Femicide

The term femicide

"By 2021 at the latest, the term femicide had arrived in German society," lawyer Jara Streuer wrote on Deutschlandfunk in 2024. In that year, the term was added to the Duden dictionary and has since entered common usage (Streuer, 2024). One example of this is that the television program Tatort in 2024 explicitly addressed the topic of femicide for the first time and named it as such. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what exactly is meant by "femicide".

In fact, the term is intended to illustrate that murders that happen in a supposedly private setting often have deep patriarchal causes and social dimensions. It also draws attention to structural, social and state failures and existing gaps (Streuer, 2024), which will be discussed later. The authors of the article "Wie tödlich ist das Geschlechterverhältnis?" (Greven, 2023) write:

"The concept of femicide thus highlights the complex interplay of individual motivations and acts of violence in different social contexts that are characterized by structural power inequalities based on gender and other factors and power relations."

Popularity through Latin American feminists

Historically, the current use of the term "femicide" goes back to the American sociologist Diana E.H. Russell, who introduced it in 1976 at the International Tribunal on Violence against Women. At the tribunal, 1,500 women from 33 countries came together to formulate 'accusations' against state failures based on civil society initiatives (FrauenMediaTurm, n.d.). Russell wanted to draw attention to the fact that the majority of murders of women take place in the context of patriarchal and misogynistic social power structures (Greven, 2023). The term therefore describes killings in which the female gender of the victim is not coincidental.

In Latin America in particular, the term has been taken up and the definition further developed. Since the 1990s, "femicide" - translated into Spanish as "femicidio" or "feminicidio" - has become increasingly popular thanks to activists and academics (Greven, 2023). Mexican anthropologist and congresswoman Marcela Lagarde, for example, expanded the definition and emphasized that "feminicidio" is only the "tip of the iceberg": underneath lies a mountain of violence against women and a non-existent prosecution of the perpetrators (Greven, 2023). The term "feminicidio" was then used primarily in an activist context to refer to the lack of protection from the state in addition to the murder of a woman under criminal law.

Especially in Latin America, activists and authors have placed femicides in a "close connection with neoliberal-capitalist, colonial-racist and heteronormative structures" (Bedrosian, 2023). Accordingly, violence against women serves to maintain traditional gender roles and the status quo of gender relations (Bedrosian, 2023). Thus, physical and psychological violence must always be viewed in the context of a heteronormative, neoliberal-capitalist image of men (Bedrosian, 2023).

First social movement: Ni una menos

A social movement against femicide has only gained more momentum in the last ten years. Here, too, Latin American feminists did pioneering work. The movement under the motto "Ni una menos" (not one less) originated in Argentina and primarily aims to draw attention to the fact that femicide is not a private problem, but a social and state problem. It reached its first major climax on June 3, 2015, when around 250,000 people gathered in the Plaza del Congreso in Buenos Aires (Bedrosian, 2023).

The activists of "Ni una menos" also repeatedly point to the close connection between patriarchy and capitalism as the root of violence against women (Bedrosian, 2023). One example of this is the unpaid care work performed predominantly by women. The "Ni una menos" movement is now internationally known and the slogan is also used at German demonstrations, for example.

In Germany, too, more and more (mainly feminist) groups are explicitly addressing the issue of femicide. For example, the group "Stop femicides" has been documenting femicides from Germany on its Instagram account for several years. They write about themselves:

"We count femicides in Germany to draw attention to the structural problem, because femicides are not isolated cases but have a system." (femizide_stoppen, Instagram)

Conceptual ambiguities in the German context

Although the term "femicide" has not yet fully arrived in the legal and political discourse in the German context, it is mainly established in the activist and political sphere. However, differences in language usage are still noticeable here. Greven et al. write in their dossier published in 2023 for the Federal Agency for Civic Education on the topic of femicide:

"While activist uses of the term usually encompass a broad understanding of femicide, emphasizing structural connections and state responsibility, there is a tendency among state actors and in research to focus on specific forms of homicide." (Greven, 2023)

In addition, it is not always easy to differentiate between terms, there is no uniform definition and many other terms exist alongside "femicide". "Feminicide", with its additional syllable "ni", has no explicitly different definition, but emphasizes the Latin American context and a state and police failure. "Gynocide" is a term that was mainly used in the 1970s and 1980s. "Gendercide", on the other hand, occasionally appears as a synonym for "femicide", but is gender-neutral and can therefore also refer to gender-related killings of boys and men, inter* or non-binary people (Streuer, 2024).

