The Femicide Census publishes its annual report on women killed by men in the UK in 2022
Today (Tuesday 2nd September 2025), the Femicide Census releases data on women killed by men in the UK in 2022. As most cases have now concluded the criminal justice process, we are now able to publish the most comprehensive data on femicides from 2022 in the UK. This is our fourteenth year of reporting.
The Femicide Census has identified 122 women who were killed by men in the UK in 2022. 62 women were killed by a current or former partner. More women were killed by their son than by a stranger. The vast majority of women were killed in their own home. Evidence of gratuitous violence was found in just over two-thirds of killings.
Key findings include:
- Consistent with previous years, women killed by men are most likely to be killed by a current or former partner than any other man. Sixty-two (51%) women killed by men in 2022 were killed by a current or former intimate partner. The average between 2009 and the end of 2021 is 60%.
- Leaving an abusive man is no guarantee of women’s safety. The Femicide Census has consistently shown that separation is a risk factor for intimate partner femicides, or more accurately, a trigger for violent, abusive and/or controlling men At least 40% of women killed by a current/former partner had left or were taking steps to leave him. Yet Women’s Aid regularly report that there are insufficient spaces in women’s refuges to meet need.
- A sharp instrument, such as a knife, was used in the killing of 65 women (53%). This has consistently been the most common method men choose to kill women.
- Men used the brute force of their own bodies in the killings of 20 women (17%) by kicking, hitting and stamping a woman to death.
- More women were killed by their sons than by strangers. 10% of women killed by men were killed by their sons. 9% were killed by strangers.
Of the men who killed women in 2022:
- Seventy-one men (57%) were known to have histories of violence against women and/or were subject to monitoring or restrictions by a statutory agency at the time they killed.
- The majority of men who kill women are charged with murder. 84% of all who killed, 97% of those charged, were charged with murder, double or multiple murder.
Women are left at risk by the state’s failure to act swiftly and incarcerate men who are known to be a risk to women. This year alone: one man who killed was under investigation for rape, whilst on bail he killed a women, sexually assaulting her and inflicting more than 90 injuries; another man had been on extended licence for a sexual assault committed in 2013, he suffocated and strangled a woman he had met on an escort site; another man on extended licence for rape strangled his wife and cut her throat with a Stanley knife; another man had only been out of prison for nine days before sexually assaulting, strangling and beating to death a woman in the street. It cannot be acceptable that women’s lives are valued less than abusive men’s liberty.
The Femicide Census has shown that despite years of government interventions to address men’s violence against women, girls and children, the rate of femicide remains remarkably consistent. So too do identifiable patterns in who kills whom: current or former partners, sons or strangers, the methods they choose to kill and the demographics of perpetrators and victims. The Home Office has said that the Government’s delayed ‘Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy’ will be published in September. It remains to be seen whether it will be the first strategy to use the word ‘femicide’ and have the conviction to address, let alone name, this serious and systemic crime and abuse of women’s human rights. If they cannot or will not even name the problem, we have little hope for them being able to identify and carry out the actions necessary to reduce femicide, men’s fatal violence against women.
Clarrie O’Callaghan, co-founder of the Femicide Census said:
‘The State is able to solve most known femicides – nearly all perpetrators are caught – but what it does not seem able to do despite 14 years of our reporting on femicides, is prevent more women being killed. There are known and repeated state failures, known and repeated risks ignored as is so much learning from a multitude of sources that we should have the lowest rate of femicide in the world. It is nothing short of state-sanctioned weaponised incompetence.’
Karen Ingala Smith, co-founder of the Femicide Census said:
‘Men who are known to be a danger to women are too frequently at liberty to harm, rape and kill. The Labour Party, now in Government, has pledged to halve serious violence, including men’s violence against women, in ten years. They are going to have to act fast and ambitiously to even approach that target. Not only do they need to address how men who are known to be a danger are held to account and managed, how justice is served, how women and children who have been subjected to men’s violence are supported, they also need to look at how and why society creates a sex class of killers and rapists.’
