Neither Jess Phillips nor Brianna Ghey will be mine.

Today, for the eighth year running, in the Parliamentary International Women’s Day debate, MP Jess Phillips read out the names of women in the UK who have been killed since the previous years IWD debate and where a man or men are principal suspects. This year the list contained the names of 107 women, the youngest, Holly Newton was just 15 years old, the oldest, Anne Woodbridge was 92.

I have been collating and commemorating UK women killed by men for 11 years, since the murder of 20-year-old Kirsty Treloar on the 2^nd January 2012.

I am grateful to Jess Phillips for amplifying my work and for doing something that I could not do without her: ensuring that those women’s names are afforded the respect of being recorded in perpetuity in the official parliamentary record. This year and last year, Jess invited members of families of women who have been killed by men, some of them whose names have been read out in previous years, to sit in the House of Commons public gallery to listen. Jess and I are frequently told how much this gesture means to those who knew and loved the women who are commemorated.

This year, following the suggestion of my Femicide Census co-founder and fellow Director, Clarrie O’Callaghan, two weeks ago the Femicide Census wrote to every MP who had one or more constituents whose names were going to be read out.  84 letters were sent and followed up by email. We asked MPs to honour their constituents and act to prevent further femicides. We told them that femicide is a local and national problem occurring within the broader context of men’s violence against women which inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Seven MPs acknowledged our letter: Rosie Duffield, Rushanara Ali, Lillian Greenwood, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, John McDonnell and Andrew Lewer. Others were visible in the parliamentary broadcast. However, like preceding years, the benches were noticeably empty. Whilst each man who chooses to end a woman’s life must be held to account and to justice, the names stand as a roll call of state failure, the government could be doing so much more to end men’s violence against women and girls. The almost empty chamber does not reflect well on political will to address men’s violence against women.

Counting Dead Women and sister project the Femicide Census record men’s fatal violence against women in the UK. Through this work we know that on average, a woman is killed by a man every 2.6 days, and by a current or former partner approximately every four days. We know that after current or former partners, the next largest group of males killing female relatives is sons who kill their mothers. It was the work of the Femicide Census that told us that Wayne Couzens was one of 16 former or serving police officers who had killed women between 2009 and his murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021. At least 237 women are suspected to have been killed by men in the UK since Sarah’s death.

There has been a significant response online to Phillips’ decision to acknowledge the death of Brianna Ghey in February this year after reading the names of women and girls. Ghey was a 16-year-old male who had a transgender in identity. A boy and a girl, both 15, have been charged with Ghey’s murder. An inquest opened yesterday and has been adjourned pending criminal proceedings. Ghey’s alleged murder was marked by thousands of people attending candlelit vigils across the UK. None of the names of the women and girls read out today attracted comparable responses. Yet like those who loved Ghey, each of those women and girls will have left devastated and still grieving family and friends. It is Ghey’s name trending on social media. I wish the killing of every woman and every girl, in the UK and across the world, attracted the comparable energy and condemnation. They rarely do.

As far as I’m aware, it’s just over four years between Brianna Ghey’s death and the previous most recent known murder of a transgender person in the UK, that of Amy Griffiths in January 2019. In that same period in the UK, at least 453 females aged over 14 years have been killed by males. Don’t let’s add to the deflection of attention from women and girls. My focus, like always, is those women and girls. That doesn’t negate the tragedy of the any male life taken. Whether or not we agree with Jess’s decision, let’s not make her or Brianna Ghey the scapegoats. We should be demanding action from the elected representatives and others with power and influence, who do nothing or little to end men’s violence against and abuse of women and girls. They’re the ones we should be castigating.

If you’re reading this maybe you could identify the women who’ve been killed by men in your constituency. There are currently 1,414 women’s names listed in my blog, 1,425 women named in the Femicide Census 10-year report. Ask your MP what they are doing to honour these women, what they are doing to end femicide, what they are doing to end men’s violence against women, girls and children. You could ask your MP what they are doing to protect specialist women-led independent services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence in your area. We can all be part of a legacy to women who have been killed by men.

What do women need from the Labour Manifesto?

The last Labour manifesto fell well short of pledging to develop an ambitious strategy to end sexual and domestic violence and abuse, and prostitution.  However, it did say that a Labour government would,

“Ensure that the single-sex-based ‘exemptions’ contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.”

