Femicide: definition, types and causes

Gender inequality and violence are recurrent in the history of societies. With the advance of the feminist movements These issues have become much more visible than they were a few decades ago in much of the world.

In this article we will define the different types of femicide, the most extreme consequence of gender violence, and we will analyze its causes from a psychosocial perspective.

• Related article: "The causes and effects of gender-based violence"

What is femicide?

The term “feminicide” refers to a specific type of homicide in which a male murders a woman, girl or girl for being female. Unlike other types of murder, femicides usually occur in the home as a result of gender-based violence. They are also categorized within hate crimes, since they occur in a context in which the feminine has been stigmatized for years.

The word "femicide" is in dispute; There are authors who affirm that it includes any murder whose victim is a woman, regardless of the gender of the person who commits it or what her motivations are.

Femicide is the most extreme manifestation of abuse and violence from men to women. It occurs as a consequence of any type of gender violence, such as physical attacks, rape, forced motherhood or genital mutilation.

• Related article: "The 7 types of gender violence (and characteristics)"

Data and statistics

It is estimated that each year around 66 thousand femicides are perpetrated in the world. However, it must be taken into account that the number of cases of gender violence tends to be underestimated and that many countries do not differentiate between homicides and femicides.

While 80% of murder victims are men, when we speak specifically of family or intimate homicide, the percentage of men drops to one third. This is one of the factors that explain why femicide requires to be distinguished from other murders.

The countries with the highest rates of femicide are El Salvador, Jamaica, Guatemala, South Africa and Russia. More than half of the 25 countries with the highest rate of femicides are in America; In addition to those mentioned, the list includes Honduras, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil or the Dominican Republic.

Killer motivations

The motivation for the crime is one of the main peculiarities of femicide in relation to other types of homicide.

According to Diana Russell, who is credited with popularizing the word “feminicide” (“femicide” in English ”), some of the main motivations for these murders they are anger, hatred, jealousy, and the pursuit of pleasure.

Other variables that Russell considers relevant are misogyny, sense of gender superiority, and the conception of women as possession. These variables are transmitted culturally and favor violence from men towards women.

On the other hand, murders of women in the sphere of the couple are also statistically linked to the consumption of alcohol or of other drugs by the murderer, although these actions cannot be attributed solely to a purely biochemical.

• You may be interested: "Patriarchy: 7 keys to understanding cultural machismo"

Types of femicide

Diana Russell and other authors have proposed different types of femicide that differ mainly in the relationship between the victim and the murderer and in the motivation for the crime.

1. Intimate and familiar

While family femicides are committed by men within your close or extended family, the concept "intimate feminicide" is often used to talk about the murder of the partner or former partner, regardless of the legal relationship between the two people.

Intimate feminicide is related to the consumption of alcohol and other substances and accounts for 35% of all murders of women (not only those committed by men), which makes it the most frequent of all types of femicide.

Honor killing is a special type of femicide that is committed against women who are said to have dishonored the family. Common grounds for “dishonor” include being a victim of rape and being accused of adultery.

Also in India, Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh dowry killings are perpetrated. After the marriage, the husband's family harasses and tortures the wife as a method of extortion to obtain a larger dowry. In these cases the woman can be driven to suicide or be murdered, often burned alive when her family does not agree to pay.

2. Lesbicide

It is not difficult to find historical periods in which the murder of women as punishment for being gay it was legal. For example, in 13th century France a law was passed that women should be amputated a limb the first two times they had sex with women, while the third time they had to be burned.

A crime similar and frequently linked to lesbicide is corrective violation; consisting of sexually abusing a homosexual woman with the aim of making her behave as if she were heterosexual or simply as punishment. It is a way of trying to impose a supposed "natural order" through violence and power.

Today homosexuality, in both women and men, continues to be condemned by most religions and is illegal in countries such as Iran, Libya, India, Pakistan, Morocco and Nigeria. These conditions favor violence against homosexual people, since they legitimize it from the institutions.

