of femicide differ depending on the specific country, but of the countries with the top 25 highest femicide rates, 50% are in Latin America, with number one being El Salvador. Also included in the top 25 are seven European countries, three Asian countries, and one African country, South Africa. Social beliefs and acceptability about gender based violence varies from country to country
Data on femicide worldwide is poor, and often countries do not report gender differences in murder statistics. Many communities do not have access to resources or accurate data. In addition, reporting data on migrants is particularly scarce. High-income countries have seen more decreases in femicide than low-income countries.
Africa
thumb|Demonstration against femicide in [[Cape Town, South Africa following the murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, 2019]]
The continent varies in the manifestations of femicide depending on the country or region.
In 2023, Africa recorded 21,000 cases which led to the highest rates and absolute numbers of intimate partner and family-related femicide, the rate is followed by the Americas, and then by Oceania. Asia recorded the second highest absolute numbers.
Between 1990 and 2021, the number of female homicides in Africa rose from 12,570 to 19,769, though the age-standardized death rate decreased from 4.58 to 3.34 per 100,000 women, remaining nearly double the global average of 1.76 per 100,000 in 2021.
Burundi
As of 2023, it has been noted there is a growing problem of femicide.
Kenya
Although Kenya has had an increase in femicide reports, there is a lack of proper data management systems. There is a lack of media representation in many counties, underreported murder cases and omission of details under the murder circumstances. As a result, Nairobi, Nakuru and Kiambu have been reported as the leading counties with femicide victims.
Africa Data Hub analyzed 930 female murders between 2016 and 2017 in Kenya, with 628 of them meeting the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)'s definition of femicide, with the highest femicide specific cases occurring in 2024, totaling to 127 from 82 in 2023. Femicide Count reported that there were 160 cases of femicide in 2024 with the highest month being January.
In 10 December 2024, thousands of people, mostly women, marched in the capital city, Nairobi, in protest against a wave of femicides. Some smaller groups also marched in other towns. The main demand was for the government to take action. Despite the protest being peaceful, the police used tear gas to disperse the group in Nairobi. At least 3 activist protesters were detained. According to UN Women, South Africa has five times higher than the global average of femicide rates. Women for Change (WFC), an NGO dedicated to combating gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide (GBVF), noted that 5,578 women were killed between April 2023 and March 2024, with femicide rising 33.8% year on year. "The sad reality within South Africa when it comes to GBVF is that we have a conviction rate of 12%," WFC's national spokesperson, Cameron Kasambala said, claiming that at least 86% of the time nothing was done when victims of GBVF reported cases to the police. In 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa described South Africa as one of "the most unsafe places in world to be a woman". GBVF had been declared a national crisis in 2019. In November 2025 during the G20 Summit, The National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) upgraded GBVF to a national disaster. She defines female infanticide as "part of a crime of gender", which she refers to as "social femicide", and relates it to the broader problem of gender inequality in Chinese society. Furthermore, daughters became liabilities, as gender was also crucial to the system of ancestor worship, in which only sons were allowed to carry out ritual sacrifices. Thus, "if a couple failed to produce a son, its crucial links to the past and future were broken". These included female infanticide, the killing of girls under six years through starvation and violence, the killing of women due to forced abortions, so-called honor killings, dowry murders, and Witch-hunts.