"There is a femicide out there!"

Before diving in, it’s worth remembering that every violent death is a human tragedy—and clear thinking starts with that simple fact.

1 Intentionally Ambiguous Definition

• Elastic wording. UN-Women’s explainer calls femicide “an intentional killing with a gender-related motivation,” yet concedes that each country can label any female homicide “femicide” if domestic law so decides—no motive proof required. unwomen.org

• Presumed misogyny. Several Latin-American statutes actually presume every man-on-woman homicide is gender-motivated unless the defendant proves otherwise, inverting the normal burden of proof. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

• Outcome, not motive. Because real-world motives are hard to establish, activists quietly slide from “killed because she was a woman” to “killed while being a woman,” letting them sweep almost any female homicide into the ‘femicide’ bucket.

  
  

2 Statistical Abuse

1. “All female deaths = femicide.” UN-Women’s 2022 brief lumps every intentional killing of a woman or girl (≈ 89 000 that year) under the femicide headline, regardless of motive. unwomen.org

2. Intimate-partner slice double-counted. WHO reminds us that ~38 % of murdered women are killed by a current or former partner, yet campaign material presents this figure as new evidence on top of the overall count—when it’s already inside it. who.int

3. No male baseline. Reports trumpet “51 100 women killed at home in 2023” but omit that four-fifths of all homicide victims are male. who.int

Net effect: the same set of deaths gets recycled into dramatic headlines, while the far larger male body-count is treated as statistical wallpaper.

3 Real Scale — and the Broader-Mortality Context

2023 global snapshot	Male victims	Female victims
Share of all homicide victims	≈ 80 %	≈ 20 % who.int
Killed by an intimate partner/family member	≈ 11 %	≈ 58 % of female victims who.int

Broader-mortality context: where homicide actually ranks for women

Cause of death (2021-22)	Female deaths (≈)	Share of all female deaths*
Cardiovascular disease (heart + stroke)	≳ 10 million	> 30 % who.int
All cancers	≈ 5 million	≈ 15 % who.int
Respiratory infections & COPD	≈ 2.5 million	≈ 8 % who.int
Diabetes	≈ 1 million	≈ 3 % who.int
Maternal causes (pregnancy/childbirth) 2023	≈ 260 000	≈ 0.8 % who.int
All homicides of women (vast majority by men) 2022	≈ 89 000	≈ 0.3 % unwomen.orgwho.int
Suicide	≈ 250 000	≈ 0.8 % ourworldindata.org

*Total female deaths ≈ 32 million in 2021 (68 million total deaths worldwide, women ≈ 47 %). Calculation from WHO totals. who.intwho.int

Take-away:

• A woman is 100 × more likely to die of heart disease and ~5 × more likely to die giving birth than to be murdered by anyone—male killers included.

• Homicide is not even in the top-25 medical or injury causes of female mortality. It sits below road traffic injuries, drowning, and fire-related burns.

• Framing this comparatively tiny risk as a unique, gender-wide “epidemic” requires the definitional tricks and statistical sleights outlined in §§ 1-2.

Bottom line

The “femicide” label functions less as a neutral criminological term and more as a political branding device:

1. Keep the definition slippery so almost any female homicide fits.

2. Inflate the body-count by re-labelling ordinary murders as gender crimes.

3. Present numbers without the male or overall-mortality baseline, masking the fact that being killed by a man is one of the least likely ways a woman will die.

If our goal is genuine concern for human life, we should abandon gendered labels—or at least apply them symmetrically—rather than reserving moral outrage and policy attention for ~0.3 % of female deaths while ignoring the vastly larger male and non-violent disease burdens that claim women’s lives every day.