Tracking Femicide in America
The government doesn't have any data on femicide, so this nurse and former victim of domestic violence tracked 1,800 cases herself.
Woman take matters into their own hands in global femicide crisis
Women are just killed merely because they're women, because of who they are. In 2018, at least 1,800 American women and girls were reportedly killed by a man because of their gender, according to Dawn Wilcox's data. She has compiled on those femicides during her spare time. She has experienced domestic violence herself in her 20s. Dawn Wilcox adds more names to her list every day. Sometimes as many as 50.
“I'm just a nurse who decided I wanted to answer a question and I felt like this mattered. And I felt like these women were not just numbers on a page. If you look at my spreadsheet, they've faces and names. And I wanted an answer to really "how many women?" I knew I was just seeing a lot, but I just felt like we get that information in a very fragmented way. You know, here's one. Here's two. Here's five. She shares details about their lives and deaths in a spreadsheet publicly available on her website Women Count USA. I think that the data shows that, you know, from probably like 20s to 30s, 40s, those kinds of reproductive years, those women are overrepresented, represented and also women of color are very much disproportionately represented on in my data. So this is an issue that in our country affects black women at a much higher rate, not just the femicide, but violence against women in general, domestic violence,” Dawn Wilcox tells Brut.
Wilcox has spent much of the past two years scouring online news stories and social media for reports on women and girls killed by men in the US. She compiles their names in a publicly available spreadsheet and shares details about their lives and deaths with nearly 6,000 people on the Women Count USA Facebook page. The federal government tracks domestic violence killings but doesn’t specifically compile data on femicide.
Brut.
Woman take matters into their own hands in global femicide crisis
Women are just killed merely because they're women, because of who they are. In 2018, at least 1,800 American women and girls were reportedly killed by a man because of their gender, according to Dawn Wilcox's data. She has compiled on those femicides during her spare time. She has experienced domestic violence herself in her 20s. Dawn Wilcox adds more names to her list every day. Sometimes as many as 50.
“I'm just a nurse who decided I wanted to answer a question and I felt like this mattered. And I felt like these women were not just numbers on a page. If you look at my spreadsheet, they've faces and names. And I wanted an answer to really "how many women?" I knew I was just seeing a lot, but I just felt like we get that information in a very fragmented way. You know, here's one. Here's two. Here's five. She shares details about their lives and deaths in a spreadsheet publicly available on her website Women Count USA. I think that the data shows that, you know, from probably like 20s to 30s, 40s, those kinds of reproductive years, those women are overrepresented, represented and also women of color are very much disproportionately represented on in my data. So this is an issue that in our country affects black women at a much higher rate, not just the femicide, but violence against women in general, domestic violence,” Dawn Wilcox tells Brut.
Wilcox has spent much of the past two years scouring online news stories and social media for reports on women and girls killed by men in the US. She compiles their names in a publicly available spreadsheet and shares details about their lives and deaths with nearly 6,000 people on the Women Count USA Facebook page. The federal government tracks domestic violence killings but doesn’t specifically compile data on femicide.
Brut.