The latest available Istat data shows that, in 2023, 334 murders 117 were women and 217 were men, with a homicide rate of 0.57% per 100,000 inhabitants. Seeing these data, you might think: so why are we talking more and more often about feminicides and so little about male murders? Well, they are the motives to get people talking above all about feminicides, because they reveal a violence linked to gender inequalities and emotional relationships, different from the one that leads to the murders of men.
In our country, in fact, feminicides – that is, the killing of women as women — represent 82% of murders of womena worrying fact that has no counterpart in male homicides, the motives of which can be attributed to arguments, trivial reasons (personal grudges) or organized crime.
When can a murder be defined as “femicide”
To understand the extent of the phenomenon, it is necessary to understand first of all when we talk about “femicide”: while a murder of a woman can be generic (it can have any motive: arguments, crime, robbery, gang), femicide occurs when a woman is killed precisely because she was a woman. A murder of this type, therefore, is rooted in dynamics of power, control and discrimination against women precisely because of their gender.
Femicide is almost always committed by the victim’s partner and ex-partner, but also (to a lesser extent) by family members, and the motive is almost always linked to a question of possession, jealousy, non-acceptance of a separationor to the man’s desire to impede the autonomy of the woman.
Murders of men and women: what the data say, including numbers and motives
Let’s look carefully at the Istat data. As anticipated at the beginning, of 334 murders 117 were women and 217 were men. 93.3% of murderers are men (in 88.9% of cases of women killed and 80.6% of men killed), and 6.7% of murders are committed by women.
In particular, in Italy, the men those most at risk are in the range between 25 and 34 years (1.63 per 100 thousand inhabitants). The reason why two-thirds of young adults were killed in 2023 can be traced back to one quarrel (66.7%) or remains unspecified despite the perpetrator having been discovered (11.9%).
For them women however, the risk of being a victim of homicide increases with age. The most exposed, in fact, are the very elderly: among them there is a rate of 0.67 murders per 100 thousand women over 84, which in Italy corresponds to approximately 10 feminicides per year in this age group. Mainly, this type of feminicide happens at the hands of partners or family members, who motivate the murder with the idea of ”putting an end to the woman’s suffering”, both physical and psychological. But beyond this data, as reported by Istat, the context in which the murders of women occur is predominantly a family or emotional one (82% of cases). The data is no better for foreign women: in 2023, in 14 out of 16 crimes, foreign women were killed within the family.
THE motives for the murdersin most cases, are to be found in arguments, trivial reasons and personal grudges, but in the case of feminicides i are also added passionate reasons: for female victims between 35 and 44 years old, six out of ten homicides fall into these motives. In more than one case in two (51.5%) Italian women were killed by their partners (41% current and 12.8% ex-boyfriends, ex-spouses or ex-cohabitants), and the number rises for foreign women (68.7%).
But perhaps the data that speaks most clearly is the simplest: in 2023, of 63 women killed as a couple, 61 killers were their male partners (96.8%), confirming a complex picture regarding a problem that cannot be hidden: that of gender homicide, almost always anticipated by a picture of violence very precise.
What is considered “violence” that preludes feminicide?
Not all forms of violence lead to femicide, which is only the epilogue. In fact, there may be several preceding the latter forms of violenceincluding abuse, threats and coercion that affect various spheres (physical, sexual, psychological, economic, stalking and harassment).
This type of abuse takes the form of: beatings, threats physical and verbal, non-consensual sexual intercourse, handling, insulation of the person by friends and family, stalking, invasions of privacy, control of daily life and finances. This last point is often underestimated, but it is what often leads abused women to remain close to their companions who abuse them, because their precarious condition does not allow them to truly distance themselves. Furthermore, even before financial control (i.e. stealing money or blocking access to accounts), the partner can prevent his partner from working, making the situation even worse.
Be careful, therefore: a couple’s argument that ends, for example, in insults, is not automatically violence. It becomes so when there is one disparity of power that harms the other person.
Murders in the world: what the situation is and the alarming data
Globally, approx 81% of homicide victims are men. The global homicide rate with male victims is approximately 9.1 per 100,000 malesapproximately four times that of females (approximately 2 per 100,000 females). The motives, however, almost never concern family contexts or relationships, but – just as in Italy – interpersonal conflicts, organized crime, arguments or economic reasons, which intensify especially in contexts of strong social inequalities and illegal activities (and the murderers are of the same type in almost all cases).
If men are killed above all outside the home, for women the danger is concentrated precisely in the family environment, and the data from the latest United Nations report (2023) offers a significantly serious picture of the issue. Every day, in the world, 140 women and girls die at the hands of your partner or a close relativewhich means a woman killed every 10 minutes (around 85,000 victims per year). But who are the killers? The 60% of these murders (51,000) were not committed by strangers, but by partners or other family members. Throughout the world, therefore, it is almost always women who kill trusted peopleand the causes are always attributable to questions of check And candies on the lives of women, who as women must obey, under penalty of death.
The data are impressive: the continent that has the highest rates of femicide isAfricawith 21,000 women killed per year, but the data are incomplete (they fluctuate between 18,600-24,600), and the victims could be many more than those declared. In Asia the number drops, but only slightly, with 18,500 victims. Then followed by the Americas with 8,300 women killed, Europe (2,300) and Oceania, with around 300 victims. If in Europe (64%) and the Americas (58%) the majority of feminicides are committed by partners, in Africa, Asia and Oceania the nature of those who commit the crime changes: in these continents, in fact, the majority of victims of femicide were killed by family members (59%) rather than by partners (41%).