3. Racial feminicide

In racial femicides the gender component is added to an ethnic factor: in these cases the murderer kills the victim both for being a woman and for having cultural and physical traits different from his own. It is a mixture of elements that generate hatred in a totally irrational way, although culturally induced by historical dynamics of discrimination.

In this type of murder, racism not only influences the commission of the crime, but also the fact that the victim is from a a less socially valued ethnic group can interfere in the resolution of the case, in the legal process and in the image that the media gives of the deceased.

4. Serial femicide

This type of femicide usually occurs when a man kills women repeatedly for sexual pleasuresadistic. In general, these murders are caused by trauma or suffocation.

The victims of serial femicides, like the rest of non-intimate femicides, are more frequently women who work as waitresses or as prostitutes.

Serial femicide is sometimes attributed to pornography, especially that which eroticizes violence. From a gender perspective, this may be due to the normalization of violence that occurs in these pieces of fiction. However, this relationship has not been proven so far. It is probable that the use of these materials is not a predisposing factor to the performance of the crimes, but is part of the preparation process through the act of fantasizing about rapes and murders.

Psychological explanations of gender violence

Although, from different theoretical orientations, gender violence and feminicide of very different ways, we will focus on two examples: symbolic interactionism and psychology evolutionist.

Symbolic interactionism and patriarchy

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical current of sociology, social psychology and anthropology that proposes that people we jointly construct symbols that give meaning to reality in its different aspects, guiding our conduct in relation to these.

From this orientation, femicide could be explained as a consequence of the differences in the roles given to each gender by many societies: it is understood that the public sphere must be controlled by men and women are relegated to reproduction and care of the home.

On many occasions this social structure is called “patriarchy”, which is supported by written laws and / or implicit norms that reinforce and condition differentiated behavior patterns based on biological sex.

According to the sociologist Sylvia Walby, patriarchal structures are manifested in the greater probability that women have to receive abuse, to take care of the home and their children, to be represented with little fidelity in the media and in popular culture, to be paid less than men for the same work and to have their sexuality seen in a negative. They also tend to be underrepresented in power and decision-making spheres.

The conception of women as inferior to men makes the social significance of these murders less negative in more patriarchal settings. From this it could be deduced that there is a greater probability of gender violence and therefore feminicide if the law and culture do not penalize them.

Fruit of a historical process?

The concept of patriarchy serves to introduce a very relevant dimension to the conception of the problem of feminicide. It makes it not an isolated problem reducible simply to the violent tendencies of some individuals, but has to do with the situation of submission of the female gender and the domain of the male.

A) Yes, this inherited vulnerability and of economic, political and social causes are materialized in the deaths of helpless people, who do not see their rights protected by the society in which they live, since it protects privileges that have nothing to do with the way of life of the majority of the women. As a result, femicide should be analyzed from the perspective of a gender perspective.

Evolutionary and Biologist Perspectives

Differences in gender roles are often attributed to the biology of men and women. In particular, it is often mentioned that men have higher levels of testosterone, a sex hormone that influences aggressiveness, dominance, and risk-taking. However, hormonal differences have not been shown to be responsible for differences in behavior between men and women.

It has also been proposed that the fact that women become pregnant historically influenced the development of societies since the beginning of humanity, especially since the adoption of the sedentary lifestyle.

From these perspectives existing biological differences between genders tend to be highly valued, to the detriment of sociocultural influences, such as religion. In any case, it is assumed that in general violence against women, and specifically murders in which they are the victims, cannot be explained solely from the analysis of biological categories such as genes or differences hormonal. This is so because even though there are clear physical differences between both sexes, any pattern of behavior incorporates a previous learning history that greatly influences its appearance and the way it behaves. Express oneself.

What can be done?

The measures to be taken to combat femicides cannot be concentrated in just one of the foci of the problem, because everything starts from a problem with various levels of complexity: psychological, psycho-social, and sociopolitical.

Therefore, everything must go through changes at the individual (development of prevention and mental health programs) and collective level. The latter not only imply changes in culture and sensitivity towards violence suffered by many women; In addition, they include material and objective measures: urban planning that promotes the safety of the streets, prison policies that protect the victims, etc.