Femicide, the murder of girls and women because of their gender, is something that’s happening all around us. Every 11 minutes, a woman is murdered somewhere in the world by a sexual partner, an ex or current spouse or by a family member. She’s murdered just for being a woman.

Femicides concern us because they’re the most extreme form of gender-based violence and they’ll continue to concern us till significant measures are taken in order to acknowledge and eradicate this phenomenon. The establishment of the term “femicide” is the first necessary step, in order to render the phenomenon of gender-based violence more visible, thus contributing to the recognition of this grave issue and also it’ll help raise awareness within society and add pressure so actions are taken towards a solution.

The femicide edition of the Perspectives feature was curated and edited by Angeliki K. Karageorgou.

For this Perspectives feature on femicide, we would like to thank Ioanna Stentoumi, lawyer, Aliki Kosifoglou, researcher and Anastasia Goni-Karabotsou, lawyer and researcher at the Greek division of the European Observatory on Femicide.