For the first time ever, the Government has used the word femicide – the killing of women and girls – in its strategy to tackle men’s violence against women and girls, and does so three times. However, it appears they separate intimate partner and family perpetrated killings of women (domestic homicides) outside, not within, the concept of femicide. This is not the case, intimate partner and family perpetrated killings of women by men are femicides. This is internationally recognised.
Femicide is arguably the most serious form of men’s violence against women and girls. Our work has shown that on average, every three days, a woman is killed by a man in the UK. You would not have known this from the three previous national strategies to tackle men’s violence against women and girls; none of which even addressed the killing of women and girls, let alone as a strategic priority. The 2021 strategy produced by the Conservative government named a number of ‘high profile murders’ but nowhere in the document was femicide or even homicide specifically addressed. Femicide has been hidden in plain sight. We are pleased that Labour’s new strategy finally reflects the harm of men’s fatal violence against women and our call for femicide to be named and recognised as a form of men’s violence against women and girls; but we are alarmed by the separation of intimate partner and family perpetrated femicides from other femicides. Intimate partner femicides share more in common with femicides perpetrated by other men, than they do with intimate partner killings of men committed by women; especially when we are looking at causes and looking for solutions. Femicide is not simply homicide with female victims, it recognises that the circumstances and contexts of woman-killing are different to those when men are killed.
Femicide shows the connections between forms and contexts of men’s fatal violence against women and moves away from siloed thinking which separates sexual violence, intimate-partner violence, child sexual-abuse, pornography and prostitution. Splitting the forms of violence and abuse encourages approaches which assume sex symmetry rather than sex-differences. Putting them together, we create space for responses which look at the root causes of men’s violence against women in sex inequality. The countries with higher measures of sex equality are generally those with lowest rates of femicide. The strategy falls short of recognising the impact of sex inequality.
Femicide is not a gateway crime. Men who kill women almost always have long histories of violence against and abuse of women and very few of these men have been held to account by the law. We therefore welcome the announcements made prior to the strategy about the full powers of the state being deployed on the largest crackdown on violence perpetrated against women and girls. At the same time, the need for this to be portrayed as a turnaround in practice, suggests, as we believe, that women and girls have been woefully failed by the state for decades. Ironically, when a man is charged with homicide of a woman in the UK, we see by far the best conviction rates of any form of men’s violence against women in that he is almost always found guilty of murder or manslaughter. It appears that the courts believe women when we’re dead – but not so readily when we are able to stand up and testify. A woman’s dead body should not be the evidential threshold required for the justice system to hold men to account for the violence against and abuse of women that they commit.
A properly functioning police force and criminal justice system is not enough. It’s right that the state should respond with its full force to men’s violence against women and girls, but we need to go beyond this and also ask why society creates a sex-class of abusers. We welcome the ‘whole of society approach’, the cross-departmentation ambition of the strategy and the emphasis on prevention. We need to tackle men’s sense of entitlement, entitlement to women’s bodies and entitlement to a sense of dominance in relationships and the home. We need to separate people’s sense of self-worth from their apparent value to the opposite sex. We need to recognise that everyday gender and sex-role stereotypes feed and reinforce sex inequality. Prevention must be so much more than a few special school assemblies. It is rightfully presented in the strategy as future proofing; and although this is critical for younger generations, we need to look at the attitudes of adult men today, younger and older. The strategy states that perpetrators of ‘serious crimes’ should not be allowed to hold positions of power, privilege, or influence but failing to recognise that the state is the biggest employer of adults and could begin that work to tackle perpetrators on its own payroll is a missed opportunity. The strategy’s action plan has specific actions to keep perpetrators out of policing, and to address perpetrators in the armed forces. This should have been extended to include all state employees. There should be zero tolerance of sexist and misogynistic attitudes, or abuse of and violence against women and girls by men employed by the state; including within politics or any other sphere of power and influence. This is not just about ‘Andrew Tate.’ Misogynistic attitudes were prolific and pervasive way before he became noteworthy.
