Naming ‘Femicide’
Ashley Rogers
[Njaming an injustice, and thereby providing a means of thinking about it, usually precedes the creation of a movement against it. (Russell, 1996: xiv)
Femicide: The killing of one or more females by one or more males because they are female. (Russell, 2012)
While there is much that is unknown about men killing women, it is now undeniable that the majority of women who are killed are in fact killed by men and that this number is increasing. According to the latest UK Femicide Census Report, a current or ex-partner is the perpetrator in over half of those cases (Long et al., 2020). With similar patterns found around the world, there are now various ways of referring to this most brutal form of violence against women, but the term most globally recognised is ‘femicide’. What is pertinent is that the term ‘femicide’ itself has provided a new concept, and thus language, around which attention can be focused and demand for change mobilised. Although the collection of data on these killings come with a number of challenges and complexities, Diana Russell’s work on naming and highlighting the phenomenon has given rise to greater awareness and demands for change to social and legal orders.
This chapter therefore engages with the work of Diana Russell on femicide, drawing on a number of her texts, including her work with Jill Radford, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, and with Roberta Harmes titled Femicide in Global Perspective. In addition, a number of speeches have also been drawn upon. The importance of her work is placed in the context of the broader literature surrounding violence against women and homicide, and the significance of her work is detailed in relation to her efforts to establish this term and fight for space to challenge woman-killing. This has influenced the work of others across the world, and this is shown with particular reference to Latin America and the reworking of the term ‘femicide’, its centrality to women’s rights and social justice movements, and its incorporation into legal frameworks. This chapter also draws on my own insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by the term ‘femicide’ in Latin America, having conducted 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork on violence against women in Bolivia.
The Work of Diana Russell
This specific killing of women, or ‘femicide’, is not always differentiated from the more gender-neutral term ‘homicide’, and in criminal justice the term ‘homicide’ is supplemented with gender information only where considered relevant. In fact, there continues to be very little sociological engagement with femicide, with much of the focus on the term to be found in more legal or criminal justice literature (Weil, 2016). Yet continuing to utilise ‘homicide’ as an overarching term for all killing simply obscures the particularities of the act that a more gendered approach reveals, and doing so also adversely impacts on responses to deal with it. In recognising ‘the power of a name’ (Russell, 2011a) then, Diana Russell introduced the term ‘femicide’ at the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Belgium in 1976,' defining it as an act implicitly motivated by patriarchal and misogynistic culture (Radford and Russell, 1992: 3). By naming the specific killing of women by men, she sought to separate it out from homicide and draw attention to it as a political and social phenomenon in and of itself, made possible by harmful male-dominated structures of society.
Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, with an education focused on social work and sociology, and combined with activism, striving for social justice has been central to Diana Russell’s career and personal life. In her role as Assistant Professor ofSociology at Mills College, California, in 1969, she taught one of the first courses focused on women, and it was shortly after this that she introduced the term ‘femicide’. Between 1991 and 1993, Russell returned to South Africa to document women’s experiences of male violence - and in particular incestuous abuse - sharing findings (Russell, 1995) as well as an engaging reflexive account of her experience of ethnicity and ethics whilst conducting such research (Russell, 1996).
In a diversion from literature surrounding homicide on the one hand, and gender-based violence on the other, Russell’s recognition that there was something particular about the killing of women at the hands of men helped propel femicide in to use in social, political, criminal, and health policies which seek to address this extreme form of violence against women. Not only is there a gender dynamic to homicide with killing being more prevalent in one direction than the other, but the frequency with which it happens and the relative silence around its gendered nature meant that Russell’s work became central to establishing the issue zwan issue. She later went on to develop definitions of the term in two coedited collections that brought together the work of various authors on the subject of woman-killing: Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing in 1992 (coedited with Jill Radford) and Femicide in Global Perspective in 2001 (with Roberta Hannes). These texts provide insightful feminist explorations of femicide with a deliberate focus on the structure of male-female relationships at both macro and micro levels. While her 1992 anthology was largely focused on the minority world,2 Russell’s later book provided more global insights into the phenomenon of femicide across 14 chapters, just under half of which she,
Naming ‘Femicide’ 87 herself, authored. Then, in the 2001 collection, Russell emphasised femicide as the misogynistic and hate-filled killing of women by men and pointed to it as a hate crime. Since both of these texts, her work has contributed to a growing awareness of femicide as a social issue and one that must be addressed if social justice is to be achieved. For this reason, her collective written and verbal work and efforts in this area (see also Russell, 2001; 2011a; 2011b; 2012) can be considered as profoundly influential.
