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Home is the most dangerous place for women, says global femicide report

www.theguardian.com Home is the most dangerous place for women, says global femicide report

Of the 85,000 women killed by men in 2023, 60% died at the hands of a partner or family member, new UN figures show

Home is the most dangerous place for women, says global femicide report

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.

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  • The leasing non-disease causes for death in women are:

    1. Falling (primarily elderly women)
    2. Unintentional poisoning (primarily middle aged women)
    3. Car accidents (primarily younger women)
    4. Suicide
    5. Homicide at 5th place

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5683079/

    And thats ignoring, of course, all the actual leading causes of death which are various diseases, primarily heart diseases of course, and COVID.

    Mind you that still does indicate that home is where most people die, but it's not homicide you should be worried about.

    It's your stairs and... garden, I guess? I have no idea why unintentional poisoning is so high, does food poisoning count? It must. (Edit: drug overdoses, whoops)

    So I guess what ladies should really be wary of is their stairs, ladders, and those leftovers that you're not sure about from the weekend.

    Just as an example, for every 1 homicide victims in women aged 20-39, there were (in the same group):

    • 4.5 unintentional poisoning deaths (drug overdoses)
    • 2.7 traffic accident deaths
    • 2.1 suicides

    And among women aged 70+ years, there were no homicides in the data, but over 60% of injury related deaths were caused by falling. Just... Falling. Not homicide, just "mum had a fall yesterday and had to see the doctor"

    I suppose that really drives home how important building codes are and stuff like life alert, for old folks...

    If you account for the actual leading causes of death though, where you really outta be wary of are fast food chains, public transit, and low ventilation workspaces with sneezy coworkers. That's what'll actually be most likely to kill you...

    I guess with skip the dishes being a thing though, that's still home being the most "dangerous" place anyways, /shrug

    • This is ignoring the fact that not every women who is a victim of intimate partners violence is murdered by that intimate partner. Those who die are a very small minority of those who suffer. Women absolutely have to be concerned about being physically or sexually harmed by intimate partners. It is so common that we have to for our own survival.

      • No one said that doesnt happen.

        But the article is trying to frame homicide at home as the leading danger to women. It's pretty demonstratebly not, it's a small minority of causes for injury and death amongst women.

        Accidents are substantially more common as a source of danger for women, by an enormous margin, both in lethal and non lethal cases.

        Literally anyone who has ever worked in an ER can attest to the fact that the vast vast majority of injuries are accident related.

        Women should be a fuck tonne more concerned about the shitty products ordered from China that can genuinely kill them (lithium batteries, tools, healthy and beauty products, electronics, etc), as well as practicing proper safety precautions when doing tasks (PPE, having a spotter, avoiding lifting too much weight, etc).

        That shit is enormously more dangerous than domestic violence, in terms of pure statistics, by an enormous margin.

        • This is just entirely ignorant of how prolific domestic violence against women is. There are communities of women where the victimization rate is over 60%.

          This is not a conversation about cause of mortality. The purpose of highlighting the ways women are abused and murdered by intimate partners is to examine how widespread the issue of violence against women is.

          Domestic violence is, statistically, something the majority of women will face at some point in their life. We are telling you that broadly speaking, the entire class of women is suffering the effects of chronic victimization by intimate partners, and you will do absolutely anything to avoid addressing it for what it is.

          • There are communities of women where the victimization rate is over 60%.

            I'm going to need to see some sources on that, that sounds incredibly high.

            • Have a read at my other comment in the thread then. I provide several links covering this exact thing.

              Honestly, the fact that this is surprising to you is kind of incredible. Most of the women I know have been victims of domestic violence. Including family members.

              • Ah I see, right so the key in your date is it's historical.

                It's not a 60% victimization rate in discrete circumstances. It's a victimization rate hysterically.

                Which is critical because there's an enormous difference between "60% of women are being victimized actively" vs "60% 9f women are reporting having been victimized at some point historically"

                The difference is such:

                Let's do the usual poisoned m&ms in a bowl analogy.

                If 1% of m&ms are poisoned, but you grab 100 m&ms and eat them, your odds of getting poisoned are waaay higher than 1%, it's now 63%!

                So on a discrete measure of "what percent of women are actively living in a victimizing situation right now" it will be fairly low, I don't know if we have that data.

                But a woman moves through numerous situations in her life. She likely lives with many people, goes to many jobs, interacts with many strangers.

