Summary
A U.N. report shows that 140 women and girls were killed daily by intimate partners or family members in 2023, totaling 51,100 victims, an increase of 2,300 from 2022.
The rise reflects improved data collection rather than an increase in violence.
The highest rates were in Africa, with 2.9 victims per 100,000 people.
Despite global prevention efforts, these killings, often the result of ongoing gender-based violence, persist at alarming levels.
The report emphasizes the preventability of such violence through timely and effective interventions.
It’s a shame that this data is being presented this poorly, because this is a really important issue that deserves attention. None of the figures presented in the linked article have the proper context to understand them. Even the UN report itself does not present their findings well.
So, for instance, 140 women per day is of course more than the ideal number of zero, but there are billions of people on this planet. To actually quantify the gender imbalance of this number, we need to compare it to the number of men who are victims in the same way. From the report:
Globally, approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed by their intimate partners or other family members […out of…] 85,000 women and girls killed intentionally during the year […] In other words, an average of 140 women and girls worldwide lost their lives every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative.
The report does not offer corresponding numbers for male (or non-binary) victims. It does, however, say that 11.8% of male victims and 60.2% of female victims are killed by partners or other family members. It also acknowledges that 80% of all homicide victims are men and 20% women, which is beside the point as this is about domestic violence, but it will allow us to do some math to arrive at numbers to compare against.
- 85,000 * 80/20 = 340,000 men killed total
- 340,000 * 11.8% = 40,120 men killed by partners or family
- so we are comparing 40,120 men with 51,100 women
- women are 27.4% more likely than men to be killed by partners or family.
…which should have been the headline. 27% more is massive! Domestic violence is a huge issue, and women are more likely to suffer from it!
There is no need to obfuscate the numbers to be less honest. The honest numbers themselves are shocking enough, and scientifically literate readers won’t dismiss your credibility along with your cause. I look forward to future UN reports communicating these horrifying statistics a bit more clearly.
Consider the following:
A lot of reports of domestic violence for male on male violence is reported as non domestic instead, which contributes to a portion of the perceived gap.
The gap is likely smaller than you think. Its even distinctly likely men are in reality the victims more often (like every other category of violence), but it just doesn’t get categorized as domestic because sexism.
Especially since a lot of the victims are often black, which even further biases against them for a domestic incident to get escalated to non domestic (carrying heavier sentences)
It’s well known that black men tend to convicted with far heavier sentences than any other demographic for the same crimes.
Sir, my entire thesis was about how important it is to present clear data to substantiate your claims. Not only are you refuting the findings with zero data or sources, you are injecting a racially charged dimension into the mix.
For all we know your arguments could be entirely correct, but you yourself are undermining them by not attempting constructive discourse.
I just assumed the fact that black men get charged with worse penalties on average was well known enough and common knowledge I wouldnt have to sit and gather papers on it.
https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/64/5/1189/7612940
I mean there’s an entulire Wikipedia page with many sources for it, take your pick.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
The fact that black men make up a disproportionate amount of perpetrators and victims of violence is also extremely well established, because you know… gangs exist
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-race-ethnicity-and-gender/
In Canada our Indeginious communities have a similiar trend: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510015601
While simultaneously it’s also pretty well known that gangs trend to being familial in nature. I hope you won’t ask for me to find papers demonstrating how often gang violence tends to be “in family”, I don’t know how easy that will be to find, but it should be pretty common knowledge that gangs typically revolve around family blood ties.
As a result of all three of these facts, it’s extremely easy to see how a considerable chunk of what would be classifiable as male on male domestic violence instead gets classified as non-domestic gang related activity.
Which will make up a non-trivial chunk of that gap you are seeing, very possibly swinging it the opposite direction.
I’d be extremely surprised if men aren’t the actual disproportionate victims of domestic violence once you remove racial/cultural biases out. I expect an enormous amount of domestic violence is categorized as non-domestic.
Literally anyone who has paid attention to the news over the past several years should be starkly aware of how intense these biases play out when it comes to cops knocking on doors of domestic violence events, and how way to often it turns into a “justified homicide”
These trends are pretty consistent anywhere you look em up.
Homicide is quite rare overall, people due to all sorts of shit, amd very rarely is it homicide.
It’s usually heart disease, or cancer, or covid.
And outside diseases, it’s usually accidents at home, at work, or on the road.
And outside accidents (and overdoses), it’s usually suicide far more often than homicide. (You could classify that as disease again though, depression can be extremely lethal)
Only after all of that do you start talking about homicide, which is the very tiny fraction of deaths left over.
Go look at the obituaries evey single week in your local city, then compare it to how many homicides there were.
My city of about 1 million population averages only 35 homicides per year.
Meanwhile thousands of people are dying per year to illness, accidents, etc.
You are extremely out of touch if you think homicide is the largest threat to women, lol.
Cars alone beat homicide like 3:1
27% more (while significant) is really low compared to the disproportionate focus on violence against women. It shows 44% of domestic violence victims are ignored by the Istambul convention due to sexism, and even that is assuming the number is accurate (see also pixxelkicks reply).
Domestic violence is a huge issue, and women are more likely to suffer from it!
Yes and yes.
and scientifically literate readers won’t dismiss your credibility along with your cause.
No. If you care about women’s lives, you’ll focus on cancer instead.
Homocide per 100k capita of women (summed the separate numbers on page 9, worldwide): 7.4
Deaths per 100k capita of women just in the USA (listed under “Sex and Race/Ethnicity”): 126
Here’s your headline: Women are 1602.70% more likely to die of cancer, than of homicide at home!!!
Now… Homicide bad. very bad. Homicide very bad (self-defence does obviously not count). But compared to some other numbers that are also bad, maybe homicide relatively not that bad.
If we’re talking about statistics then from the original report
An estimated 80 per cent of all homicide victims in 2023 were men while 20 per cent were women,
Shouldn’t we figure out unequal woman murder rate first? What are they doing better than men if they are 4 times less likely to be murdered at all?
Here’s a more general report that delves into your question: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html
By far the biggest reason is that ~70% of those homicides are crime or gang related, and almost all of those are men, which neatly accounts for the disparity.
That of course raises the question, why are men so much more likely to get tangled up in gangs or crime? I’m sure that the sociologists have a more nuanced take, but I’ll venture out on a limb and say it’s because men are full of dumbassifying hormones. Being immersed in societal peer pressure probably doesn’t help, depending on what environment they’re in.
