Editors

Executive Summary

This one-of-a-kind volume explores in depth femicide and feminicide, bringing together our current knowledge on this phenomenon and its prevention.

No country is free from femicide/feminicide, which represents the tip of the iceberg in male violence against women and girls. Therefore, it is crucial and timely to better understand how states and their citizens are experiencing and responding to femicide/feminicide globally.

Through the work of internationally recognised feminist and grassroots activists, researchers, and academics from around the world, this handbook offers the first in-depth, global examination of the growing social movement to address femicide and feminicide. It includes the current state of knowledge and the prevalence of femicide/feminicide and its characteristics across countries and world regions, as well as the social and legal responses to these killings. The contributions contained here look at the accomplishments of the past four decades, ongoing challenges, and current and future priorities to identify where we need to go from here to prevent femicide/feminicide specifically and male violence against women and girls overall.

This transnational, multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral handbook will contribute to research, policy, and practice globally at a time when it is needed the most. It brings a visible, global focus to the growing concern about femicide/feminicide, underscoring the importance of adopting a human rights framework in working towards its prevention, in an increasingly unstable global world for women and girls.

 

Introduction to Co-Editors and contributors

Myrna Dawson is Professor of Sociology and Research Leadership Chair, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph. She is the Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV; www.violenceresearch.ca) and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice & Accountability (CFOJA; www.femicideincanada.ca). For ten years, Dawson was a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice (2008–2018). She has spent more than two decades researching social and legal responses to violence with emphasis on violence against women and children, femicide, and filicide.

Saide Mobayed Vega is a researcher interested in the intersections between human rights, violence against women, digital technologies, and data. Her research traces how feminicide is recounted across scales by zooming in on global practices of data collection and local data activism, with a focus on Mexico. In 2017, she co-founded the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform with the UN Studies Association. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Cambridge.

Learn also more about all contributors which are part of our FWP Expert Directory! 

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dubravka Šimonovic, Former Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences (2015-2021)

Part 1 Introduction 

Chapter 1: Femicide and feminicide: A growing global human rights movement 

Authors: Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega

 

Part 2 Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives

Chapter 2: A global archaeology of femi(ni)cide 

Author: Saide Mobayed Vega

Chapter 3: Femicide and the global political economy 

Authors: Alison Brysk and Vitória Moreira

Chapter 4: Understanding femicide using a global social ecological model

Authors: Emma Fulu, Victoria Alondra, Xian Warner, Chay Brown and Loksee Leung

Chapter 5: Femicide and intersectionality

Author: Lorena Sosa

Chapter 6: Femicide/feminicide and colonialism

Authors: Paulina García-Del Moral, Dolores Figueroa Romero, Patricia Torres Sandoval, and Laura Hernández Pérez

Chapter 7: Femi[ni]cide and space: Theorising the socio-spatial scripts of femi[ni]cide

Author: Lorena Fuentes

Chapter 8: Systems of power and femicide: The intersections of race, gender, and extremist violence 

Authors: Maria N. Scaptura and Brittany E. Hayes

 

Part 3 Data and Methodological Considerations

Chapter 9: Data sources and challenges in addressing femicide and feminicide

Authors: Angelika Zecha, Naeemah Abrahams, Karine Duhamel, Cristina Fabré, Alejandra Otamendi, Alejandra Rios Cazares, Heidi Stöckl, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega

Chapter 10: Feminicide data activism

Collectif Féminicides Par Compagnons ou Ex Feminizidmap, Kathomi Gatwiri, Counting Dead Women project, Savia Hasanova, Anna Kapushenko, Lyubava Malysheva, Saide Mobayed Vega, Audrey Mugeni, Counting Dead Women project, Rosalind Page, Black Femicide project, Ivonne Ramírez Ramírez, Ellas Tienen Nombre project, Helena Suárez Val, Feminicidio Uruguay project, Dawn Wilcox, Women Count USA: Femicide Accountability project and Aimee Zambrano Ortiz, Monitor de Femicidios project, Utopix

Chapter 11: Femicide/feminicide observatories and watches

Vathsala Illesinghe, Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven, Femi(ni)cide Watch Poland, Feminicidio.net, Observatorio de Feminicidios, Observatorio feminicidios Colombia - Red feminista antimilitarista, Shalva Weil, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega

 

Part 4 Femicide and Feminicide Across World Regions and Countries

Chapter 12: Femicide in Afghanistan

Authors: Mohammad Ibrahim Dariush, Farzana Adell, and Angelika Zecha

Chapter 13: Femicide in Australia

Authors: Patricia Cullen, Jenna Price and Natasha Walker 

Chapter 14: Feminicide in Brazil 

Author: Joana Perrone

Chapter 15: Femicide in Canada

Authors: Wendy Aujla, Myrna Dawson, Crystal J. Giesbrecht, Nneka MacGregor, Shiva Nourpanah

