An estimated 140 women and girls across the world die at the hands of their partner or family member every day, according to new global estimates on femicide by the UN.
The report by UN Women found 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally by men in 2023, with 60% (51,100) of these deaths committed by someone close to the victim. The organisation said its figures showed that, globally, the most dangerous place for a woman to be was in her home, where the majority of women die at the hands of men.
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, said: “What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic sphere’s of women’s lives, where they should be safest, that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence.
Posting this from another thread.
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:
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.
…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.
Thank you.
To be fair to the Guardian, their headline is substantive, compared to the other article that just gave a number without context. The report does clearly support the assertion that on average home is the most dangerous place for women to be attacked.
I’m confused - how are the numbers they provided less honest? You came up with a different stat than what they’re focusing on, but I don’t see how that makes it more honest.
Well, the way they initially presented has people coming in saying “Well, men get hurt too” like they’re trying to say they don’t. The way this first explained the numbers is saying, “Hey, they’re 27% more likely to be harmed.” All the person did was turn the data into a percentage.
It’s a dishonest representation. It ignores violence against men entirely, and makes it look like women in relationships should expect to be killed.
How is it dishonest? It’s looking at one specific kind of harm. It just happens men aren’t the highest statistic for this kind of violence. That’s literally all it’s saying. “When it comes to relationship violence, women tend to be victims more often than men.” If this was a report about suicide and they were ignoring men, I would get the issue.
It’s like an article talking about smokers being more likely to get lung cancer. It’s not the only way to get it, but they’re focusing on smokers. We wouldn’t go, “Well they’re ignoring all the miners.” They just happen to not be the focus of that study.
Context is important in statistics, which is why the Mark Twain quote is so popular. An honest article about smoking and cancer is going to say smokers have an 80% higher chance of cancer than non-smokers, showing the relationship between the two groups, not showing how much of a single group falls into a single category.
Focusing on a subset of a subset to get a scary sounding number is a dishonest tactic to get an emotional response rather than a logical one.
The only way they could get this information is to compare it, that’s why they’re focusing on women, they happened to come out in top. If they said “smokers have an 80% higher chance of cancer”, I’m taking it that they compared it to people who don’t smoke, they don’t need to tell me that because I can infer it. If I get a report that says “men are 50% more likely to die in combat” I wouldn’t sit and go, “compared to what? Women? CHILDREN!? Why are they just focusing on men, like women don’t die in combat! They’re just showing scary numbers!” they’re focusing on the group that came out in top and delving into that. I don’t know how you would read the title of the article and be surprised that that is what they are focusing on.
The article isn’t saying X% more likely though. It’s saying X% of women who die by homicide are from domestic violence. That sounds bad, but it gives you no actionable information for what this means for homicide or domestic violence as a whole.
It’s really only a way to spread fear that if a woman is going to be killed, it’s likely from domestic violence.
The final line of the snippet states: “Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, said: “What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic sphere’s of women’s lives, where they should be safest, that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence.” It is not saying that, if women die, it’s likely from DV, nor are they claiming to speak for homicide as a whole. They’re saying that in cases of DV, women are more likely to be the victim. It’s not spreading fear, it’s just awareness. It sounds bad because it is bad. Sometimes that’s just how it is.
Don’t worry, men are more likely to be killed from gang violence or in a homosexual relationship with domestic violence . There ya go, you’re not ignored. You’re #1 in some circumstances too.
And men are usually the most common victim of violence …from other men. This is if you take in the gang violence and LBGTQ factor. This is not to say that men cannot die from women or women are on some sort of pedestal this is just to say men are more likely to be killed by another man than a woman in many circumstances.
I thought it was the other way around. TIL.
It’s funny how your types only acknowledge non binary people when you’re trying to put down women’s issues.
Maybe we’re just exhausted of being preached to about how hard life always is for women while at the same time being told life is never hard enough for men and boys to matter, and if it is, it’s their own fault? Or about how men are shit stains who are all at fault for everything each man has ever done and maybe should just all die? When the overall discourse is 99% about women and girls, each individual article becomes inseparable from the overall cultural norm that none of men’s suffering matters but all of women’s suffering does, no matter what it is.
Literally in this thread