More than statistics: rethinking femicide

Photo by Joanne Adela at Pexels

Anya Wadhwani explores society’s role in enabling gender-based violence

A few weeks ago, in my English class, while discussing male-female power dynamics, we touched upon the murder of Sarah Everard. The boy next to me shuffled in his seat uncomfortably and defensively remarked, “Miss is making it seem like men just kill women.”

The problem is, they do.

My concern is that many men fail to recognise the gravity of this issue. Something that desensitises people to the seriousness of femicide is how it’s often talked about in terms of figures and percentages. Statistics reduce each life and death, each in their own ways simple and complex, to just another tally mark. Therefore, I want to refrain from stuffing this piece full of rates and stats, shocking though they are, and instead will focus on a time that I found impactful.

Instances of gender-based violence are too often removed from their wider context and seen as stand-alone tragedies. They become just another example that begs women to change their behaviour or gets tied to an easier-to-confront social issue, like male mental illness or gang violence. Over last summer, when Kyle Clifford murdered Louise, Carol and Hannah Hunt in their own home, just a 10 minute drive from mine, people were horrified and outraged. I was deeply disturbed by the murders, but I was also taken aback by the aftermath. 

The conversation, in person and online, was entirely skewed. People called for a review of crossbow legislation, as if the weapon used was the root cause of the problem. Family members sat me down to talk about noticing abusive tendencies in men, as if the blame somehow fell on Louise Hunt for having dated and broken up with Clifford.

In media coverage of the murders, the three women were lumped together, dehumanised, and reduced to a mere ‘incident’. Headlines referred to the ‘triple murder of John Hunt’s family’, failing to fully acknowledge the women in their own right.

Focusing on women protecting themselves ignores the urgent need to rethink how we raise men

These were three ordinary women simply living their lives. An event like this could happen to any woman, because the fault doesn’t lie in their choices, behaviours or lifestyles, but in the societal message that women’s lives are worth less. It’s clear why the murders were reported on in this way: to shock and gain clicks. But it’s also clear that this is unjust.

The language used in reporting issues like this is of critical significance. While people disregard the importance of words, they often fail to realise that the way we speak about a topic shapes both our conscious and unconscious beliefs about it. According to the Pyramid of Violence, developed by Tatiana Piper and Jackie Strohm, the first step toward physical violence begins with our attitudes and beliefs, which are formed through societal messaging and language.

As a result, when we put the onus on women to protect themselves, and treat this with higher importance than changing attitudes to women or raising socially conscious and emotionally intelligent men, we are sending a harmful message. This allows these belief systems to fester and this behaviour to continue.

What was an offhand comment from the boy next to me in class is reflective of a larger issue: the way we talk about femicide, or rather, how we don’t talk about it enough. He doesn’t know about it because he doesn’t think he has to, while I, along with so many other young women, am hyper-aware of it.

Femicide is usually framed as a women’s issue, placing the burden on victims rather than perpetrators, allowing men to avoid accountability and perpetuating silence. To create change we must change the narrative, speaking louder and more frequently about gender-based violence until it’s universally recognised and addressed.