Tag Archives: women

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Open letter to national organisations supporting (women) victim-survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse

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It had been more than a week since the ruling in For Women Scotland v. Scottish Ministers and despite the widespread celebrations of feminists and amazing widespread front-page news coverage, none of the national charities working to address men’s violence against women and girls had spoken out about what the ruling meant for women survivors of men’s violence against women and girl and those working with them. Meanwhile, some organisations working with victim-survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse had issued statements pledging that the ruling will not change their working practices whilst not making it clear whether women would be able to access women-only support delivered by women, or whether a woman may find a man who claims to be a woman, rape and sexual violence support centre or counselling group.

Shonagh Dillon and I have each worked in the specialist sector supporting women victims of men’s violence for over three decades. We have been speaking up about the importance of women-only spaces for years. Shonagh’s doctoral thesis ‘TERF Bigot Transphobe – We Found the Witch. Burn Her’ researched the clash between transgender ideology and women’s sex-based rights analysing the direct impact on the male violence against women sector. I wrote Defending Women’s Spaces about the importance of women only spaces, in particular why they are essential to meet the needs of women who have been subject to men’s violence and the first policy for a women’s charity using the exceptions permitted in the Equality Act to maintain women-only services. I made a written complaint to Women’s Aid Federation England about the use of ‘trans captured language and concepts’ in a survey to member organisations back in 2018.

The ruling did not change the law, instead it clarified what the law meant. And it confirmed what Shonagh and I – and others – have been saying for over a decade. The Equality Act permits and recognises the need for women-only spaces for women victim-survivors of men’s violence. Frustrated by the lack of response from the national charities, most of which were originally constituted to meet the needs of women, Shonagh and I decided to write an open letter to them jointly about what we see as their failure to put the interests of women who have been subjected to men’s violence first.

In an article by Janet Eastham, ‘Domestic violence shelters ‘defy trans court ruling’’, The Telegraph picked up the issue and spoke to us about the letter. Now, more than ever, we need those in roles and with organisations who were sent up to advocate on behalf of women, girls and children who’ve been subjected to men’s violence to show leadership and put women first. If not before, if not now, when?

The letter follows below.

Dear Women’s Aid Federation England, Scottish Women’s Aid, Welsh Women’s Aid, Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland, Rape Crisis England and Wales, Rape Crisis Scotland, Rape Crisis Northern Ireland, Imkaan, SafeLives, The Survivors Trust, End Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition (EVAW),

We are writing to you following the decision of the UK Supreme Court that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex and therefore the words ”woman” or “women” in The Act refer to those who are female, moreover that The Act’s protections were always intended to be read as such. The judgment made clear that men who identify as women are men, regardless of their identification and whether they hold a Gender Recognition Certificate, and again, that The Act never intended otherwise.

It is well established that victims of sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution, are disproportionately women and that perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. It is also well established that women victim-survivors benefit most from women-only independent specialist support and indeed that the overwhelming majority would choose female only support, if given the option. Mixed sex services for victim survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse are less effective at meeting the needs of women.

Those activists and survivors, primarily women, who set up sexual and domestic violence services starting in the 1970s understood the need for single-sex support for victim-survivors of men’s violence, hence most of these services were women-only from the outset.  The single-sex exceptions in The Equality Act reflected this understanding and made clear that males could lawfully be excluded from services for women where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim meeting at least one of six qualifying criteria, including that the service would not be as effective if it were provided for women and men jointly and that a woman using the service might object to the presence of a man, or vice versa. The claim that exclusions must be made on a case-by-case basis is false and always was.

Every survivor should be able to access independent specialist services. We support the delivery of specialist services for the minority of victim-survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse who are men and/or the provision of mixed sex services for those who identify as transgender. But these services must clearly be identified and advertised as such, and women should always be able to choose and trust that the services you advertise as women-only services are delivered by women. Transwomen are not women and should not be treated as such in single-sex sexual and domestic violence services.

