Violence against women comprises a wide range of acts-from verbal harassment and other forms of emotional abuse, to daily physical or sexual abuse. At the far end of the spectrum is femicide: the killing of a woman. Femicide is defined most broadly as the killing of women but definitions vary depending on the cultural context and user context. Feminist author Dr. Diana Russell is one of the early pioneers of the term, and she currently defines the word as “the killing of females by males because they are females. Most emphasize the idea that the murders are motivated, directly or indirectly, by misogyny and sexist motives. An alternative option they offer is the term gendercide, which is more ambiguous and inclusive, but feminists argue that it perpetrates the taboo of the subject of femicide. Feminists also argue that the motives for femicide are vastly different than those that are involved in homicide, and instead of centering around street violence, much of the violence is cantered within the home. The manifestations of femicide vary greatly depending on culture and definition of the word. Using Diana Russell's definition, femicide includes intimate partner femicide, lesbicide, racial femicide, serial femicide, mass femicide, honor-killing related femicide, dowry-related femicide, sex-selective infant femicide and more. Any act of sexual terrorism that results in death is considered a femicide. This includes forms of covert femicide as well, such as criminalisation of abortion that leads to death from botched abortions, or death as a result of female genital mutilation.
Femicide, Discrimination
