The word is seldom used and identifies a problem that is only getting worse.
University of Guelph professor Myrna Dawson is leading research on femicide and says unless we call the problem for what it is — the killing of women and girls for the sole purpose of their gender — it is difficult to find ways to prevent the atrocity.
In 2017, Dawson launched the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, an organization that aims to bring a national focus to the topic of femicide.
She said the context in which women and girls are killed is vastly different from the context in which men and boys are killed although both males and females are primarily killed by men.
“When we don't recognize that fact, our prevention initiatives also don’t recognize that fact. So we need to call it femicide so people understand this type of problem in which women experience different factors leading up to their death than men do,” said Dawson.
Preliminary numbers from the organization show that 92 women and girls were killed in Canada in the first six months of 2021. The deaths were mostly driven by current or former male partners.
“This is up from 78 during the same period in 2020 and 60 in 2019,” said Dawson. “So, an increase of 32 women from 2019.”
A study from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) shows that just in Ontario, 58 women and girls were killed as a result of femicide between Nov. 26, 2020 and Nov. 25, 2021.
Dawson said the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability expects the national number to fluctuate from year to year but the preliminary numbers suggest that the number will be higher at the end of the year.
“Some deaths remain listed as suspicious which often become officially labelled as homicides at a later point,” said Dawson.
“We are still collecting data and finalizing numbers for the latter half of this year but we expect this trend to continue as the fallout of the pandemic continues with no clear end in sight.”
Dawson has been researching the topic for nearly 30 years. She said she hasn’t seen many changes in patterns.
“We see that women in intimate relationships continue to be at high risk, Indigenous women continue to be at high risk. Working women living in rural communities are at higher risk. So we didn't see a lot of changes in the risk groups or in the numbers,” said Dawson.
She describes femicide as the killing of women and girls based on sex or gender related motives.
Dawson explains that women are more likely to have experiences of violent and controlling behavior, instances where they they wanted to leave that resulted in sexual violence in or outside intimate relationships.
“We need to understand that in terms of identifying more nuanced prevention responses,” said Dawson.
She said the term femicide was used for the Montreal massacre in 1989 when women were solely killed for being women, but then the term faded into obscurity.
“Some of the things that we'll look at, to sort of feel encouraged is that Deputy Prime Minister Freeland has actually used the term femicide in several of her addresses and has talked about it most recently when she was talking about the 16 Days of Activism, so that's positive,” said Dawson.
She said the organization has been using the hashtag femicide on social media to encourage people to touch on the specific subject and acknowledge it.
The United Nations marked Nov. 25 to Dec. 10 as a call to acknowledge gender-based violence, calling it 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence.
The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability launched a online campaign that uses the hashtag #RememberMe and shares images of women and girls who were killed in Canada as a result of femicide.