Diana Russell’s collective work on femicide is therefore a ‘leading work’ in the sense that her activist and academic pursuits have culminated in raising the profile of the concept ‘femicide’ and, in turn, drawing attention to the sociological elements of these acts and the social and legal injustices that women face. Taking her body of work on femicide together, I do not focus solely on one text, but this chapter is instead inspired by her broader insights on femicide and the influence they have had collectively.
Femicide in Context
With literature on homicide largely focused on male victims of male perpetrators - a reflection of more traditional, male-centric criminological approaches - there was a lack of engagement with women as victims. At the same time, though, there was a growing literature around gender-based violence and women as victims of domestic or intimate partner violence. Russell’s work brought these two areas together, emphasising the specific homicide of women as a gendered act, intimately linked to dominant patriarchal structures of society. By emphasising the power dynamics of misogyny and sexism that are deeply rooted in processes of social learning from a young age (for both men and women), Russell suggested that more consideration of the role of hate in a range of actions against women was required and thus the specific killing of women deserved more attention. Alongside the growing literature on domestic violence, she instigated a strong challenge to individualistic considerations of domestic violence as being a private or pathological issue (Russell, 2012) and instead pointed to violence against women and femicide as the sexist terrorisation of women and girls (Caputi and Russell, 1992). Although the term ‘femicide’ was slow in gaining traction, the work of Russell and others alongside her has been central to raising awareness and mobilising feminist activists across the globe, which has in turn encouraged greater discussion in the majority and minority world. Importantly, numerous countries now have legislation pertaining to the crime of femicide and other tolerated practices of men’s violence towards women, with evidence of the term being incorporated into criminal law and constitutional law.3 Femicide has therefore been politicised, with Russell striving to shed light on the struggle against violence that exists in numerous spaces of women’s social and private lives. In turn she encourages mobilising resistive strategies to combat the targeted abuse of women.
The emergence of the text, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (with Jill Radford), was part of this attempt at mobilisation by not only pointing out thespectrum of male violence against women and its ongoing nature but also frequently culminating in women’s murder. Thus, as Radford and Russell (1992: xiv) highlight, ‘naming an injustice, and thereby providing a means of thinking about it, usually precedes the creation of a movement against it’, and it is for precisely this reason that her work is such an influential one and pertinent to the areas of gender-based violence and women’s rights. More broadly, naming the phenomenon of men killing women has also drawn together the fields of sociology', criminology’, law, socio-legal studies, and anthropology, amongst others. This has meant that the subject of femicide has not been monopolised by’ legal practitioners or theorists who tend to focus largely' on legal doctrine, but the nuances and social construction of the act have instead been discussed far more acutely, paying attention to the structures of society' that reinforce patriarchal ideologies and practices that all culminate to produce the conditions for femicide to exist. The fact that Radford and Russell’s (1992) anthology' draws from a range of examples of femicide, its prevalence, how it is silenced, and the injustices surrounding it, making it both accessible and relevant to a number of academic fields as well as outside of academia.