Over the past decade, as membership organisations and/or those responsible for quality audits of services, we believe that you have collectively and individually failed to fully articulate the importance of single-sex spaces for women victim-survivors of men’s violence. You have made space for your members and/or organisations that you audit to deliver mixed-sex services in the name of transgender, inclusivity. You have failed to require such service providers to make clear whether they include men in services that they claim are women only. You have failed to adequately make the case for women-only services to law and policy makers and to commissioners and providers of services. In this, we believe that you have failed to act in the best interests of your and our primary beneficiaries.

We understand since the ruling, some member organisations have reaffirmed their intention to continue to provide mixed sex support presented as women-only in the name of transgender inclusion. This is not lawful. Further, the failure to provide single-sex services for women and girls may rightly be open to sex discrimination claims. In many cases, the failure to provide single-sex services for women and in doing so meet the needs of women, may be at odds with the organisations’ charitable objects which is a legal obligation and would be a failure of governance.

We call on you to make access to women-only provision delivered by women for victim-survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse a priority and a requirement. It should be universally understood that our services are by and for women, and they should be accessible as such to every woman. This reaffirmed declaration of the movement’s core purpose should be openly and proudly stated.

Dr Karen Ingala Smith, author of Defending Women’s Spaces

Dr Shonagh Dillon, author of TERF/Bigot/Transphobe – We found the witch, burn her!

Since being contacted by the Telegraph, two of the national organisations have issued statements. (Rape Crisis England and Wales ; Women’s Aid Federation England.)

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Abused women and children cannot be used as pawns in power politics

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Men’s violence against and abuse of women, girls and children is not a party-political issue but of course responses must be led by whichever party holds power. The issue of so-called ‘rape gangs’ is currently being used by the Right to undermine the government which has been in power for six months. In particular, the rhetoric of Elon Musk towards Jess Phillips is incendiary, dangerous and does nothing to support victims of sexual violence whatsoever.

I understand why some people are angry. I’m angry. Again and again, we see failure to act on the recommendations of national and local inquires and ‘strategic needs analyses’. We see failure to act on the recommendations of reviews into individual deaths, such as Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews (previously Domestic Homicide Reviews) and case reviews into the death or serious harm of children. This is unacceptable and both local, regional and national administrations/governments have failed victims in repeated and systemic failures to act on what is known. Equally, victims are failed by what is not known, or more accurately, what is not recorded and evidenced.

The chair of the Jay Review of Criminally Exploited Children published in November 2023, Prof Alexis Jay, told the BBC Radio Four Today Programme that lack of data means it is “impossible to know whether any particular ethnic group is over-represented as perpetrators of child sexual exploitation by networks” and that one of the review’s recommendations was improved data collection. It should be unacceptable that this was ever the case, more so that it remains the case because the review recommendations still have not been implemented.

It is clear that there are patterns in the ethnicities of perpetrators and victims and geographical distribution of child rape gangs and some other forms on men’s violence against women and girls. It is not racist to say this, but it is racist to extrapolate from this to make assumptions and statements about the characteristics of all people who share ethnic and religious characteristics with the perpetrators. It is racist, as Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice did, to forefront some cultures as having ‘medieval attitudes to women’ and overlook the fact that sexism, misogyny and the abuse of women and children crosses all cultures. It is inflammatory and irresponsible and risks re-igniting the rioting of the summer of 2024 where innocent people, including women and children, were afraid to leave their homes and two hotels housing asylum seekers in Rotherham and Tamworth were targeted by far-right, racist, and Islamophobic rioters. Jenrick has further claimed that the grooming gangs scandal “started with the onset of mass migration” but he ignores other forms of organised sexual exploitation of children, young people and women, such as under the roofs of Catholic or Christian churches, elite boarding  schools and residential schools for troubled children, children’s homes or family homes, whether organised and used by politicians, the police, celebrities or those we’d call ‘ordinary men’.

