Femicide — the gender-related killing of women — constitutes the most extreme and lethal form of gender-based violence, which is a crime against humanity. Among almost 85,000 women and girls who were intentionally killed in 2023, 60 percent of them were murdered by intimate partners or other family members and mostly by men.
Femicides can be characterized as active and direct, with defined perpetrators, or passive and indirect, as in deaths resulting from neglect, such as botched abortions and maternal mortality. Femicides can also occur in what is called the “world of work” as defined by the International Labor Organization Convention 190 (ILO C190). It covers but is not limited to work-related trips, commuting and both public and private places, including homes.
This year witnessed femicides in the workplace that shocked the world. The rape and murder of a woman doctor in India; the killing of a Ukrainian woman journalist; the killings of 21 women Palestinian journalists within a year by Israel since the conflict escalated in Gaza; and the discovery of the deaths of three Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers in Oman show how femicides affect women workers both in formal and informal sectors in private and public spheres.
Gender-based violence and harassment that leads to femicides in the world of work are driven by discrimination, gender stereotyping, poor working conditions and other inequities. The heightened vulnerabilities from many intersecting forms of discrimination stemming from age, race, ethnicity, disability, employment, migrant status and gender identity can further compound the scale of violence and femicides.
Femicides affect women workers across different sectors and geographic regions. They occur not only as intentional individual killings but also in mass numbers through deliberate discrimination. The lack of social and legal protections, coupled with the perceived stigma and lack of recognition of their work as “real work” and “valued work” make informal women workers, such as sex workers and domestic workers, particularly vulnerable to femicides.
Migration as well as the exclusion from national labor laws and the impact of exploitation practices such as the kafala system make domestic workers more vulnerable to gender-based violence and femicides. The murders of migrant domestic workers, as documented by the media in Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Hong Kong and elsewhere, from 2019 to 2024, testify to the phenomenon.
Similarly, the lack of legal and social protections worsened by indecent working conditions in global-supply chains driven by companies in the global North pose heightened risks for women workers. The problem is apparent in the targeted killings of young women workers in the “maquiladoras” — the free-trade manufacturing zones in Mexico.
Women in formal sectors, including in influential positions, are not immune to acts of femicide. The victims include politicians, judges, journalists, trade union leaders and human rights defenders. Those who publicly condemn and advocate against gender-based violence or other injustices are also vulnerable to femicides.
According to Unesco, in 2022-2023, the number of female journalists killed reached its highest level since 2017. Two women Supreme Court judges in Afghanistan were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in January 2021. Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, 220 female Afghan judges were forced to go into hiding due to fear of retaliation and death threats from criminals whom they had convicted for crimes against women.
More than 40 percent of women members of national parliaments interviewed by Inter-Parliamentary Union had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction while serving their terms. If unaddressed, these threats can result in femicides.
The wide array of conditions that can lead to femicides point to the need for concerted laws, policies and actions from governments, employers and other relevant parties to address and prevent such violence and harassment. ILO Convention 190, the first international treaty to address violence and harassment in the world of work and adopted in 2019, is a step toward preventing femicides when countries ratify and implement it.
This binding treaty applies to both formal and informal sectors; expands the definition of the workplace; and acknowledges that domestic violence is a workplace issue. The continuum of violence between home and the world of work is evident in data showing that women are more likely to be murdered at work by intimate partners or family members as the perpetrator knows where to find the victim.
As of November 2024, 45 countries have ratified ILO C190, but there have also been successful examples where it can be implemented and integrated into collective bargaining and supply-chain agreements even before its ratification. That is the case of the Dindigul Agreement, which resulted from the rape and femicide of a Dalit garment worker in Tamil Nadu, India.
For countries such as the United States that have not yet ratified the convention, such promising practices offer innovative ways to integrate C190 principles at the local level through ordinances and at the state level by collaborating with both public and private entities.
Although there are promising practices emerging to prevent gender-based violence from spiraling into femicides, a major roadblock is the lack of comparable data on femicides in the public sphere. The statistical framework developed by UNODC and UN Women for measuring the gender-related killing of women and girls offers a helpful tool by acknowledging how femicides can occur within different perpetrator-victim relationships and across both private and public spheres. Yet, much more disaggregated data is needed to include the gender-related killings of women workers.
During the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence, ending on Dec. 10, we call on all countries to adopt stringent measures to institute zero tolerance for femicides in all walks of life. This goal should be marked by a shift from impunity to accountability, with national governments adopting strong policies, such as investing in femicide prevention, repealing of gender-based discriminatory laws and establishing femicide observatories to include femicide in the world of work.
Femicide transcends all sectors, cultures and regions, and women are targeted for exercising their rights and their courage to work. Yet, women still rise up on a daily basis to demand justice and continue to be resilient.
The opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not reflect their institutions.
This is an opinion essay.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the act of femicide at work?
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Ardra Manasi is the Senior Program Coordinator for Gender and Labor at Global Labor Justice (GLJ). Since 2019, her work shas focused on policy advocacy around ILO Convention 190, the first international treaty to address violence and harassment in the world of work.
According to ILO, men experience a significantly higher rate of 108.3 deaths per 100,000 workers compared to women at 48.4 deaths per 100,000 workers in the labour force. I care for womens health and safety but I’m not sure why we should be more concerned for female harm than male harm, it seems like we are more willing to accept institutional harm to males. It would be helpful if this was explained in the article.
The fundamental question is what your denominator means, meaning how many men do we have in the work force and how many women do we have there? This conclusion by ILO seems grosso modo and confusing! Anyway at work place, in mosques, in churches or at community level in general, women are suffering from discrimination, marginalisation, gender based violence, etc…and killings from men!