What can we learn from understanding the characteristics, circumstances, and patterns of women killed by men and the men who kill them?

Abstract

This thesis explores what can be learned from a connected analysis of men’s fatal violence against women, that is, looking at all instances regardless of the relationship between victim and perpetrator, to understand the characteristics, circumstances and patterns of women killed by men and the men who kill them. Sex differences, both between victims and perpetrators, are hidden in official data and policy responses to fatal violence and historically were overlooked in criminology. This thesis seeks to make the case for keeping sex differences at the forefront, rejecting siloed approaches which overplay the distinctions and overlook the commonalities between sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution, and for reinstating the concept of patriarchy as central to feminist scholarship whilst bringing together the too often separated approaches of feminist activism, service provision and academia.
A mixed method approach was used wherein quantitative analysis of data regarding UK women killed by men in between 2012 and 2014 (446 women), with an additional purposive sample of women who had been killed by strangers between 2015 and 2017 (63 women) and women who had been involved in prostitution and killed between 2009 and 2011 and 2015 and 2017 (16 women, of whom ten were also in the purposive sample of women who had been killed by strangers, therefore an additional 6 women), was enhanced by case histories ensuring that women’s realities remained the focal point of the research and adding depth.
The research found that ignoring sex in analysis of homicide means ignoring the specificities of femicide. The thesis offers both a new definition of femicide and a new model of men’s violence against women, incorporating individual, situations/relational, institutional, structural, and cultural contributors recognising intersecting inequalities to contextualise men’s violence against women within patriarchal societies.