We are disappointed that prostitution has not been included in the strategy. Prostitution is both a form of men’s violence against and abuse of (usually) women and girls and an important influence on the proliferation of other forms of MVAWG. Prostitution and women’s safety are contradictory. Recognising the influence of male entitlement on men’s violence against women shows us that not only is it essential to have well-resourced exiting services for women in prostitution, but also that we need to tackle men’s attitudes and we can best do this by targeting their demand and access. Including child sexual exploitation but not the exploitation of adults ignores that many women in prostitution entered before they were 18 years of age and infers that once women reach legal adulthood, they cease to be victims of exploitation. Femicide Census data has shown us that the women who have been involved in prostitution and killed by men tend to be younger and are more likely to have been born abroad. They are often women not making a free choice but women with the least choice.
Femicide shows clearly that men’s fatal violence against women cuts across all sections of society—across ages, class, and ethnicity. There should be no hierarchy of victims. But some women are afforded more empathy than others. Some are more likely to be disbelieved, blamed, or sent away without the help they need. Black women and disabled women are disproportionately victimised, yet more likely to receive a substandard response from state agencies. Poor women and those with mental health or substance use problems—often the result of a long history of abuse from multiple perpetrators—are more likely to be blamed. The strategy does not specifically address men’s violence against older women. Femicide Census data for 2022 and 2023 showed that more women were killed by their own sons than by strangers. More broadly, 22 percent of women killed by men in the UK are aged 60 years and above. We are concerned that ‘requiring a victim’s consent before sharing their information with immigration enforcement’ is not the same as a firewall prohibiting data sharing between the police and immigration enforcement and could be imposed coercively. We are disappointed not to see the extension of the Domestic Violence Indefinite Leave to Remain model to all migrant victims. Having ‘no recourse to public funds‘ should not be a barrier to any woman subject to violence and abuse. No woman should be trapped with abuse because of a lack of economic alternatives. There should be equal access to support and resources. Keeping woman and girls safe should never be presented as synonymous with the interests of those with racist agendas. Campaigns like “One Law for All”— against Sharia and religious arbitration in the UK – critically led by Black feminists, including some of whom are ex-Muslim, should be supported.
Of course, we value any pledges by the government to provide sustainable funding to specialist organisations led by women for women and girls who have been subjected to men’s violence, including services for and led by Black, Asian, migrant and minoritised women. Commissioning practises which disadvantage the small independent specialist services must be abandoned. The commissioning body should never be the provider. We know that many women who have been subjected to men’s violence self-exclude from services that they know are a thinly disguised local-authority service.
The claim is made that expert voices including those with lived experience were central to the strategy’s development. And yet we have heard from many in the specialist sector supporting victims of sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution, and from academics, that they have not had opportunities for meaningful dialogue with government to help shape the strategy. This is a travesty and a wasted opportunity for expert input. It is certainly true for the Femicide Census. We know that the government would not have mis-framed femicide in the way that it does in the strategy if we had been properly consulted duri%ng its development. Policy and strategic development should be evidence based. We have the country’s most comprehensive data about women killed by men, the men who kill them, the circumstances of the killings and criminal justice outcomes for perpetrators and yet we are sidelined. We urge those leading services and second tier organisations who have the government’s ear, to put their beneficiaries first. Contracts should never have anti-lobbying clauses but equally, a seat at the table of government and funding from state sources should never come at the cost of self-censorship and losing our willingness to challenge complacency, inaction and compromises which are not in the interests of women and girls.
The strategy rightfully recognises that males can be victims and also that 90% of those prosecuted for domestic abuse, stalking or sexual offences are male. It’s a shame that that the government were not bold enough to use the word ‘men’s’ as a prefix throughout and talk about ‘men’s violence against women and girls’ rather than ‘violence against women and girls’ which renders the perpetrators invisible.
In the 17 months since Labour came to power, at least 146 women have been killed by a man or where a man is the suspect. If Labour’s new strategy has any chance of realising their pledge to halve men’s violence against women and girls in a decade, then it is critical that these are not seen as 146 isolated incidents but symptomatic of a systemic problem with deep roots. We cannot assume that Labour has a decade (minus 17 months) to show that this strategy works. The next general election must be called by August 2029; that’s in just over three and a half years. It is women and girls who will pay the price if Labour and their strategy fail.