                So while one discrete dice roll can have extremely low odds of a bad outcome, naturally living life inherently means you will roll that dice hundreds of times.

                Inversely, when talking about "are women currently safe in their homes?" That's a discrete statistic, not historical.

                It's like comparing eating a handful of the m&ms vs eating only 1 m&m, the numbers are wildly different and if you try and present one as the other, you will come across as disingenuous.

                When discussing mortality rates, that's a discrete event, moat people typically only die once.

                You either are, or are not, dead.

                So when discussing whats most likely to kill you, you look at the discrete numbers and it's objectively fact that the discrete odds of being murdered are incredibly low compared to dying pretty much any other way.

                While bring harassed historically is high, the odds a woman's current living situation right now is one of violence is much lower than 60%

                Because if it was 60%, then the odds of being historically a victim of any type of violence would be pretty much 100%.

                But the fact that number is 60% means the discrete number is, eyeballing it with rough numbers, going to be in the single digits.

                • Are you under the impression that once your boyfriend is done assaulting you, you go back to normal? Or that after your husband beats you and threatens to kill you, that you resume normal life afterwards? Or that when you are sexually harassed by adult male family members as a teenager, once it's over you're able to continue growing into an adult without any impact on you? No, you don't. Being a victim of intimate partner violence is not something that ends once the specific act is done. Many women suffer the effects of it for their entire lives. An abusive relationship can also last decades. Most abusive relationships are long term ones. It is very difficult to leave an abuser, even moreso if that person is a member of your family.

                  This is far and away the most deranged response I have ever seen. Rambling, completely incoherent and entirely unrelated to the subject matter?

                  These studies are self reported as well. They're not account for violence against children under the age of 15, and by nature, they come in under the actual figures. The reality is that women as a class suffer chronic victimization of male violence. The overwhelming majority of women have experienced gender based violence at some point in their lives.

                  • completely incoherent Just because you dont understand the difference between discrete statistics vs historical doesnt mean its incoherent.

                    Understanding the difference between "whats the chance I get poisoned if I eat one M&M from the bowl" vs "whats the chance I get poisoned if I eat an entire handful" is something you should've learned in high school.

                    Representing one of those odds as the other is disingenuous, and will not win people over to your side, because people can usually intuitively tell the difference usually and go "that doesnt seem right..."

                    Which, in turn, is why shit like trump getting elected happens. The pattern of vastly over-inflating numbers to make shitty clickbait when the original meaningful numbers were already a big enough deal anyways has heavily polarized the landscape.

                    As long as people keep doing stupid shit like that, it's going to do the exact opposite of what you want. Instead of drawing people to any good causes it pushes them away, because they then just assume its all bullshit.

                    If you don't understand the vast difference between a discussion on discrete statistical odds vs cumulative odds, you probably shouldn't be trying to weigh in because all you are doing is just muddying the waters with bad numbers that aren't actually relevant to the core of the discussion, which just pisses people off and makes them turtle up more.

                    I get where you are coming from, but you just need to wrap your head around the fact the numbers you brought up have no bearing on anything I was talking about, they arent necessarily wrong, but they're just not relevant to what I was discussing, so it just came across as rude or uninformed at best, disingenuous at worst.

                    • No, I know what you're saying about discrete numbers and historical ones. I never once tried to represent anything as a discrete number, by nature of the subject matter this conversation cannot be about discrete numbers because again BEING A VICTIM DOES NOT STOP WHEN INDIVIDUAL ACTS OF ABUSE ARE NO LONGER OCCURRING.

                      What is incoherent is someone being like "here's factual data showing 60% of women have been sexually assaulted" and your response is "okay but 60% of women are not ACTIVELY being sexually assaulted". I can understand why the specific phrase "victimization rate" could come off as confusing? But even in the context of discrete vs historical there are some figures supporting a discrete interpretation of this. Like from previous figures I've given 61% of women reporting unwanted sexual behaviors by men between the ages of 15 and 24. That would indicate that yes at present somewhere around 60% of women in that age demographic have recently experienced gender based sexual violence.

                      This is also not about winning anyone over to a cause. This is a statement of fact, the extent to which women are abused by men. To the point that the majority of women are victims of gender based violence from men.

                      You entirely skipped over the first part of my last message as well. A discrete number would be entirely unhelpful in assessing the extent to which women are being victimized by men because women are not all being victimized at the same time and women do not stop being victims once they aren't being actively victimized.

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