I’ve worked in organisations supporting victim-survivors of men’s violence for almost 35 years. From 1995 to 2,000, I worked in a hostel for homeless women in Bradford. We worked with mainly younger women, young women who weren’t usually coming with domestic abuse as a presenting issue and some had problematic substance use. Heroin was starting to become easily available in the city at this time. Some were care leavers. In any case, most weren’t eligible for support from refuges or had been asked to leave refuge accommodation because of their behaviour. But most had long histories of abuse, sometimes life-long. Most agencies deemed such young women as beyond help. They were seen as problems, certainly not young women whose needs should be prioritised. Victim-blaming was rife and institutionalised. You only have too look at how West Yorkshire police and the media viewed the victims of Peter Sutcliffe to find see this. Men like Peter Sutcliffe may be mercifully rare, but the response to those upon whom he preyed was far from usual and remains.

Not all women abused, used and violated through semi-organised child sexual exploitation were from working-class back grounds, but, I am sure that if we had accurate records, we would be able to say that they were disproportionately so. Or worse, young women who had grown up in families who had long since been written off. They were products of multi-generational poverty, joblessness and deprivation. You have to have a sense of the impact on regional collective mood in the North of the end of the coal industry, but also the end of widescale textile production in the mills, the end of mass production of steel, the end of ship building, to have a sense of the pervasive hopelessness for many.

We still don’t know the real extent of sexual and domestic violence abuse. We don’t know the extent of prostitution, we don’t know the extent of child sexual exploitation. It remains the case that most violence against women, girls and children is never formally reported and so never counted. But for decades, we feminists have known that which most of the rest of society refuses to acknowledge, the scale of child sex abuse is far greater than that which is commonly assumed. As Bea Campbell movingly tells in her book Secrets and Silence, the Cleveland scandal of child sex abuse in the 1980S was not a scandal of over-zealous professional inventing evidence of child sex-abuse that did not happen, as many of those who remember misremember, it was a scandal of child-sex abuse denied and covered up because most were not ready to face the truth or finance the implications of that truth. Allegations of sexual abuse were made against Cyril Smith, the Rochdale MP from 1972 to 1992, as early as 1969, but no action was taken. Since his death, it has been found that he was abusing, including raping, boys between 1960 and 1987. Jimmy Savile was never held to account and is known to have abused hundreds. The records of Rape Crisis organisations give an indication of how many women and girls are have been regularly raped and violated at home and also how many believe that justice will never be theirs.

Children of all religious and ethnic backgrounds are victims, people – the vast majority of which are men – of all religious and ethnic backgrounds  are perpetrators. Equally, we know that all forms of sexual and domestic violence and abuse are under-reported; and that support for victims and actions to hold perpetrators to account are under-resourced. No government to date has set out an effective strategy to seriously reduce, let alone end, men’s violence against and abuse of women, girls and children.

Prof Alexis Jay does not support another review or independent inquiry. She said “We’ve had enough of inquiries, consultations and discussions, and especially for those victims and survivors who’ve had the courage to come forward, and they clearly want action. We have set out what action is required and people should just get on with it. Locally and nationally.”

We need to put supporting and responding to the needs of existing victims first. We need to stop the hierarchy of victims where some are more likely to be believed, some are more likely to see justice and some are more likely to be ignored or blamed for the abuse that they were subjected to. The law must apply equally to all perpetrators. We cannot see men’s violence against women, girls and children as a class or race issue but neither can we deny how these issues intersect with perpetration, victimisation, accountability and justice.

Policing, the criminal justice system, state organisations and independent non-state organisations, particularly the specialist women’s sector, must be adequately resourced to support victims and hold perpetrators to account.  We cannot refuse to see uncomfortable truths whether we’re talking about people that we perceive to be similar or different from ourselves. We need to act on what we know and close the evidence gaps around that which we have not yet documented. We need to challenge institutional reluctance to name this as a ‘man’ problem whilst not denying that women can abuse, facilitate and men and boys can be victims. We need to ask why there isn’t wider outrage at our shamefully low conviction rates for rape and ask why this itself is not seen as a cover-up or societal collusion with rapists.

