arah Everard did everything right. She wore reflective clothes and took a well-lit route when walking home at night in London. She called her boyfriend and let him know when she left. The 33-year-old marketing executive was still kidnapped and murdered. Investigating officers suggested that women in her neighborhood stay inside ‘for their own safety.’
The case exploded as a flashpoint for women’s rights, with the movement “Reclaim These Streets” erupting across the UK as women protest the assertion that their behavior — rather than their attackers’ — needs to change.
The Metropolitan Police grappled and detained attendees of a candlelit vigil for Everard, prompting international outcry. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that plain-clothes police officers will patrol bars and nightclubs to keep women safe, a move criticized as tone-deaf since a policeman has been arrested and charged with Everard’s murder.
The police’s problematic response — and women’s outcry at violence against them — are not new. Femicide extends across the globe and beyond modern times, from honor killings and intimate partner violence to infanticide, and human trafficking.
In some less developed parts of the world including India, Papua New Guinea, and portions of Africa, femicide is practiced for economic reasons. Drawing on the centuries-old tradition of accusing women of witchcraft as blame for problems like economic strife, colonization, and rapid industrialization, they use violence to steal land. To combat the practice in modern India, women accused of sorcery created ANANDI, a group which meets and sings together, acts as on-call responders to gender violence, and pressures police to document witch hunts. In Africa, women perform acts of staged incivility — such as public shaming or literally sitting on would-be attackers.
Due to a combination of organized crime and domestic violence, fourteen of the world’s twenty-five nations with the highest murder rates against women are in Latin America, according to the Small Arms Survey of 2016. On average, seven women are murdered every day in Mexico alone, while an average of twelve women per day murdered in the Latin and Caribbean regions overall, per UN Women. Stunningly, 98% of these murders go unprosecuted.
In October of 2020, Mexican women had enough. Protesters seized and occupied Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission building, converting it into a women’s shelter and repudiating a government that had done little to prioritize their lives and safety. Across Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, major protests continued in March 2021 in the form of public theater, green bandanas, and hashtags like #EleNao (#NotHim) and #NiUnaMenos (#Not One Less.) Women and police also clashed in Mexico on International Women’s Day.
How societies enable femicide
While their murder rate is lower than Latin America, failure to prosecute sexual violence is also a major problem in the US and the UK. Less than 1% of rapes in the US lead to felony conviction, and only 1.5% of rape cases in England and Wales lead to charges or summons. Women rallied in the US across hundreds of college campuses in February to raise awareness about sexual assault, staging socially-distanced demonstrations and leaving messages in chalk and on flyers. And as protests against the handling of Everard’s case grow, they’ve reached as far as Australia.
Domestic violence is another startling problem that unites all nations of the world. In 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a global study which found that 50,000 women were killed by intimate partners or family members in the year before, accounting for the majority of women’s murders globally. In the US alone, nearly one million women have been shot or fired upon with a firearm, and 4.5 million have been threatened with a firearm. One in three women worldwide experienced physical or sexual violence mostly from an intimate partner before the pandemic spiked domestic violence further, UN Women stated.
A severe and pervasive culture of physical and sexual assault normalizes violence and leaves women at risk of further — and often escalating — harm. In a report titled “One Day I’ll Kill You: Impunity and Domestic Violence Cases in the Brazilian State of Roraima,” Human Rights Watch explains how the failure of Brazil’s police to investigate and prosecute domestic violence indict a system that does not prioritize women’s safety, and ultimately enables their deaths.
Likewise, justice systems often put the burden on women to justify their experiences, with the UK usually abandoning prosecutions and evidence-gathering when women don’t cooperate. Despite the psychological dependence and trauma abuse causes and the increased danger women experience when fleeing violence, victims are expected to be perfect to put their perpetrators behind bars — and even then, they often walk. One study noted that while some women don’t cooperate with courts, many others are failed by them because courts trivialize their experiences, commute sentences for abusers, and frame abuse as a private familial matter. Reporting domestic violence and not being amicable with abusers also harms women in custody battles in the US. And even as police are often the first recourse for victims, more than half of officers who are charged, arrested and convicted of domestic abuse keep their jobs.
In response to surging cases of domestic violence within the COVID crisis, women have taken to the streets from France and Rome to Ukraine, pressuring world leaders to take a stand. For months in Turkey, county-wide demonstrations pressured the government to support the Istanbul Convention to increase regional protections against domestic violence, Amnesty International notes.
The United Nations suggests the best ways to prevent femicide include training and sensitizing health care workers and police to women’s issues and intimate partner violence, increasing intervention and prevention research, decreasing gun ownership and strengthening gun laws, and strengthening research, laws and awareness about murders committed in the name of ‘honor.’
On the one hand, law enforcement and community safety reform present possible partnership opportunities which could help both women and police, strengthening officers’ understanding of femicides and harassment and increasing women’s resources. On the other hand, traditional power structures have deep and systemic flaws in responding to women’s needs, and are often not an option to those most at risk. Women internationally report dismissive culture from law enforcement, and police officers are both significantly more likely to be domestic abusers than the general population and less likely to be caught or terminated for their actions.
Voicing concerns over femicide to elected officials and police can be an important element to activism, but it is often flawed and not enough on its own. So as always, women are taking to the streets, clashing with police, publicly shaming and speaking out against their attackers, and creating their own safe havens.
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Femicide and How Women Respond
(In)Justice - November 25 is the international day against domestic violence. This photo was taken in Bonn, displaying the work of an artist. Photo by Mika Baumeister via Unsplash.