It also promised sustainable funding for refuges and rape crisis services. So, in that respect, whilst it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t’ bad.  It’s such a shame that two years later, the party leader couldn’t even say that only women have cervixes, which might suggest that he’d have a problem upholding a pledge to protect single-sex services.

I not here tonight to tell you what I think a strategy to end men’s violence against women and girls would look like. Suffice to say, that’s going to be my second book and I haven’t quite written it yet. Tonight, I’m here to tell you about my first book, due to be published in two months, on 25^th November, called Defending Women’s Spaces.

Defending Women’s Spaces reflects my 32 years’ experience of working in specialist services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence and the research and campaigning that I’ve read and done alongside it. And my experience, like many of the women who I have worked with, and independent research: tells me that female survivors’ needs are best met in women-only spaces.

On the matter of males who transition? Do they belong in our women-only services? I say no. The minute you say that you provide access to services through gender identity, not sex, your services become mixed sex services. Males who have transitioned – if we accept that transition can be meaningful – are not a risk to women because they are trans but because they are male. The most rigorous data that we have currently on trans males and their rates of committing violent crime, tells us that at best their crimes followed the pattern of male offending, and that was only if they received psychological support as well as surgery and hormones. Without psychological support, trans males’ rates of violent offending were significantly higher than those of other males.

Defending Women’s Spaces focuses on spaces for women survivors of men’s violence though I also briefly look at other areas. I look at sex differences in perpetration of and victimisation in violence. I dismantle and disprove the myth that it is trans people who are at greatest risk of murder.  I pull apart the lie that risk assessment can make it safe for males to be included in women’s spaces. I look at how telling women victim-survivors – that someone that we all know is male is actually a woman- is nothing more than a variation of the psychological abuse done to them by the man or men who had been abusing them. I look at trauma and explain why women-only space is necessary for recovery. I also explore why so many so-called specialist service providers seem to have abandoned their principles and stopped putting women first.

Including males with trans identities in services for women can mean excluding some of the most vulnerable women who need support. We know this will mean some women will self-exclude, because they tell us.

Not all women will be subjected to men’s violence and abuse, though globally one in three of us are at some point during our life. Not all women who suffer men’s violence will develop a trauma response. We can recognise that some women need or benefit from women -only spaces more than others. It’s true that not all women who have been abused by men want women-only spaces, but surely these women should not deny that right to those who do.

Labour needs to show its commitment to ending the sex hierarchy. Labour needs grow a backbone. The Labour Party needs to commit to ending men’s violence against women; and unless or until we ever reach that utopia, we need single sex spaces for women who have been subjected to men’s violence.

One day, people might stop asking me ‘What about the men?’ but that day isn’t here yet. This is the third time I’ve written a blog comparing sex differences in intimate partner homicide but it’s five years since the last time and so it’s time for an update.

This information is about people aged over 16 in England and Wales who have been identified as having been killed by current or former partners by The Office of National Statistics (ONS) for the 11 years ending March 2020. I’ve used ONS data because – although the Femicide Census data for women killed by men is much richer, we do not collect data on male victims or on women killed by women – it’s important to use consistent ways of collecting information for everyone. The ONS data doesn’t break down the data for victims of intimate partner homicide by the sex of the perpetrator so I requested this from them.  

In the 11 years from April 2009 to March 2020, 1,027 people were killed by a current or former partner, defined by the ONS as when the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator falls into one of the following categories: spouse, common-law spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, ex-spouse, ex-cohabiting partner or ex-boyfriend or girlfriend or adulterous relationship.  890 (86.7%) of the victims were female, 137 (13.3%) were male. So, for every 2 men killed, there were thirteen women.

But there are differences in who is doing the killing too. Of 137 male victims, 109 were killed by women. Of 890 female victims, 884 (99%) were killed by men. There were 912 men who killed a current or former partner and 115 women. So, one in five men (20.4%) killed by a current or former partner were killed by a man; for women, approximately one in 147 women killed by a current or former partner were killed by a woman.  Men who are killed by a current or former partner are 29 times more likely to be killed by someone of the same sex than women are.

There is a further important difference too, but this can’t be found in the ONS data. When the Femicide Census published our 10-year report on women killed by men in the UK between 2009 and 2018, we found evidence in 59% of cases that the man who killed them had been violent and/or abusive to them in the past. We think this is highly likely to be an undercount since it is not unusual for women to tell no-one that they are being abused, and also in many cases, this might not have been reported in publicly available information even if someone did know about it. The Centre for Women’s Justice looked at women who have killed current or former male partners. They found a very different picture, that in 77% of cases, it was the man who had been killed who had been abusing the woman who killed him.