Although much of the focus of Russell’s work has largely' been on the gender element of femicide, many' scholars have since examined femicide from a more intersectional approach, which draws on not only' the common gendered nature of femicides but further explores the racialised elements of them, too. Radford and Russell’s (1992) anthology' does include, in part three contributions, including three of her own, focused on femicide and racism, but there is no meaningful engagement with intersectional feminism. Garcia-Del Moral (2018: 931, 930) argues that a decolonial intersectional framework in particular is what is important for ‘capturing how coloniality operates through violence’, and this calls for a ‘reconceptualisation of femicide ... that pays attention to structural and representational processes that shape and are shaped by the historical material realities of specific groups of women’. Although Russell’s work is credited, there is a warning presented by Garcia-Del Moral (2012), reflecting the work of Marcus (1992), which posits that in Russell’s popular definition of femicide with women the objects of violence and men the subjects, women have come to be defined largely' by both their fear and by' their vulnerability' to violence. By' accepting and naturalising men as the perpetrators of violence and suggesting that violence itself is inevitable means that little space is left to consider creative way's of tackling it. Yet, as Russell (2001: 177) emphasises, women arc rendered ‘chronically' and profoundly' unsafe’ and acts of femicide are simply reinforcing a naturalised and socially' constructed male dominance which is central to the act itself and therefore cannot be overlooked or underplayed. Ultimately, all those working on the issue of femicide do all acknowledge and highlight that failure to adequately' address the root causes of male violence against women, and the impunity with which men act, are ‘logical consequencejs] of the patriarchal system that maintains male supremacy’ (Monarrez Fragoso, 2002: 280, see also Segato, 2013).
Naming ‘Femicide’ 89
The Significance of Naming Femicide: Mobilisation and Resistance
There are a number of reasons that Russell’s work on femicide can be considered to be significant for law and social justice and not simply because it has encouraged greater discussion of the phenomenon. Firstly, bringing the term to life and demanding space for its recognition has meant that femicide has not only become a concept of global dimensions but also a category’ and a paradigm through which to examine and analyse violence against women (Novo Paleo, cited in European Network of Migrant Women, 2019). Secondly, by' naming it, there has been increased pressure on states to recognise femicide and for it to be incorporated into law or embedded in criminal justice systems, and social and health policies, alongside broader legislation on gender-based and intimate partner violence. Thirdly, Russell’s work has resulted in more calls and efforts to document instances of men killing women and to hold media to account for their representation of such acts. The aim is therefore to resist and dismantle ongoing assumptions about victims and common victim-blaming narratives and ensure that media reporting focuses on men as perpetrators and using language that emphasises this.
As the term ‘femicide’ is so heavily' steeped in a sociological understanding and analysis of society’ as patriarchal and misogynistic (an understanding that appears to be a relatively' timeless one, unfortunately), its addition to our vocabulary has resulted in a broader consideration and analysis of the gendered dynamics of power, domination, and control that may’ not have been explored if the killing of women were to always be categorised as homicide (see Dobash and Dobash, 2015). This new interpretive framework or ‘cultural repertoire’, as Ewick and Silbey' (1998) would call it, for the killing of women is important in that it provides a space and tool that can be used to deconstruct the complexities of womankilling and challenge existing scripts of language that might be blind to gender. By' naming femicide, there are now new recourses for meaning making which provide families of those murdered, the media, non-governmental organisations, social movements, and criminal justice agencies with a more nuanced vocabulary and paradigm to understand and challenge these acts. The term ‘femicide’ and explorations of it, have therefore provided ‘a set of resources that operate to define and pattern social life’ (Ewick and Silbey, 1998: 43).