April 8, 2021
The problematic government response to Sarah Everard's kidnapping and murder is just the latest example of how society is failing to respond to femicide. Some women are taking matters into their own hands.
S
arah Everard did everything right. She wore reflective clothes and took a well-lit route when walking home at night in London. She called her boyfriend and let him know when she left. The 33-year-old marketing executive was still kidnapped and murdered. Investigating officers suggested that women in her neighborhood stay inside ‘for their own safety.’
The case exploded as a flashpoint for women’s rights, with the movement “Reclaim These Streets” erupting across the UK as women protest the assertion that their behavior — rather than their attackers’ — needs to change.
The Metropolitan Police grappled and detained attendees of a candlelit vigil for Everard, prompting international outcry. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that plain-clothes police officers will patrol bars and nightclubs to keep women safe, a move criticized as tone-deaf since a policeman has been arrested and charged with Everard’s murder.
The police’s problematic response — and women’s outcry at violence against them — are not new. Femicide extends across the globe and beyond modern times, from honor killings and intimate partner violence to infanticide, and human trafficking.
In some less developed parts of the world including India, Papua New Guinea, and portions of Africa, femicide is practiced for economic reasons. Drawing on the centuries-old tradition of accusing women of witchcraft as blame for problems like economic strife, colonization, and rapid industrialization, they use violence to steal land. To combat the practice in modern India, women accused of sorcery created ANANDI, a group which meets and sings together, acts as on-call responders to gender violence, and pressures police to document witch hunts. In Africa, women perform acts of staged incivility — such as public shaming or literally sitting on would-be attackers.
Due to a combination of organized crime and domestic violence, fourteen of the world’s twenty-five nations with the highest murder rates against women are in Latin America, according to the Small Arms Survey of 2016. On average, seven women are murdered every day in Mexico alone, while an average of twelve women per day murdered in the Latin and Caribbean regions overall, per UN Women. Stunningly, 98% of these murders go unprosecuted.
In October of 2020, Mexican women had enough. Protesters seized and occupied Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission building, converting it into a women’s shelter and repudiating a government that had done little to prioritize their lives and safety. Across Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, major protests continued in March 2021 in the form of public theater, green bandanas, and hashtags like #EleNao (#NotHim) and #NiUnaMenos (#Not One Less.) Women and police also clashed in Mexico on International Women’s Day.
How societies enable femicide
While their murder rate is lower than Latin America, failure to prosecute sexual violence is also a major problem in the US and the UK. Less than 1% of rapes in the US lead to felony conviction, and only 1.5% of rape cases in England and Wales lead to charges or summons. Women rallied in the US across hundreds of college campuses in February to raise awareness about sexual assault, staging socially-distanced demonstrations and leaving messages in chalk and on flyers. And as protests against the handling of Everard’s case grow, they’ve reached as far as Australia.
Domestic violence is another startling problem that unites all nations of the world. In 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a global study which found that 50,000 women were killed by intimate partners or family members in the year before, accounting for the majority of women’s murders globally. In the US alone, nearly one million women have been shot or fired upon with a firearm, and 4.5 million have been threatened with a firearm. One in three women worldwide experienced physical or sexual violence mostly from an intimate partner before the pandemic spiked domestic violence further, UN Women stated.
A severe and pervasive culture of physical and sexual assault normalizes violence and leaves women at risk of further — and often escalating — harm. In a report titled “One Day I’ll Kill You: Impunity and Domestic Violence Cases in the Brazilian State of Roraima,” Human Rights Watch explains how the failure of Brazil’s police to investigate and prosecute domestic violence indict a system that does not prioritize women’s safety, and ultimately enables their deaths.
Likewise, justice systems often put the burden on women to justify their experiences, with the UK usually abandoning prosecutions and evidence-gathering when women don’t cooperate. Despite the psychological dependence and trauma abuse causes and the increased danger women experience when fleeing violence, victims are expected to be perfect to put their perpetrators behind bars — and even then, they often walk. One study noted that while some women don’t cooperate with courts, many others are failed by them because courts trivialize their experiences, commute sentences for abusers, and frame abuse as a private familial matter. Reporting domestic violence and not being amicable with abusers also harms women in custody battles in the US. And even as police are often the first recourse for victims, more than half of officers who are charged, arrested and convicted of domestic abuse keep their jobs.
In response to surging cases of domestic violence within the COVID crisis, women have taken to the streets from France and Rome to Ukraine, pressuring world leaders to take a stand. For months in Turkey, county-wide demonstrations pressured the government to support the Istanbul Convention to increase regional protections against domestic violence, Amnesty International notes.
The United Nations suggests the best ways to prevent femicide include training and sensitizing health care workers and police to women’s issues and intimate partner violence, increasing intervention and prevention research, decreasing gun ownership and strengthening gun laws, and strengthening research, laws and awareness about murders committed in the name of ‘honor.’
On the one hand, law enforcement and community safety reform present possible partnership opportunities which could help both women and police, strengthening officers’ understanding of femicides and harassment and increasing women’s resources. On the other hand, traditional power structures have deep and systemic flaws in responding to women’s needs, and are often not an option to those most at risk. Women internationally report dismissive culture from law enforcement, and police officers are both significantly more likely to be domestic abusers than the general population and less likely to be caught or terminated for their actions.
Voicing concerns over femicide to elected officials and police can be an important element to activism, but it is often flawed and not enough on its own. So as always, women are taking to the streets, clashing with police, publicly shaming and speaking out against their attackers, and creating their own safe havens.
