An estimated 140 women and girls across the world die at the hands of their partner or family member every day, according to new global estimates on femicide by the UN.
The report by UN Women found 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally by men in 2023, with 60% (51,100) of these deaths committed by someone close to the victim. The organisation said its figures showed that, globally, the most dangerous place for a woman to be was in her home, where the majority of women die at the hands of men.
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, said: “What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic sphere’s of women’s lives, where they should be safest, that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence.
How is it dishonest? It’s looking at one specific kind of harm. It just happens men aren’t the highest statistic for this kind of violence. That’s literally all it’s saying. “When it comes to relationship violence, women tend to be victims more often than men.” If this was a report about suicide and they were ignoring men, I would get the issue.
It’s like an article talking about smokers being more likely to get lung cancer. It’s not the only way to get it, but they’re focusing on smokers. We wouldn’t go, “Well they’re ignoring all the miners.” They just happen to not be the focus of that study.
Context is important in statistics, which is why the Mark Twain quote is so popular. An honest article about smoking and cancer is going to say smokers have an 80% higher chance of cancer than non-smokers, showing the relationship between the two groups, not showing how much of a single group falls into a single category.
Focusing on a subset of a subset to get a scary sounding number is a dishonest tactic to get an emotional response rather than a logical one.
The only way they could get this information is to compare it, that’s why they’re focusing on women, they happened to come out in top. If they said “smokers have an 80% higher chance of cancer”, I’m taking it that they compared it to people who don’t smoke, they don’t need to tell me that because I can infer it. If I get a report that says “men are 50% more likely to die in combat” I wouldn’t sit and go, “compared to what? Women? CHILDREN!? Why are they just focusing on men, like women don’t die in combat! They’re just showing scary numbers!” they’re focusing on the group that came out in top and delving into that. I don’t know how you would read the title of the article and be surprised that that is what they are focusing on.
The article isn’t saying X% more likely though. It’s saying X% of women who die by homicide are from domestic violence. That sounds bad, but it gives you no actionable information for what this means for homicide or domestic violence as a whole.
It’s really only a way to spread fear that if a woman is going to be killed, it’s likely from domestic violence.
The final line of the snippet states: “Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, said: “What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic sphere’s of women’s lives, where they should be safest, that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence.” It is not saying that, if women die, it’s likely from DV, nor are they claiming to speak for homicide as a whole. They’re saying that in cases of DV, women are more likely to be the victim. It’s not spreading fear, it’s just awareness. It sounds bad because it is bad. Sometimes that’s just how it is.