A recent study of UN women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and a recent article in The Hindu, "Femicides at a Twenty-Year Peak Across the Globe," show that the fulfillment of 'new women' in India is a myth. These sources reveal alarming statistics on femicide, highlighting the harsh reality faced by women. Despite progress in various areas, such as education and employment, the study and article emphasize that the empowerment of women still has a long way to go in the country.
- Femicide, or feminicide, refers to the intentional killing of women or girls because of their gender.
- In 2022, about 88,900 women and girls were intentionally killed worldwide on the grounds of gender-related factors. This is the highest number of such fatalities in a year in the past 20 years.
- The UN study titled “Gender-related killings of women and girls (femicide/feminicide)”. Published on November In general, victims of homicides worldwide tend to be men or boys. As shown in Chart 2, men formed 80% of the total victims of homicide in 2022, while women’s share was 20%.
- In Chart 3, it is shown that of the 88,900 female homicide victims in 2022, 48,800, or 55%, were killed by family members or intimate partners.
- Only 12% of male victims of murder were slain by somebody they knew.
- Women are more likely to be murdered by their spouses or someone known to them; as a result, women are vulnerable to physical violence, mostly from members of their immediate family.
- According to the NCRB report, 179 women between the ages of 18 and 30 were reported as victims of femicide in 19 Indian cities, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi City, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Indore, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Pune, and Surat.
What are the main reason for Femicides?
- Gender inequality and discrimination
- Patriarchal norms and values (honor killings or dowry-related murders), and
- Controlling or exerting authority over women's lives, decisions, or behaviors can result in extreme violence and murder.
- Lack of access to resources and
- Support services for survivors.
To better understand and respond to homicides of women, the Crime in India bulletin should be centralized. To better understand the number of women and girls murdered or dying due to unnatural causes, it should include categories such as "homicides", "murder with rape", "dowry deaths", "female foeticide", "female infanticide" and "suicide". Education campaigns, stricter regulations, and better access to support services for survivors should all be considered.
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