Consciousness of this term not only’ raises awareness of gender inequalities and injustices in social and gender relationships but it also points to the manner in which meanings and categories are being applied to cases of men killing women. By' transforming our language and incorporating the term ‘femicide’, better attempts can be made to liberate future meaning making and understanding. Although in North America the term ‘femicide’ is more readily' in use, in the UK the term used tends to be ‘intimate partner homicide’. The UK’s dearth of references to femicide and favouring instead of the classification of ‘intimate partner homicide’ can be considered to be restrictive in the sense that it focuseson those who are in ‘intimate’ relationships. This was not Russell’s intention, and in fact the term ‘femicide’ should be used because it also includes a range of situations where women are killed by men, for example honour killings, dowry-related deaths, female genital mutilation that results in death, and deaths related to unsafe abortions - all of which are acts that feature the domination and control of women and their bodies. In Latin America, which will be discussed in more depth in the remainder of this chapter, Russell’s work has been influential in establishing a more contextualised conceptualisation of femicide. Rising rates of violence against women and of the killing of women by men across Latin America have resulted in national and regional campaigns to challenge both the act itself and the range of violence against women that encourages and reinforces the consideration of women as inferior.
One controversy surrounding the term ‘femicide’, and in particular Russell’s definition of it, (although note that I use this word ‘controversy’ very lightly here) is Lagarde’s (2010) preference for a slight reworking of the term into ‘feminicide’ or ‘feminicidio’, as highlighted in the introduction to the Spanish language version of Radford and Russell (Lagarde, 2006). Lagarde is a Mexican academic, focusing on feminist studies and anthropology, and the reworking of the term into what is termed feminicidio is an important reflection of the particularities of the experiences of femicide and the historical, social, political, legal, and economic contexts in Latin America. The term feminicidio was introduced not just as a language translation - which Russell (2011b) expressed confusion about - but to also emphasise the role of the state either/both in its complicity or unwillingness to prevent or respond to men’s fatal violence against women. The focus with feminicidio, therefore, is on the impunity with which men act. In addition, it also emphasises the way that states reinforce this impunity through ineffective and male-dominated justice systems and the promotion of harmful hegemonic masculinity in society.
Despite her hesitation and partial rejection (see Russell, 201 lb), this reworking does not overshadow Russell’s contribution, which in fact Lagarde also promoted in Latin America, but it adds to it an element that is particularly important when exploring femicide from majority world perspectives - the state. For example, the promotion of the term feminicidio recognises the impetus of international legal instruments (such as the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women) to define state responsibility for gendered violence, and so Lagarde incorporated it into this her new term. In Mexico, where the highest figures of femicide are recorded, recognition of impunity, the silencing of women, and the role of the state are all vital factors that must be understood in order to develop strategies for combatting femicide. The same can be said for other countries in Latin America, too (see Rogers, 2017). For Lagarde, and those who prefer the term feminicidio or feminicide (in perhaps its more anglo-translation), the role of the state cannot be separated out from the killing of women by men and broader systems of power. As Menjivar and Walsh (2017: 223) point out, ‘this context includes structural, political, symbolic, and everyday violence that reinforces and undergirds the normalization of persistent impunity and violence in the lives of women ... [which]
Naming‘Femicide’ 91 sustains and perpetuates gendered violence and impunity’. While the emphasis on the cultural context was not new to Russell’s term ‘femicide’, for she also stresses that it is the broader social relations and toleration of a range of violence against women that contributes to their murder, the specific emphasis on the state, as a key and complicit actor, was a new addition (see also Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010 and Martin and Carvajal, 2015).
Russell (2012), though, has expressed concern that a focus on impunity may mean that should a woman be murdered by a man and be convicted for it, femicide has no longer taken place. She also expresses confusion as to why a new term needs to exist at all. Her argument here, though, does not reflect my own interpretation, and I therefore do not agree with a suggested rejection oifemini-cidio in favour of femicide (see Russell, 2012), especially in the Latin American context. In fact, by drawing attention to the state and a culture of impunity, even more discursive space is created for increased and powerful social movements to draw on international human rights norms and apply them in national contexts, albeit it is important to point out that the success of movements attempting this has been variable (Friedman, 2009; Santos, 2007). While I would not necessarily uphold this particular concern with regard to the different terminologies of femicide, I do recognise that expanding definitions too much can of course simply add to the complexities of recognising, reporting, recording, and ultimately challenging the phenomenon. Alvazzi del Frate (2011: 116), for example, highlights that although there has been increased attention on how women are often specifically targeted, ‘the definition has progressively become diluted and confused’. If the definition is too broad, the political thrust into dealing with it becomes less focused and thus weakens. Without engaging with the debates around universalism and cultural relativism (see Brems, 1997), it is imperative that an adoption of the term ‘femicide’ and understandings of it as a concept and a paradigm for exploration and challenge are contextualised within the social, political, and economic conditions of each society.
