Frias (2023) first gives an overview of how the term “femicide” came to be. Often, in Mexico, the terms femicide and feminicide are used to refer to gender-based violence against women. Diana H. Russell coined the term femicide at the first International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in 1976 to describe the murder of women by men due to their gender. The term already existed, but Russell gave it a political connotation and used it to describe feminist politics. In the course of its development, the term has come to mean both the killing of women by men because they are women as well as the killing of women simply because they are women. The purpose of this was to capture the possibility that gender-based killings may extend beyond male perpetrators, women may be capable of killing women as well. In 2006 Lagarde adopted the term femicide but added a twist, she coined the term “feminicide” or in Spanish “feminicidio” This term was similar to femicide but different in that it added on to Russel’s definition so that it included the dimension where it addressed the state’s role in neglecting cases and the impunity for these crimes.
Feminicidal violence is the extreme, the culmination of many forms of gender violence against women that represent an attack on their human rights and that lead them to various forms of violent death. In many cases, these forms of gender violence are tolerated by society and the State; at other times, citizens live feminicidal violence with powerlessness, for there are few channels available for the enforcement of rights.
Lagarde
As Frias points out, quantitative methods fail to reveal the full extent of feminicide because not all feminicides are labeled as such, and not all female murders are feminicides. Moreover, she argues that female homicides and feminicides are two different phenomena, and it is difficult to distinguish between the two based on the available records. There is a scarcity of details in death records like perpetrator and victim characteristics, making it difficult to identify femicide adequately. Among the challenges Frias points out in feminicide research is that it fails to consider that the “female” category is not the only important feature and that other factors, such as age and race/ethnicity, may further marginalize females. To illustrate her point, she uses the example of indigenous women, who are more likely to experience gender-based violence like partner violence or sexual violence in their childhood than non-indigenous women. She draws attention to the fact that official statistics and administrative records fail to separate homicide and feminicide information by race or ethnicity. Moreover, she points out that indigenous communities are marginalized because they are usually far from large cities, where law enforcement resources such as feminicide specialized state attorneys are located. A lack of medical services, which would be useful in identifying feminicide cases, is another problem. She argues that this largely contributes to the invisibility of indigenous women’s feminicide. Moreover, this study by Frias aims to accomplish three objectives: (one) differentiate female homicides that occurred between 2001-2017 as feminicides or not feminicides, (second) examine the relationship between gender inequality, feminicide, and female homicides in Mexico, (third) assess feminicides and female homicide trends in indigenous and non-indigenous municipalities and to analyze how homicides differ from feminicides according to victims’ sociodemographic characteristics and the means by which the crimes are committed.
Frías, Sonia M. 2023. “Femicide and Feminicide in Mexico: Patterns and Trends in Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Regions.” Feminist Criminology 18(1): 3–23.