So, in answer to that question: yes, sometimes women kill male current/former partners but there are four critical sex differences:

• 87% of people killed by current or former partners are women
• 89% of people who killed a current or former partner are men
• Men who are killed by a partner or ex are more likely to be killed by someone of the same sex (29 times more likely)

Women are likely to have been abused by the man who killed them in the years (or sometimes months) before their deaths, men who are killed by female partners are very likely to have been abusing the women who killed them in the years of months before their deaths

I overheard a discussion on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning (8 June 2021) that contained such a blatant piece of misinformation imparted by Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, that I felt compelled to transcribe it.

Justin Webb: Just on the point about abolishing legal provisions for single sex spaces, do you not accept that it is perfectly acceptable for women to campaign for those single sex spaces and to say that those who have changes sex should not be in them?

Benjamin Cohen…..[Evades question and talks about something else for a few moments]   and goes on to say, over again, it’s a debate about trans issues without a single trans voice being heard

Justin Webb: Hang on number one, you don’t know anything about me; number two, I asked you a question, would you answer it?

Benjamin Cohen: Sure bit, I just, I’ve made a statement, is this a debate about trans issues with no trans voice?

Justin Webb: Yeah, you’ve made your statement, now could you answer the question?

Benjamin Cohen: You made the statement which is that the provisions around who hets access to single sex spaces has changed, that hasn’t changed, the EqualityAct was passed in 2010, there’s been no changes to that

Justin Webb: Yeah, hang on, what I’m suggesting is that Stonewall would like to change it, and a lot of women are worried about

Benjamin Cohen: Sorry, you just claimed that but that’s not actually true. So, Stonewall supports self-ID  (Justin Webb : Exactly) which is about, simply about paperwork, so you’ve been able to self-ID for practical purposes for the Equality Act, since 2010,

Justin Webb:  But not for instance to go to a safe space for women, like a women’s refuge, those a protected  aren’t they

Benjamin Cohen: (speaking over Justin Webb): yeah, and they continue to be protected.

Justin Webb: And does Stonewall …

Benjamin Cohen: Can you answer me a question, Justin, has Stonewall said that those spaces should be open to trans people, I don’t believe they have

Justin Webb: Well, exactly

Benjamin Cohen: this is the problem,

Justin Webb:  But hang on, I think we agree on this

Benjamin Cohen: It’s such misinformation

Justin Webb:  Hang on,  I think we agree on this in that case because, is it the case, or is it not the case that Stonewall, is campaigning for those safe spaces not to be women only?

Benjamin Cohen: They aren’t campaigning for that, that’s just misinformation being spread by a homophobic and transphobic media, I’m afraid.

The thing is, Benjamin, you’re the one that’s not telling the truth here. The extract below shows that Stonewall are campaigning or did campaign for the removal of the protection of women’s single sex spaces. This is from Stonewall’s  submission to Women & Equalities Select Committee Inquiry on Transgender Equality submitted on 27 August 2015. Stonewall’s recommendations included:

““A review of the Equality Act 2010 to include ‘gender identity’ rather than ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic and to remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces”

Screenshot

(Source Woman’s Place UK, Evidence of calls to remove single sex exemptions from Equality Act: https://womansplaceuk.org/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-exemptions/)

Saying that Stonewall hasn’t campaigned for the removal of women’s single-sex spaces looks a lot like misinformation being spread by a media that doesn’t acknowledge the need for women’s single sex spaces to me. Your move, Benjamin.

I’ve been Counting Dead Women, women killed by men in the UK since January 2012 and as one of the founders of the Femicide Census have access to records of women killed by men in the UK going back to 2009. From this, I can say that we know that on average since 2009, a woman has been killed by a man in the UK every three days. Because that’s an average, sometimes it is more frequently than that, and sometimes it’s less. It means that we know that the oft quoted statistic, that two women a week are killed in England and Wales by their partner or ex, is inaccurate. My work on this issue means I’m often well placed to have a sense when something unusual is happening, and as importantly, I have access to information to check out my hunches, The Femicide Census.