We cannot allow the response to sexual and domestic violence and abuse to be hijacked by those with the deepest pockets, the loudest voices and those with nefarious agendas, however compelling they sometimes are. We cannot refuse to make the links between child sexual exploitation, pornography and prostitution. A society that condones the purchase of ‘consent’ to sexual access is one where men’s entitlement and women’s objectification and where sexual exploitation is normalised.

We need to believe that men’s violence against and abuse of women, girls and children is not inevitable and act accordingly. Whilst our goals and actions must be across party political divides, they must be set without prejudice, be victim-centred and implemented with determination. Abused women and children cannot be used as pawns in power politics.

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Sarah Owen, MP, newly elected chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, on Woman’s Hour

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Sarah Owen, MP (Labour) for Luton North was elected Chair of the parliamentary Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC) on 11th September 2024. The following morning, she was a guest on Woman’s Hour, presented by Anita Rani.  

Woman’s Hour was hardly quick to pick up on women’s legitimate concerns regarding the threats posed by the Gender Recognition Act, and transgender identity ideology more generally, to women’s sex based rights and protections. In fact, the BBC issued Woman’s Hours’s longest serving presenter, Jenni Murray, with an impartiality warning after a piece she had written for The Sunday Times Magazine (in March 2017) addressed whether men who had undergone ‘ a sex change operation ‘ (more accurately  described as gender affirmation surgery, because, quite simply, people cannot change sex) were different from ‘real women’. As Murray later wrote, ‘ I was roundly ticked off publicly and informed that I would not be allowed to chair any discussions on the trans question or proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.’ Refusing to be silenced, Murray left the BBC just over three years later. Woman’s Hour’s refusal to tackle the issue increasingly undermined the programme’s claim to address ‘topical issues’ and slowly the embarrassing lacuna was filled. When Woman’s Hour presenter Anita Rani interviewed Owen, whilst some of us might have liked a more robust challenge to Owen’s responses, at least relevant questions were asked about the some of the issues in the clash between women’s and transgender rights.

Owen expressed sadness that people’s fears and concerns had been boiled down to body parts. This interpretation is her own and way behind the current state of debate. It is a central feminist position that women are more than our body parts. Of course, we are. The feminist position is that women’s bodies should not and need not define the entirety or scope of our lives, that our sex and socially prescribed sex roles are not the same. This is far from saying that we do not share the material reality of a sexed body.  

Owen was one of 452 MPs and 129 MSPs who were sent a complimentary copy of my book, Defending Women’s Spaces in a campaign by Woman’s Place UK and nia. The book makes clear that the needs of women in relation to single-sex spaces go way beyond matters of body parts. Of course, being sent a book is not the same as reading it, and if she hasn’t done so already, I’d suggest that Sarah spends some time with the book and considers some of the issues I raise from the perspective of someone who, for 34 years, has been involved in the provision of specialist services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence. Sarah, if you’ve misplaced your copy, could I further suggest that you buy one or even borrow someone else’s? Even if I say it myself, the book has important things to say about the importance of single sex services in particular for women victim-survivors of men’s violence.  

When asked what a woman is, Owen for some reason found herself unable to answer the question. Instead, she said ‘somebody that is going to be paid less than their male counterparts, somebody that is going to be less safe walking down the streets and somebody that faces more barriers in the workplace, education and health sector. These are not examples of what a woman is, they are examples of sex-inequality. They are examples of how the sex-hierarchy operates in patriarchal societies. Indeed, they are issues that we might suppose fall within the remit of the WESC. If we managed to eradicate all these examples of sex inequality, the biological category of women would still exist. But we need to be able to identify women if we are to show how we are discriminated against.