Despite challenges surrounding the definition of the term, like many other terms, there is one notable impact of it that it is important to highlight in the context of Leading Works in Law and Social Justice, and that is the incorporation of the term ‘femicide’ into social and legal frameworks. Where the term has not been incorporated, the range of violence that often precedes it has. As highlighted, although sociology' and criminology hold issues of social justice at their core, the literature on femicide has been rather scarce (Weil, 2016), particularly when compared to domestic abuse or intimate partner violence. Yet those forms of violence are often, although not always, crucial elements in recognition of femicide or at least the risk of it (Johnson et al., 2019). It is undeniable that there are observable patterns of male violence against women that can be positioned along a continuum or cycle of violence (Kelly, 1987; 1988). This is most recently exemplified by the legislative developments in relation to coercive control in England and Wales4 and Scotland5 (Stark and Hester, 2019; Burman and Brooks-Hay, 2018) - although it is important to point out that neither criminal justice systems have formally recognised the term ‘femicide’ in their legislative frameworks.
In fact, it is a similar law in Bolivia (that was enacted prior to those on coercive control in the UK) that attracted me to exploring gender-based violence as part of my doctorate research. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork I explored women’s experiences of violence and both their legal consciousness of a new law which recognised various forms of violence against women and, of particular importance here, recognised feminicidio as a criminal offence. Incorporation of this term into law is of course to be commended, and indeed it is in many other countries across Latin America where it appears to be more readily accepted into legal and popular discourse than here in the UK. Inclusion in legal frameworks reveals a form of recognition as well as a potential framework for accessing justice through the state, but caution must be exercised, too. The law itself ‘is often of secondary importance to those it is supposed to help, and is at times, [even] an irrelevancy’ (Engel and Munger, 2003: 40). Law and legal reforms should not be our focus but should be presented as spaces to expose and contest gendered constructions of women’s experiences (see Rogers, 2019). With reference to my own work in Bolivia the increased demand for legal recognition of femicide and space to raise awareness can, in particular, be attributed to a high-profile case in 2013.
On 11 February 2013, Jorge Clavijo Ovando, a Bolivian police officer, killed his journalist wife, Hanali Huaycho. After stabbing her 13 times he was confronted by both their own son and Hanali’s mother. He stabbed her mother twice, too. Aided by his family and another police officer he fled the scene to then be located two weeks later in a town approximately five hours away, where he was found hanging from a tree (Aldunati, 2015). For long before this case, civil society organisations and women’s movements in Bolivia had been demanding political action and attention for increasing rates of violence against women and the ideologies that produce the conditions for such violence to flourish. In Hanali Huaycho’s case, her public profile as a Bolivian journalist ‘sped up mobilisation’, according to Coordinadora de la Mujer (interview, La Paz, 2015) because her murder was not a shock; she had frequently reported her husband’s abusive behaviour. Public marches and protests began immediately, calling for legal recognition and recourse to justice through the state. The President at the time, Evo Morales, released a press statement the following day, suggesting his commitment to tackling gender-based violence through ‘the full weight of the law’. One month later, on 9 March 2013, Law 348 to Guarantee Women a Life Free from Violence was enacted, which not only legally recognised 17 different forms of violence, including physical, psychological, symbolic, institutional, political, and media violence, but it also included the term feminicidio. This was an important political and legal gain for women’s rights groups, who played a central role in the law’s creation. Although this case resulted in legal reform, women’s rights organisations and women’s movements had long been fighting for the recognition of the harmful structural conditions of society that Bolivian women face. Linked to broader social movements across Latin America that recognised and denounced the killing of women by men, the collective efforts of scholars and activists who established this term, including the English language term
Naming ‘Femicide’ 93 ‘femicide’ and ‘feminicidio’, are to be commended for creating an important discursive space and site of resistance.