This – noticing something unusual was going on – happened last March, just after the first national lockdown.  In the first week of lockdown, 10 women (and two children) were killed by men. That’s not one woman every 3 days, it’s one woman every 16.8 hours. It wasn’t two women a week, it was ten in a week. The oldest was 80, the youngest was 24 years old. For seven women, the suspect was her husband, partner or lover, for one he was her son, for another he was her father and one woman was killed by a stranger.  The next week, three women were killed by men, and the same the following week. 3 weeks into lockdown, 15 women had been killed by men. So, it’s true, for the first three weeks of lockdown, on average, five women a week had been killed by men, through this was largely driven by the 10 women killed in the first week. This was the snapshot for a specific period in time, 23 March – 12 April 2020.  This was three times higher than the average for the same three weeks since 2009 (five), though the actual numbers had varied between nine women in 2009 and two women in 2013, 2018 and 2019. It’s not the only time when for a short period of time there has been an atypically high number of women killed. Another example is January 2012, when in the first three days of the year, eight women were killed by men and don’t know if I’d have even started Counting Dead Women if that hadn’t coincided with the murder of Kirsty Treloar.

I shared this information at the time, there was a lot of interest. If I’m honest, I will say it pissed me off, why was one woman every three days barely worthy of mention? I wasn’t impressed by attempts to frame the killings of women in 2020 as ‘due to COVID-19’ and wrote this piece, Coronavirus Doesn’t Cause Men’s Violence Against Women about the suspected levels of men’s fatal violence against women  and what might or might not be causing an apparent increase.

But the things I’m hearing now are at best: ‘it was five women a week during lockdown’, and at the most inaccurate: ‘it’s been five women a week killed by current or former partners since lockdown.’

Because of the work by The Femicide Census, we know that there have been patterns in the numbers of women killed by men over time. Between 2009 and 2018, on average, more women tended to be killed in April than in any other month, followed by December. I was able to use information from the Femicide Census database to compare how many women had been killed in the same time period (week beginning, 23 March, week beginning 30 March, week beginning 6 April and so on) for every week since 2009.  I did that for every week of the initial national lockdown, or until 31 May.

By 31 May 2020, I was aware of 26 women who were suspected of having been killed by men in the 10 weeks since 23 March. The average for those same 10 weeks between 2009 and 2019 was 24.7 women, the highest was 30 women in 2010, the lowest was 17 women in 2013. In other words, the rates of women being killed by men had returned to pretty much an average level of unacceptable for the time of year and that continues for the rest of 2020.

I should mention that the numbers I used from 2019 and 2020 were based on media searches alone, we hadn’t analysed the Freedom of Information requests for the Femicide Census for 2019 at that point and we wouldn’t be sending those for 2020 out until 2021.  I am expecting that the real numbers for 2019 and 2020 will be a bit higher.  I am also worried about what might happen as we move on from the pandemic, if we move on from the pandemic, because another of the findings of the Femicide Census, is that 43% of women killed by their partners do so at some point during or after the process of separation. Will more women leave abusive partners as lockdown eases again? Will we see this reflected in lethal violence from jealous, possessive and controlling men?  

It’s also important to mention that at both Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census include all women killed by men. There are some important differences in the characteristics between women killed by current and former partners, for example the presence of coercive control, or, what would good support services look like? But there are some commonalities too. What’s the impact of the status of women? What’s the impact of the sexual objectification of women? What’s the impact of male entitlement? I believe that we can learn something about the role of such issues if we look at the killing of women by men, rather than restricting ourselves to current and former partners only, even though the latter make up the greatest proportion of femicides in the UK (on average 62%).

Data matters, but it’s important that we use it correctly. It’s important that we don’t extrapolate what was happening at a moment in time to what happens all the time. We should not need to exaggerate the numbers of women being killed by men to make people with influence address men’s violence against women. If we think 15 women in three weeks is unacceptable and worthy of outrage, surely, we’re not saying that the average number for three weeks, seven women, (one woman every 3 days) is fine and nothing to rise up against?

Am I naive – obviously I am – in the belief I had that facts were checked before use in the national media? Can those with editorial roles stop the use of ‘two women a week’ and respect the work of those of us who have tried to get accurate data?  How does a claim that five women a week have been killed by current or former partners since lockdown, get through whatever editorial process is supposed to happen?

Most importantly though and as always, we must remember that dead women are never merely numbers, data or statistics. They were real living women once, most of them leaving family and friends who loved them shocked and in mourning, so many people left with a gap that they’ll feel the pain of for the rest of their lives.  We should try to do the right thing by these women and try to make changes that will protect the women and girls of the future. What are we going to do to end men’s violence against women and girls?