According to a new study, a woman’s safety is most compromised by the men in her life.
The Femicide Census, a UK-based organization that researches the circumstances around women’s murders, found through its research efforts that women are most likely to be killed by male partners – especially while trying to leave those relationships – and sons.
Women are far less imperiled by male strangers, the study adds, as just 9% of the murders they researched for this latest report were committed by men the victims didn’t know. Rather, the majority of the women whose deaths were studied (70%) were killed in their own homes.
The organization’s executive director, Dr. Karen Ingala Smith, noted to BBC News that, for every woman who was murdered by a man she knew, “many more [are] living with and enduring serious violence and abuse”.
Though the Census looks at deaths that occurred in the UK, other studies have shown this trend to be true the world over. A 2024 report from UN Women indicated that of the 85,000 girls and women murdered by men in 2023, 60% were killed by a man who was close to them.
“What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic spheres of women’s lives – where they should be safest – that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence,” Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, told the Guardian. And what’s worse, she adds, is that “we see the numbers in this report as the tip of the iceberg.”
Smith, of the Femicide Census, says that sharing this information could be life-saving in and of itself – and hopes government officials act to quell the violence. In the UK, the Labour Party, now in power, has pledged to halve serious violence – including men’s violence against women – in 10 years.
“They are going to have to act fast and ambitiously to even approach that target,” she says. “Men who are known to be a danger to women are too frequently at liberty to harm, rape and kill.”
