Femicide: Evolving definitions only make proactive prevention harder, says expert

SHAH ALAM - With the widespread violence that females experience, femicide needs a proper definition to draw attention to the cases, create solidarity to address the serious crime and urge governments to legislate against the murders as well as to sentence perpetrators fittingly.

According to Dawson and Carrigan (2020), the definition of what constitutes femicide continuously evolved as scholars and law enforcement agencies attempted to categorise this form of murder.

Generally, regardless of gender and relationship to the killer, the Malaysian Penal Code classified all murders as either murder, culpable homicide, death due to negligence or infanticide in the Malaysian Penal code which focused on the action itself and not the victim.

Many femicide indicators were similar across countries such as when victims were killed by intimate partners, when perpetrators tried to re-establish relationships, when children were present, or when the victims were pregnant.

University of Science Malaysia psychologist and criminologist (Forensic Science Programme, School of Health Sciences) Associate Professor Dr Geshina Ayu Mat Saat shared that elderly women and young girls were physically more vulnerable, subsequently placing them at an increased risk of femicide.

She said these acts typically occurred in familial contexts that fell under intimate or familial femicide or in sexual violence cases that fell into the form of sexual femicide.

Aside from that, minorities and immigrants were also more at risk due to discrimination, lack of social support, and greater cultural acceptance of violence against women.

Dr Geshina argued that a more stable definition of femicide was needed in order to draw attention to the widespread violence that females experienced.

There was also a need to bring people together to address femicide as a serious crime, urge governments to legislate against the murder of females and ensure that perpetrators were sentenced appropriately.

The gender, age, and relationship of the victim to the murderer should not be the deciding factor in allowing the murder to occur in the first place, nor in deliberating appropriate punishment.

Nonetheless, she believed it was essential to collect victim-specific information to pinpoint vulnerabilities, risks and markers that increased the recognition of such killings as gender-related.

Dr Geshina said the murders of women could happened due to several factors such as emotion-based (for example: rage, revenge, passion, fear, shame, pleasure), material gain (for example: wealth, status, contract, debt repayment, dowry), self-defence (protection of self and others), ritual (for example: religion, cult, gang-related), psychopathy-related (for example: pleasure, torture, compulsion, obsession), during the commission of a crime (for example: abuse, kidnapping, robbery, snatch theft, human trafficking, etc), and even failure of expectations (for example having a daughter instead of a son, failed ransom demand, honour killing, perceived cultural demands).

The real question was whether these motives - combined or stand-alone - could be categorised as femicide.

“There is also the issue of the murder’s modus operandi and victim-perpetrator relationships, which create other classifications.

“The element of ‘intent’ is problematic because of two reasons. It excludes acts resulting from repeated domestic violence that may unintentionally cause death, and it excludes death by negligence, abandonment, or torture,” she told Sinar Daily.

She said that using the term ‘females’ instead of women, and ‘males’ instead of men, acknowledged the fact that females were killed (and continue to be killed) for gender-related reasons at any point in their lifespan.

The definition did not depend on the ‘intent’ behind the murderous action, which was deliberated in most legislation on murder, but led to an overestimation of femicide cases, said Dr Geshina.

Circumstances surrounding the female victim, she said, preceded her to be murdered rather than because of her gender.

“Femicide reinforces cultural norms that dictate what it means to be a female in a given culture or family. This includes concepts and behaviours representing subordination, femininity, and fragility.

“To understand why femicide occurs, it is vital to get to the root of the problem which underlies how people develop such perceptions and norms in the first place, and how perpetrators might use such cultural or familial references when deciding to kill females,” she said.

These, of course, include ideas of male dominance, bias, rights, and disregard for a female’s life where such beliefs made perpetrators feel that they had authoritative control over victims’ lives or bodies, including punishing or killing to maintain social order.

“There are also psychological and criminogenic factors to consider. Not every male will view females as dictated by cultural or familial norms. Nor will every male decide to kill females for perceived wrongs,” she said.

Dr Geshina used perpetrator characteristics as an example and stated that the information could offer insight into who was more likely to commit femicides such as people who were involved in prostitution or human trafficking, since women were viewed as properties or objects.

The Home Ministry reported seven intimate femicide cases in the country in 2019, compared to 2020 and 2021, where 10 cases were reported for both years respectively.

The majority of these cases took place in Selangor, but the geographical location was considered secondary when it came to perpetrator motives.

Dr Geshina said that past research and official records tended to focus on observable sociodemographic factors like age, location, and ethnicity only because these are easy to see and classify. However, criminal action was more complex than that.

“Statistics alone are inconclusive. Are there more females in Selangor? If yes, this already predisposes that femicide is more likely to occur in that state,” she explained.

As femicide was at the end of the spectrum of violence experienced by women, it highlighted the danger of what abuse and violence could escalate to.

Therefore, focusing on trends of femicide alone was not helpful as the victims have already succumbed to their injuries.

What really matters is proactive prevention, which means the authorities in question must stop all opportunities and circumstances for abuse and violence even before they happen and not wait until the crime has occurred.

This requires a combination of efforts on all levels of society. Dr Geshina highlighted that there must first be a consistent and not shifting political will to prevent femicide.

“There must be an increased inclusion of women in decision-making positions across all ministries so that legislations for things such as anti-sexual harassment (bill) will be passed and gazetted more smoothly.

“Besides that, self-awareness, re-education of gender roles and issues at all levels, measurable efforts to address victim-blaming, stigmatisation, and labelling of vulnerable and at-risk groups also play a significant role in the enforcement of anti-femicide,” she added.

Prevention of femicide begins with the individual and everyone has a role to play in changing cultural and societal norms surrounding femicide, Dr Geshina said.