During my year-long ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivia, my attention frequently turned to femicide, although this was not the main focus of my work. In my time there, I encountered numerous cases both personally and in the media. It would be impossible to avoid. Bolivia has one of the highest rates of gendered-related violence in Latin America, and despite the new law in 2013, rates of femicide continue to rise. Shortly after arriving, on 25 November 2014, women’s movements and organisations took to the streets to raise awareness of feminicidio for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Under the afternoon sun, earning large purple crosses inscribed with the names of femicide victims from that year, women (and men) marched and chanted as they moved through the streets of La Paz. I both joined the march and followed alongside it, noting the commitment and vibrancy of this movement of peoples to raise awareness of gender-based violence and demand political action against impunity, a commitment I had never before seen, in person, in my own country of Scotland.
The law has therefore not only provided another space to challenge and contest hegemonic constructions of gender and the violence that results, ‘but it also determines the terms of the contest’ (Merry, 1995: 20). The terms in Bolivia are couched in impunity, at both state and individual levels, and it is for this reason that the term feminicidio has become so vital in Latin America because it draws attention to the state and the impunity with which people act (Lagarde, 2010). Although law exists to criminalise femicide, it has left much to be desired. Families of victims are unable to access justice through the state and criminal justice agencies because they are so deeply rooted in the harmful patriarchal attitudes that lead to violence in all its forms in the first place (see Rogers, 2019). So, although legal reform can and should be celebrated, the value of the term femicide/feminicidio perhaps lies far more in its discursive and paradigmatic power and potential for achieving social justice. As Corradi et al. (2016: 975) highlight, ‘this new word had a political purpose, in that it intended to produce changes in the social order which tolerated the violent death of women’.
Although statistics on femicides across the globe are unreliable because of, amongst other issues, the definition of it (Walklate et al., 2019), there are a growing number of initiatives that aim to document the numbers of femicides and collect data surrounding the circumstances of each case. The Femicide Census, for example, was founded by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarissa O’Callaghan and launched in 2015 to provide a record of women who have been killed by men in the UK since 2009. It also includes information on methods used to kill and social and demographic factors. In addition to this there have been other similar initiatives in other countries, such as the Canadian Femicide Observatory and the European Observatory on Femicide (see Walklate et al., 2019). But it was not until 2006 that the term was first used in the European Parliament (Weil, 2016). But while the term ‘femicide’ might not be so readily used in the UK, there hascertainly been mounting pressure on governments and the media to acknowledge violence against women and the killing of women by men.
As the news media play a vital role in society’s knowledge and understanding of crime and of victims and perpetrators of crime, the way that the media choose to report on it cannot be overlooked (Kellner, 1995). In cases of femicide, like the majority of violence against women cases, the media continues to perpetuate myths about these forms of violence (Dekeseredy, 2011), as well as reinforce stereotypes of both the victim and the offender without drawing on sources from qualified individuals or groups (see Taylor, 2009). This simply contributes to the challenging context within which social justice can be achieved as the narratives produced by the media are informed and underpinned by patriarchal and misogynistic ideas.
