Skip to content

by
Published Jan. 1, 0001

We document all femi(ni)cides and killings of women* and girls* in Germany. Femi(ni)cide is intended to apply to certain killings of women* and girls* by men, those which occur in a context of a hierarchical power relationships where the subjects, women*/girls*, are placed on one side of that power structure, that of the subordinated; it is not meant to simply differentiate killings by the sex of the victims, distinguishing between homicides for males and femi(ni)cides for females. You can find more information on these concepts below.

We acknowledge that we were inspired and helped by the work of Feminicidio.net.

Awards and funding

In November 2021 feminizidmap.org received the Margherita-von-Brentano Price of Freie Universität Berlin.

From March to August 2021 feminizidmap.org received funding through the Prototype Fund to develop database software.

MvB Price logo Prototype Fund logo

We call it feminicide or femicide

The choice of terms has generated a heated debate amongst theorists and activists in the Americas, and there is no consensus on the matter. We are a diverse team, and each of us has our own naming preferences as well as definitions. Therefore, we use femi(ni)cide as an abbreviation of femicide and feminicide, to build conversations and enable collaborations.

Definitions

  • Femicide: The murder of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of women (Russell and Caputi, 1990).

    Russell Diana and Jane Caputi. “Femicide. Speaking the unspeakable.” Ms Magazine, 1(2), (1990):34–37.

  • Femicide: The misogynistic killing of women by men (Radford and Russell, 1992).

    Radford, Jill and Diana Russell, eds. Femicide: the politics of woman killing. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992.

  • Feminicide: The murder of a woman committed by a man, in which one finds all of the elements of the inequitable relation between the sexes: the gendered superiority of men in the face of the gendered subordination of women, misogyny, control and sexism. Not only is the murder of the biological body of the woman perpetrated, but also the murder of what the cultural construction of her body has signified, with the passivity and toleration of a masculinized state (Monárrez, 1998).

    Monárrez, Julia. “Las víctimas del feminicidio juarense: mercancías sexualmente fetichizadas.” FERMENTUM 46 (2006): 429-445.

  • Femicide: The most extreme form of sexist terrorism, motivated mainly by a sense of possession and control over women (Carcedo and Sagot, 2000).

    Carcedo, Ana and Montserrat Sagot, Femicidio en Costa Rica 1990-1999. Costa Rica: INAMU, 2000.

  • Feminicide: The extreme form of gender-based violence and human rights violation, whether occurring in public or private life, through misogynistic practices – abuses, physical, sexual, educational, professional, economic, patrimonial violence, violence perpetrated within the family, the community or state institutions – which lead to impunity and leave women at risk and without protection until their murder or attempted murder, or other kinds of deaths of women and children, such as suicides, accidents, suffering or deaths caused by lack of personal security and interest from institutions, and absence of inclusion in development and democracy (Lagarde, 2004).

    *Spinelli, Barbara. Femicide and feminicide in Europe. Gender-motivated killings of women as a result of intimate partner violence. New York: UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, 2011. *

  • Feminicide: The murders of women and girls founded in a gender power structure [it is] gender-based violence that is both public and private, implicating both the state (directly or indirectly) and individual perpetrators (private or state actors); it thus encompasses systematic, widespread, and everyday interpersonal violence [it is] systematic violence rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities. In this sense, [its analysis is not only focused] on gender but also in the intersection of gender dynamics with the cruelties of racism and economic injustices in local as well as global contexts (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010).

    Fregoso, Rosa Linda and Cynthia Bejarano, eds. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Américas. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2010.

  • Femicide: The killing of females by males because they are females (Russell, 2011).

    Russell, Diana. The Origin& Importance of the Term Feminicide (December 1, 2011), http://www.dianarussell.com/videos_and_audio.html

  • Femicide: Intentional murder of women because they are women, but broader definitions include any killings of women or girls. Femicide is usually perpetrated by men, but sometimes female family members may be involved (WHO, 2012).

    World Health Organization. Understanding and addressing violence against women. Femicide. Online publication: WHO Press, 2012.

  • Feminicide: The killings of women, or feminized subjects, as outlined by the Other, “the patriarchal system” (Luján, 2015).

    Luján Pinelo, Aleida. “A theoretical approach to the concept of femi(ni)cide.” Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 2, Issue 1 (2018): 41-63.

  • Femicide: The killing of women and girls as a result of gender norms (UNODC, 2018).

    United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Global study on homicides. Gender-related killing of women and girls (November, 2018), https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/GSH2018/GSH18_Gender-related_killing_of_women_and_girls.pdf