I was surprised to hear Owen say that most of the debate around the clash between women’s sex-based rights and protections had happened without ‘transwomen’s’ voices. Perhaps she hasn’t read the 2016 WESC Transgender Equality Report. I opened my book with a reference to this report. It included the nonsense claim that each of us is assigned sex at birth and quoted a newspaper article citing the disputed ‘sobering and distressing fact that in UK surveys of trans people about half of young people and a third of adults report that they have attempted suicide’. The report included quotes from the Scottish Transgender Alliance recommending the removal of the single-sex exceptions, from Galop, an LGBT anti-abuse charity, which claimed that transgender people are currently at serious risk of harm by being excluded from sexual and domestic violence and abuse services and one Mridul Wadhwa, who is quoted saying: ‘I am disappointed to think that someone has the right to refuse work to me and others like me in my sector [the sexual and domestic violence and abuse sector] just because they think that I might not be a woman.’  And we all know how his appointment turned out, don’t we?

Far from the voices of trans identified males not having been heard, the government announced that the Gender Recognition Act was to be reviewed following recommendations of the WESC report. The committee, then chaired by Maria Miller MP, had called 20 people (outside of MPs) as witnesses to the inquiry which preceded the report. Kathleen Stock summarised those who were called as witnesses thus: eleven of the twenty represented trans activist organisations, while the remaining nine were relatively neutral experts, though some of these were also trans themselves. No women’s groups were called to give evidence, though some had made written submissions, and neither was anyone who had voiced concerns about transitioning. In fact, one of the reasons that Woman’s Place UK was founded in 2017 was to help ensure that women’s voices were heard – as it was ours, not those of males who identified as transgender or organisations servicing their interests, which had been excluded. In addition, when I gave evidence to the WESC about whether specialist providers of services for women  who had been subjected to men’s violence understood the provisions of the Equality Act regarding single-sex spaces, one of the other two people interviewed was a trans identified man called Diana James. Perhaps it is understandable that the day after her appointment as Chair was announced, Owen was not familiar with the history of the committee, including the highly significant report that it had published eight years earlier. But this gap in her knowledge should not have resulted in her making a claim whichwas quite the opposite of the history of the committee that she now chairs. It hardly suggests that she is capable of hearing women’s concerns or recognising when we are not heard by others. And, I’d add, the ‘say what you want to think is true because it suits your narrative regardless of its basis in fact’ is entirely consistent with the input of transgender identity ideology advocates: their false claims about suicide, denial of the harms of puberty blockers, denial of the extent of the medicalisation and sterilisation of minors, exaggeration of the levels of serious harm and violence to persons with transgender identities in the UK and so on.

Owen also claims that polarised views mean that we haven’t seen any progress in addressing the conflict between women’s sex-based rights and protections and transgender identify ideology and she bemoaned the lack of respectful debate. Again, she is quite wrong. Feminist interventions have been largely respectful but most of all she is wrong to deny women’s gains. As Professor Jo Phoenix summarised ‘the count so far (of employment tribunals involving secular gender critical claimants and including full admissions of liability as wins’) is: ‘12 wins (admission of liability + claims upheld @ ET/EAT), two settled by agreement, two ongoing appeals, two unsuccessful and one dismissed at preliminary hearing stage (ruled out of time and/or claimant did not have employment status)’. This, Phoenix explains is in the context of less than five percent of belief discrimination claims winning at hearing & around 15-20% being unsuccessful at hearing in the last fifteen years while we (those of us who understand that sex is a material fact and refuse to pretend otherwise) are winning at a rate of 78 percent with three percent being unsuccessful. There are many progressions outside courtrooms too and of course the battles fought inside the courtroom themselves have implications outside it.