Chapter 16: Femicide in Europe

Authors: Marceline Naudi, Monika Schröttle, Elina Kofou, Maria José Magalhães, and Christiana Kouta

Chapter 17: Femicide in Georgia

Author: Tamar Dekanosidze

Chapter 18: Femicide in India

Author: Nishi Mitra vom Berg

Chapter 19: Feminicide in Mexico 

Authors: Saide Mobayed Vega, Sonia M. Frías, Fabiola de Lachica Huerta, and Aleida Luján-Pinelo

Chapter 20: Femicide in Palestinian Society

Authors: Rafah Anabtawi, Iman Jabbour, and Abeer Baker

Chapter 21: Femicide in Russian Federation 

Authors: Ksenia Meshkova and Lyubava Malysheva

Chapter 22: Femicide in South Africa

Authors: Nechama Brodie, Shanaaz Mathews, and Naeemah Abrahams

Chapter 23: Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa 

Authors: Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

Chapter 24: Femicide in Turkey

Authors: Ceyda Ulukaya and Büşra Yalçınöz Uçan

Chapter 25: Femicide in the United Kingdom

Author: Karen Ingala Smith

Chapter 26: Femicide in the United States

Authors: Jill Theresa Messing, Millan A. AbiNader, Jesenia Pizarro, April M. Zeoli, Em Loerzel, Tricia Bent-Goodley, and Jacquelyn Campbell

 

Part 5 Understanding Femicide and Feminicide Subtypes and Contexts 

Chapter 27: Intimate femicide/intimate partner femicide 

Authors: Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Sandra Walklate, Jude McCulloch, and JaneMaree Maher

Chapter 28: Population control and sex-selective abortion in China and India: A feminist critique of criminalisation

Authors: Navtej Purewal and Lisa Eklund

Chapter 29: Systemic sexual feminicide: Colonial scars in bodies and territories

Author: Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso

Chapter 30: ‘Honour’-based femicide

Author: Aisha K. Gill

Chapter 31: Femigenocide 

Authors: Rita Laura Segato and Lívia Vitenti

Chapter 32: Sex work feminicide and the making of #SayHerName campaign by SWEAT in South Africa

Author: Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

Chapter 33: Armed conflict femicide

Author: Anna Alvazzi del Frate

Chapter 34: Femicide in the context of gang-related violence in El Salvador

Authors: Silvia Ivette Juárez Barrios and Erika J. Rojas Ospina

Chapter 35: Continuities and discontinuities between the concepts of feminicide and transfeminicide in Mexico

Authors: Sayak Valencia and Liliana Falcón

Chapter 36: Femi(ni)cide as war as femi(ni)cide: Violence and justice-seeking beyond borders

Author: Dilar Dirik

 

Part 6 Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide 

Chapter 37: Femicide and legislation

Author: Patsilí Toledo Vásquez

Chapter 38: Femicide and transnational law

Authors: Isabel López Padilla and Helene Saadoun

Chapter 39: Investigating femicide/feminicide: The Latin American model protocol 

Authors: Françoise Roth, Mariela Labozzeta and Agustina Rodríguez

Chapter 40: Femicide and the "heat of passion" criminal doctrine

Author: Hava Dayan 

Chapter 41: State accountability and feminicide 

Authors: Cecilia Menjívar and Leydy Diossa-Jimenez

 

Part 7 Social Responses to Femicide and Feminicide 

Chapter 42: Colonial femicide: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada 

Author: Robyn Bourgeois

Chapter 43: Witnessing across borders: Truth-telling about feminicides in México and the MMIWG2S in Canada and the U.S.

Author: Cynthia Bejarano

Chapter 44: North American necropolitics and gender: On #BlackLivesMatter and Black femicide

Author: Shatema Threadcraft

Chapter 45: Femicide, digital activism, and the #NiUnaMenos in Argentina

Authors: Francesca Belotti, Francesca Comunello and Consuelo Corradi

Chapter 46: Dissident memories: Feminicide, memorialisation, and the fight against state cruelty 

Author: Elva Orozco Mendoza

 

Part 8 Where to go from here in Research, Policy, and Practice 

Chapter 47: Latin American standardisation of data on feminicide 

Authors: Silvana Fumega and María Esther Cervantes

Chapter 48: Human-centered computing and feminicide counterdata science 

Author: Catherine D’Ignazio

Chapter 49: Male perpetrators’ accounts of femicide: A global systematic review 

Authors: Dabney P. Evans, Martín Hernán Di Marco, Subasri Narasimhan, Melanie Maino Vieytes, Autumn Curran, and Mia S. White

Chapter 50: Changing media representations of femicide as primary prevention 

Authors: Jordan Fairbairn, Ciara Boyd, Yasmin Jiwani, and Myrna Dawson

 

 


 

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