On average every eight days a woman is killed in the Netherlands. It is a figure that has been cited everywhere since the murder of seventeen -year -old Lisa. But not every woman killed is a victim of femicide – killing women because they are a woman.
The use of different definitions of femicide makes the debate complicated. Does only partner murder count? Is it also femicide if friends or family members commit the murder? Or is every murder of a woman femicide?
Femicide
“I’m just talking about women’s murder,” says Marieke Liem, professor of safety and interventions at the University of Leiden. “That is what we know: the victim is a woman. You can still split it into the perpetrator, but not so easy to motive.”
As a researcher, Liem is ambivalent about the use of the term femicide: “It is a whole catchy Term that ensures that people take action, but as a researcher it is difficult to work with. It is difficult to find out to what extent a gender motif plays in a murder case. And yet – despite being critical – it is a useful term to ask attention to women’s murder. ”
Liem is currently collecting qualitative data about women’s murder in the Dutch femicide monitor. Liem: “If women are killed, it is mainly by men. And especially in the domestic context, so where women feel safe.” The risk of murder by their own (former) partner is much greater for women than for men.
Rare
“It is interesting that the unsafe feeling that many women have is linked to femicide,” says Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, professor of Sociology at VU University Amsterdam. Rosenkrantz Lindegaard has done a lot of research into emergency situations in public spaces. Many women constantly experience forms of intimidation and feel unsafe.
“But,” says Lindegaard, “the men who intimidate women in public space are a very different category of perpetrators than the men who kill their partner.” That tension between the fear of fear that women experience and the risk of becoming a victim of violence makes the discussion extremely complex. “Because the feeling is real.”
The unknown man who pops up from the bushes is a fear of many, fueled again by the murder of Lisa. “These things are rare, they are really very rare,” Liem emphasizes. “But the less the occurrence is less, the attention for an individual matter is greater.”
It is important to continue to emphasize that the risk is small to be killed by a stranger, says Lindegaard. But we must ensure that women are ashamed when they feel fear. “With intimidation you also feel the potential of violence. You feel, if I do something wrong now, it could get out of hand.”
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Murder is decreasing, but just less on women
Trend
The number of victims of murder and manslaughter in the Netherlands follows a falling trend. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported that at the end of August 120 people deliberately were robbed of life in 2024. This is half the number of victim of murder and manslaughter in 1996. Two thirds of the victims are a man. Although the number of murdered women also decreased every year during this period, the biggest decrease can be seen in male victims.
To compare murder figures, it is common to correct for the size of the population: the murder ratio is the number of murders per hundred thousand inhabitants. The Dutch figures on murder and decisive follow two well -known laws, formulated by the Finnish sociologist Veli Verkko. One: Variation in the murder ratio is caused by variation in man-to-man murders. Two: the lower the number of murders, the greater the share of women’s murder. In other words, the number of murders on women remains stable.
Liem also thinks that there is a murder of women’s murder. “Then it concerns cases of murder and manslaughter that are registered as suicide, accident, or with unknown cause of death,” says Liem.
Comparison
In the debate about femicide, sometimes the Netherlands has one of the highest femicid figures in Western Europe. “But this statement is incorrect,” says Liem. “I know from experience that it is extremely difficult to make an international comparison. Apples with pears are often compared.”
Liem participated in the European Homicide Monitor, in which different countries work together with the same definitions and methods. All available information from news items, police investigation and from the OM is compared in this. In this study, the Netherlands is one of the countries in Western Europe with lower murder ratios. In addition, Liem wants to emphasize that the women’s murder ratio in Western Europe is ‘really super layer’ on a global scale.
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