Quite simply, women have refused to be silenced and we continue to make gains. We will not let our rights be given away. We will not let demands that we ‘be kind’ prevent us from fighting to protect our interests. The chair of the Women and Equalities Committee is only one member of the committee and I hope others on the committee will ensure that issues are examined and robust challenges are made. I recognise that the remit of the committee is women and (other) equality and inequality issues. But surely there’s an indication in the name of the committee that women’s interests should not be ignored or diminished. And sadly, it doesn’t fill me with confidence that the new chair can’t even define what a woman is.  

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As Chief Executive of a charity, part of your job is to set the tone

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Me on Mridul Wadhwa and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre

I am so pleased to hear that the Employment Tribunal for Roz Adams against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) has agreed that Roz Adams was subjected to discriminatory treatment and that she was unfairly constructively dismissed.

This is undoubtedly a personal victory for Adams. To be told that you are under investigation for gross misconduct and facing immediate dismissal with no pay is intensely stressful and upsetting. For this to be followed by a nine-month procedure that results in ‘only’ a formal warning, is no exoneration. Even the escape route – resignation – is itself a punishment, the loss of job and income compounding the knock to your self-worth. I’m glad that after being discriminated against and unfairly constructively dismissed for believing that women who had been raped had the right to be supported by a female counsellor and to know the sex of their counsellor, not only did Adams find a new job with Beira’s place, she also found within herself the strength to take ERCC to employment tribunal. I’m delighted for her that she won.

Important though Adams’ victory is for her personally, and by extension, for those of us who understand that the support needs of women who have been subjected to men’s violence are best met by women and in women-only environments; Adams’ tribunal success is most important for women victim-survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse.

In May 2021, ERCC announced the appointment of Mridul Wadhwa as its new CEO. The post had been advertised as restricted to women applicants. Kathryn Dawson, Chair of ERCC’s Board of Directors, exclaimed: ‘We are delighted that a woman with such a strong track record in improving the lives of women and campaigning against all forms of inequality will be leading our organisation into the future.’ This is gaslighting. Wadhwa was well known in Edinburgh and Scotland and it was widely known that he was, indeed is, male. For a chair of a Rape Crisis charity to claim otherwise is a gross dereliction of duty and a failure of what should be a key aim of such an organisation to put their beneficiaries first.

In the opening paragraph of my book, Defending Women’s Spaces, published in November 2022, I quoted Wadhwa’s submission to the 2016 Transgender Equality Report published by the government’s Women and Equalities Committee where he bemoaned ‘I am disappointed to think that someone has the right to refuse work to me and others like me in my sector just because they think that I might not be a woman.’ But Wadhwa is not a woman. And he should not be in the sector because he has prioritised his need for validation above the needs of women who have been subjected to men’s violence. Needs which include a trauma-informed single sex space. Needs which include being heard and believed.  Needs which include being able to trust what you can see with your own eyes. The heart of Defending Women’s Spaces sets out why single sex spaces are so important for women’s recovery after men’s violence.

The grip of transgender identity ideology on the nation’s psyche has been loosened by concerted feminist and lesbian and gay rights activism since then. Legal cases taken by Allison Baily, Maya Forstater, Jo Phoenix, Rachel Meade and Denise Fahmy have demonstrated how women who dare speak up for other women have been treated but the law has repeatedly found that we have been unfairly treated.  The mantra ‘transwomen are women’ is no longer so frequently end vehemently regurgitated by its apostles and disciples. 

Within months of appointment, Wadhwa said ‘sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well’ and that ERCC service users would have to rethink their relationship with prejudice if they brought views that the charity believed to be discriminatory. This, as the tribunal showed, became a condition of accessing support.  In a later interview, Wadhwa revealed that ‘large groups of survivors’, who did not want to be exposed to men with transgender identities, were not using ERCC services. He did not appear to see this as a problem.

It is to the detriment of the specialist sector supporting women victims of sexual and domestic violence and abuse, and sexual exploitation, that the feminist activist roots and the political nature of the work is being detangled in too many cases from service provision. For me the sector has to frame our work within efforts to end men’s violence against women as a cause and consequence of sex inequality. If we can’t say what a woman is, we can’t end sex inequality.

