The most notorious form of gendercide is feminicide – the deliberate murder of women, as in dowry murders (bride burnings), honor killings, feminicide, and the rampant murder of indigenous women (called MMIW, for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) .  Feminicide typically targets teen girls and young women. Data are incomplete, but these murders account for at least 3% of the excess loss of female life (relative to males).   Although the number of women killed in these ways is dwarfed by other forms of gendercide, the killings have special significance because of their sheer brutality.  They terrify women into submission and reinforce patriarchal norms.  In many countries, these crimes are neither investigated nor prosecuted, making women’s rights and equality with men a practical impossibility.

In Latin America, killing of women (el feminicidio) has climbed to unprecedented levels in the last decade. Drug cartels and para-military activity have exacerbated violence against women in these already macho societies.8  To make matters worse, drug cartels are expanding into sex trafficking because it is more profitable and less risky (for them).  This contributes to the rising number of female deaths.9

In the US and Canada, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) has emerged in the news after decades of law enforcement neglect and media yawning. In the US, these deaths were neither reported nor investigated due to jurisdictional disputes and uncertainty as to whether tribal, county, state, or federal law enforcement should handle them.  Recent Congressional legislation now requires tracking of these deaths and protocols to establish jurisdiction and swift investigation.10

A word of explanation:  “feminicide” is the killing of women for cultural reasons where there is no equivalent for killing men.  Feminicide includes intimate partner murder (where the man typically wants total control of his partner), dowry murder,  honor killing, and the killing of women associated with rival groups (gangs, tribes) as a strike against the group’s men.  The asymmetry of feminicide leads advocates to define it, somewhat confusingly, as “killing a woman because she is a woman.”  Women do occasionally kill their male partners, but rarely as the culmination of behaviors intended to intimidate and control.