According to official data collected by EIGE, 444 women in 10 EU Member States killed their close partners in 2020.
EIGE has released a package to help EU countries gather solid data to prevent such killings.
We need a consensus on what counts as feminicide
The EIGE package includes a rating system and guidelines for identifying the “gender dimension” of female murder to help countries identify different forms of female murder.
Although no EU Member State currently has a legal definition of feminicide, some countries recognize in their laws the gendered causes of feminicide, such as gender-based hatred. This has allowed EIGE to assess the different ways in which EU countries measure the murders of women and to make recommendations for their improvement.
A common EU definition of feminicide would help EU Member States to identify these gender-based murders, which are currently disappearing from statistics on feminicide. Knowing the motives and circumstances behind the killing of women and girls can help EU governments to better protect potential victims and punish and intimidate perpetrators.
We need comprehensive and comparable data to be able to measure women’s murders properly
The more information we have about the murders of women and girls, the more likely we are to be able to correctly identify the murders of women. And the more EU countries collect the same type of data, the more information we have about the motives and circumstances behind these murders.
EIGE advises EU countries to collect at least variables in order to determine whether a murder is a murder of women and to better understand the context behind it.
Important variables are: Demographics of victims and perpetrators; the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator; the context of the murder, such as whether child witnesses were present; and the presence of gender-based risk factors such as addiction or past violence.
Laws and data collection practices are evolving slowly to better recover women’s murders
The EIGE Feminicide Package states that more detailed laws and data collection practices on feminicide are emerging in some EU Member States. Awareness of the usefulness and importance of statistics in supporting policy design and monitoring has also increased.
To raise awareness of violence against women and launch a “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence” campaign, important buildings around the world will be highlighted in orange. EIGE will illuminate the European House in Vilnius on 25 November to celebrate International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In Brussels, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European External Action Service will light up on the same day. The theme of this year’s campaign is “Orange the World: Stop Violence Against Women Now!”
Photo: Pomilio Blumm
Source: European Institute for Gender Equality