The employment tribunal found Mridul Wadhwa, ERCC’s Chief Executive, ‘was the invisible hand behind everything that had taken place.’ Not only did Wadhwa lead an organisation to a place where enforcing transgender identity ideology was prioritised over supporting women victim-survivors of men’s violence, he refused to take responsibility in the employment tribunal, he did not appear. The tribunal judgment said ‘absolutely no explanation was provided as to why she (sic) refused to give evidence in the case’ and concluded that they were therefore ‘entitled to draw an adverse inference as to what their evidence would have been in relation to those matters where the respondent’s position conflicted with the claimant’s evidence.’

As a CEO of a charity your role often goes beyond your job description in ways that can be hard to define. In short, you set the tone. It appears that Wadhwa has indeed successfully set the tone at ERCC. But that tone does not prioritise victim-survivors of rape and sexual assault. It is now the responsibility of the board of trustees of ERCC to address this critical failure of mission.

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At least 100 UK women are suspected to have been killed by men in 2023

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Counting Dead Women, has recorded at least 100 UK women who were killed by men, or where the primary suspect for an alleged homicide, is a man, in 2023.  

Counting Dead Women monitors the media and collates reports of women suspected to have been killed by men. The project was developed by Karen Ingala Smith, following the murder of Kirsty Treloar in Hackney on 2nd January 2012.  The project is now run with the support of the Femicide Census which Ingala Smith and Clarrie O’Callaghan launched in 2015.

The number of women known or suspected to have been by men in 2023 will inevitably increase beyond 100, sadly even in the next few days. On average since the end of 2009, 140 women have been killed by men every year. That’s an average of two women dead at the hands of a man, every 5 days.

We only count women where men have been charged, or deemed responsible for the death of a woman by a statutory agency, for example in cases such as those where men have killed themselves after killing a woman or have been held under the Mental Health Act in relation to a killing.  The Femicide Census has found that on average in just under 12% of cases men who kill women also kill themselves. We always have a number of cases each year where the media have reported the death of a woman but the circumstances are not yet clear. There are regular reports of women being found dead that end up disappearing from the news, they might end up being non-suspicious deaths, overdoses, suicides (often following abuse), men may have been bailed pending investigation and so on. Usually more details become apparent in the course of the year, when criminal charges can be made and as cases proceed through the criminal justice system.

In addition, the Femicide Census sends Freedom of Information requests to the 42 UK police forces asking for information on women suspected to have been killed by men in the preceding year. This also reveals cases that have not featured in the media or which we might not have seen.

Each woman killed is a loss in and of itself in relation to the woman whose life has been taken. On average, in the UK 58 percent of women killed by men are killed by a current or former partner. Often in these cases, the killing of a woman follows months, years or even decades of violence, abuse and coercive control. In addition, analysis by the Femicide Census finds that around 8 percent of women killed by men, are women who were killed by their own son. Around 10 per cent are women who were killed by a stranger.

The killing of women, because they are women and reflecting unequal relationships between women and men as individuals but also collectively, is known as femicide. Femicide is a systemic issue. Whilst individual men must always be held responsible for the actions that they take, femicide is also a product of sex inequality and widely held cultural values. Regardless of her relationship with the man who killed her and the circumstances of her life, each of these women deserves to be remembered by name and as more than just another statistic. Almost every woman’s death leaves grieving family and friends. There should be no hierarchies in femicide.

Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census are run by a small number of women: Rosie Allen, Dr Katie Elliot, Heather Harvey, Dr Karen Ingala Smith and Clarrie O’Callaghan. Whist we are happy for you to use our work in your own campaigns, research or other projects, we politely request that you reference the source of your data. The Femicide Census and Counting Dead Women are run entirely on donations and voluntary income. If you would like to donate to support our vital work, you can do so here.