An estimated 140 women and girls across the world die at the hands of their partner or family member every day, according to new global estimates on femicide by the UN.
The report by UN Women found 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally by men in 2023, with 60% (51,100) of these deaths committed by someone close to the victim. The organisation said its figures showed that, globally, the most dangerous place for a woman to be was in her home, where the majority of women die at the hands of men.
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, said: “What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic sphere’s of women’s lives, where they should be safest, that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence.
Posting this from another thread.
It’s a shame that this data is being presented this poorly, because this is a really important issue that deserves attention. None of the figures presented in the linked article have the proper context to understand them. Even the UN report itself does not present their findings well.
So, for instance, 140 women per day is of course more than the ideal number of zero, but there are billions of people on this planet. To actually quantify the gender imbalance of this number, we need to compare it to the number of men who are victims in the same way. From the report:
Globally, approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed by their intimate partners or other family members […out of…] 85,000 women and girls killed intentionally during the year […] In other words, an average of 140 women and girls worldwide lost their lives every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative.
The report does not offer corresponding numbers for male (or non-binary) victims. It does, however, say that 11.8% of male victims and 60.2% of female victims are killed by partners or other family members. It also acknowledges that 80% of all homicide victims are men and 20% women, which is beside the point as this is about domestic violence, but it will allow us to do some math to arrive at numbers to compare against.
- 85,000 * 80/20 = 340,000 men killed total
- 340,000 * 11.8% = 40,120 men killed by partners or family
- so we are comparing 40,120 men with 51,100 women
- women are 27.4% more likely than men to be killed by partners or family.
…which should have been the headline. 27% more is massive! Domestic violence is a huge issue, and women are more likely to suffer from it!
There is no need to obfuscate the numbers to be less honest. The honest numbers themselves are shocking enough, and scientifically literate readers won’t dismiss your credibility along with your cause. I look forward to future UN reports communicating these horrifying statistics a bit more clearly.
Thank you.
To be fair to the Guardian, their headline is substantive, compared to the other article that just gave a number without context. The report does clearly support the assertion that on average home is the most dangerous place for women to be attacked.
The leasing non-disease causes for death in women are:
- Falling (primarily elderly women)
- Unintentional poisoning (primarily middle aged women)
- Car accidents (primarily younger women)
- Suicide
- Homicide at 5th place
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5683079/
And thats ignoring, of course, all the actual leading causes of death which are various diseases, primarily heart diseases of course, and COVID.
Mind you that still does indicate that home is where most people die, but it’s not homicide you should be worried about.
It’s your stairs and… garden, I guess? I have no idea why unintentional poisoning is so high, does food poisoning count? It must.
So I guess what ladies should really be wary of is their stairs, ladders, and those leftovers that you’re not sure about from the weekend.
Just as an example, for every 1 homicide victims in women aged 20-39, there were (in the same group):
- 4.5 unintentional poisoning deaths
- 2.7 traffic accident deaths
- 2.1 suicides
And among women aged 70+ years, there were no homicides in the data, but over 60% of injury related deaths were caused by falling. Just… Falling. Not homicide, just “mum had a fall yesterday and had to see the doctor”
I suppose that really drives home how important building codes are and stuff like life alert, for old folks…
If you account for the actual leading causes of death though, where you really outta be wary of are fast food chains, public transit, and low ventilation workspaces with sneezy coworkers. That’s what’ll actually be most likely to kill you…
I guess with skip the dishes being a thing though, that’s still home being the most “dangerous” place anyways, /shrug
It’s your stairs and… garden, I guess? I have no idea why unintentional poisoning is so high, does food poisoning count? It must.
Drug overdoses.
This data is worthless without the corresponding rate for men.
I’m confused why they’re singling out women in this. 60% of women died from a family member or partner.
I’m honestly surprised it’s not higher. Who else would kill them? And do you not think similiar if not higher numbers are true for men?
Would it be more comforting if the statistic were “60% of women who were killed, were killed by a total stranger, for no reason”?
If anything, the 40% scares me more.
This is specifically about intimate partner violence, not a study of every cause of death. They’re focusing on women because the numbers are not higher for men. If they were the same, there would be little need to distinguish the two, but they noticed a tend. That’s the whole point of this is to highlight that women face a higher risk of harm at home, at the hands of someone they know, than men. That’s it. They’re not saying men don’t also get abused and murdered, nor is it saying the other ways men die aren’t valid.
A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report estimated that globally, while 81% of all homicide victims are males, 82% of intimate partner homicide victims are female and 64% of intimate partner/family-related homicide victims are female (UNODC 2019).
It was also estimated that around 1 in 3 (34%) women intentionally killed worldwide are killed by an intimate partner, however, there are large differences across regions. Oceania (which includes Australia) had the highest estimated proportion of women killed exclusively by intimate partners (42%) and Europe had the lowest (29%) (UNODC 2019).
https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/responses-and-outcomes/domestic-homicide
Sounds like for women partner/family is a bigger danger. So it’s not similar, women are higher.
Although men are disproportionately the largest homicide demographic overall.
Not trying to downplay the problem of domestic violence, but the title seems misleading. Most people spend considerably more time at home, of course more women die that way. It’s not like they’re going into dark alleys for hours at a time, in which case I would expect the other statistics to go up.
