The aim of my paper is to provide an explanation of the surprising fact that a decrease in sexism in liberal democracies has not resulted in a decrease in the number of killings of women (section 1). I argue that making sense of this empirical fact requires a conceptual clarification of femicide, a term whose definition is widely contested both at the juridical and the political level. Starting from the blurriness of the concept, I show that the root-causes of femicide do not lie in the mind of …
Read moreThe aim of my paper is to provide an explanation of the surprising fact that a decrease in sexism in liberal democracies has not resulted in a decrease in the number of killings of women (section 1). I argue that making sense of this empirical fact requires a conceptual clarification of femicide, a term whose definition is widely contested both at the juridical and the political level. Starting from the blurriness of the concept, I show that the root-causes of femicide do not lie in the mind of the perpetrator but in the way socio-economic and political settings are configurated (section 2). Drawing on Kate Manne’s distinction between sexism and misogyny (section 3.1), I argue that femicide is the most extreme form of the latter and does not require necessarily the former. Although analytically distinct, both misogyny and sexism are two necessary conditions for the existence of patriarchy. The specific relation between the three variables explains why a more gender equal society does not produce immediately a less violent society for women (section 3.2). This in turn has a political implication, since it requires governments to disentangle strategies against gender-based violence from gender-equality schemes.