The Legacy: Continuing the Fight for Legal and
Social Justice
The importance of Russell’s work therefore lies in her identification of femicide as a specific social and criminological phenomenon that requires attention to the gendered element of homicide, amongst other social categories of differentiation. By attaching a name to the murder of women, she established space that has continued to be used since to spread awareness and instigate contestation. With the call to move away from more general criminal justice terms like homicide, the harmful patriarchal and misogynistic motives of women-killing are no longer invisible. With the conditions and circumstances surrounding femicide no longer silenced as they once were, there have been greater calls for formal legal recognition. Although this has been more successful in, for example, Latin America than other regions of the world, her work has contributed to the acceptance that other forms of violence against women may culminate in femicide at some stage. So, although Russell’s work is now only usually cited in relation to coining the term ‘femicide’, the work that has followed the establishment of this term would perhaps not have been so focused had she not ‘named’ it in the first place. This is precisely why her work can be considered as ‘leading’ and ‘significant’, for now that a name exists, the space for mobilisation that Russell called for is not only be fought for in majority world countries but in minority world countries too. It has been placed within contemporary and ever-changing contexts. All states and societies must therefore recognise the prevalence of woman-killing and the structural conditions of society which permit and sustain it. It can no longer be ignored.
To do so, there are a few developments which must continue to take place. The first is for, as Garcia-Del Moral (2018) argued, more decolonial and intersectional approaches (see also Smith 1999 more generally for research and methodologies that should be conducted for and by indigenous researchers). This requires a particular focus on not only the historical constructions of gender relationships and harmful colonial legacies but also on neo-colonialist assumptions of gendered and racialised bodies (Bidaseca, 2013). Furthermore, explorations of other social characteristics and their relationships with one another can
Naming ‘Femicide’ 95 also provide more nuanced and contextualised understandings of femicide. It is a contextualised understand that will remain important and that does not need to be to the detriment of a universally acknowledged term such as femicide or even feminicide. Attempts to contextualise are not necessarily criticisms of the original but are attempts to ensure that there is sufficient focus on the historical conditions of societies that generate the conditions under which women’s health, integrity and freedoms can be attacked (Lagarde, 2010). A universally accepted and applied use of the term will not be possible without blurring the complexities and particularities of the context within which it occurs, which in turn could hinder tailored responses, legal or otherwise (see Rogers, 2017).
When laws are created, they must not be considered as the end point in dealing with femicide. Legal change does not necessarily produce social change, and thus criminal justice for femicide and social justice for women are not one and the same. A chicken-egg conundrum exists whereby in order to produce legal change, there must be some element of social change, political will and drive, and resistive strategies employed by people who recognise an injustice, criminal or otherwise. In turn, for the law to be successful, there must be a change in social and legal institutions and ideologies that continue to promote, reinforce, and sustain patriarchal societies that allow femicide to take place, often with impunity. Thus, the creation of law is only the beginning of working towards social justice, but without naming the injustice, there is little fight to be had.
Notes
- 1 Although the origins of the term appear to be traced back to 1820, there is no clear evidence of this, and in fact the term was rarely used until Russell’s introduction of it.
- 2 I use of the term ‘minority’ world here as opposed to the homogenising concepts ‘global north’ and ‘global south’. Although the term ‘global south’ is indeed and, quite rightly, preferred over the outdated and hierarchical notion of the ‘third world’, it is spatially and territorially incorrect given the location of, for example, Australia and New Zealand in the south and Cuba in the north. ‘Majority world’ and ‘minority world’ thus attempt to address this inaccuracy in some way, but most importantly they employ language that draws attention to the unequal power relations between countries as well as to the fact that by head of population the words ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ are better suited (Punch, 2016).
- 3 Countries across Latin America are most notable in their adoption of legislation that criminalises femicide in particular, by name, including but not limited to Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. In Europe, however, the law is not always as clear but there are measures embedded in the legislation to deal with issues such as coercive control and rising rates of domestic violence, especially in Spain, Germany, and France.
- 4 See the Crown Prosecution Service for legal guidance on ‘Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship’. https://wt5TV.cps .gov.uk/legal-guidance/controlling-or-coercive-behaviour-intimate-or-family -relationship
- 5 The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. See http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ asp/2018/5/contents/enacted
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