Violence against women as an expression of patriarchal power relations

Academia is primarily focused on the investigation of patriarchal structures. In her analyses, the Argentinian-Brazilian anthropologist Rita Segato emphasizes two fundamental laws of patriarchy: firstly, the law of control and possession over the female body, and secondly, the law of male superiority. Violence against women is therefore often a reaction to a perceived or actual threat to male dominance. The authors of the text "Wie tödlich ist das Geschlechterverhältnis?" (Greven, 2023) emphasize:

"Therefore, violence against women has expressive or communicative functions: Victims of violence are put in their place, while perpetrators claim a position of superiority, demonstrate their power and view the violence as legitimate."

Historical femicide and the social dimension

Even though the term femicide has only been slowly gaining ground in public discourse since the 1990s, femicide is by no means just a phenomenon of the last few decades. There are theories that the persecution of witches in the Middle Ages should be understood as a form of femicide. In the "witch discourses", "increased control of women in particular was demanded and formulated" (Opitz-Belakhal, 2023).

Although those executed during the witch trials were not exclusively women, the discourse of the time was clearly misogynistic, and the proportion of women among the victims was sometimes as high as 90% (Opitz-Belakhal, 2023). Historically, witch hunts can be interpreted as an instrument of the oppression of women, as they served as an instrument of violence to show women their "gender-defined boundaries" (Opitz-Belakhal, 2023) and thus consolidate patriarchal structures. Author and political activist Tara-Louise Wittwer has clear words about this on her Instagram account:

"No witches were ever burned, by the way. Women were burned."

Statistically, there is an attempted or completed femicide in Germany every day

Activists and organizations repeatedly point out that, statistically speaking, a woman is killed by her (ex-)partner every three days in Germany and an attempted murder takes place every day. For 2024, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) reports a total of 308 completed and attempted homicides of women and girls in the context of intimate partner violence (BKA, 2025). Although a look at the police crime statistics shows that homicides are declining overall, the decline in the number of women killed is significantly lower than for men: "This indicates that homicides against men and women take place in different contexts and are subject to different influencing factors" (Greven, 2023). The BKA does not refer to femicides and cites the fact that "there is no uniform national definition of the term 'femicide'" (BKA, 2025). For this reason, the use of figures from police crime statistics must be treated with caution. However, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung points out that the "existing figures [from the BKA] can be used as a guide" (Dyroff, 2020).

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Woman report "Gender-related killings of women and girls (femicide/feminicide) Global estimates of female intimate partner/family-related homicides in 2022" (UNODC, 2023), most killings of women and girls are gender-motivated. In 2022, around 48,800 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members: "This means that, on average, more than 133 women or girls are killed every day by someone from their own family" (UNODC, 2023).

Measures, prevention and demands

In recent years, many approaches, wishes and demands have emerged from academics, activists and politicians to improve protection against femicide. In the scientific discourse, for example, the sociologists Maria Arnis and Monika Schröttle name the following points in their article "Femizide und notwendige Maßnahmen" (2023):

1. Intervention: Expansion and improved equipment of women's shelters, advice centers and protection services in order to provide affected women and their children with quick and needs-based access to support (Arnis, 2023).
2. Prevention: Targeted educational work and information, especially for men and boys, should create an awareness of equal rights and non-violent behavior in order to prevent violence in the first place (Arnis, 2023).
3. Continuous training of specialists in the police, justice system, medicine and social work. Regular training and improved networking should help to recognize warning signs at an early stage and act effectively (Arnis, 2023).
4. Legal framework conditions: Femicides should be recognized as gender-specific homicides and prosecuted accordingly and the protection of those affected should be strengthened (Arnis, 2023).
5. Reliable data collection and scientific research in order to better understand the background of femicides and to be able to derive targeted measures and prevention strategies (Arnis, 2023).
6. Intersectional perspective: Particularly vulnerable groups such as migrant women, women with disabilities or refugee women should receive targeted support (Arnis, 2023).

Status: December 2025