An epidemic is a rapid, unexpected increase in the number of cases of a disease or other health-related conditions above what is normally expected in a specific community, population, or region.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is any harmful act directed against an individual based on their gender or biological sex, disproportionately affecting women and girls. It includes physical, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse, as well as threats and coercion.
GBV is today's most pervasive humanitarian crisis, affecting 1 in 3 women and girls worldwide and more in emergencies. Anyone can experience it, but deep-rooted inequality means women and girls are disproportionately affected: norms, cultural practices and discriminatory laws limit their education, employment and voice, and crises amplify this, enabling exploitation and abuse.
In 2024, 83,000 women and girls were killed intentionally worldwide; of those, 60% — around 50,000 — were killed at the hands of intimate partners or family members, meaning one woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member almost every ten minutes, an average of 137 every single day. In contrast, just 11% of male killings were perpetrated by intimate partners or family members.
Femicide is the intentional killing of women and girls because they are female. It is the most extreme and lethal form of violence against women, and it sits at the end of a continuum of abuse that includes intimate-partner violence, sexual violence, stalking and coercive control.
In the last 12 months alone, 316 million women — 11% of those aged 15 or older — were subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. This is not a problem confined to one country or one culture: women and girls are subjected to this extreme violence in every region of the world.
60% of women killed worldwide die at the hands of intimate partners or family members, compared with just 11% of men. So when a woman is killed, it is more than half the time by someone she was intimate with or related to — while a man is far more likely to be killed by a stranger or in the context of crime or conflict.
If violence were gender-neutral, these figures would be similar; they are not, and the gap is roughly 5 times higher for women. That is the evidence that women are being killed because they are women — which is precisely what makes these deaths femicide.
An epidemic is not random events — it is harm that spreads through a population, is enabled by systems, and demands a structural response. Male violence against women meets every test. It is pervasive, perpetrated systematically by one gender, and consistently under-reported and under-prosecuted: only 1.9% of recorded UK rapes led to charges in 2022, and 5 in 6 women never report.
Globally, the vast majority of femicides are committed by men, and most by men the victim knew intimately — a pattern that holds in every region of the world. In the UK, 6 in 7 rapes are committed by someone the survivor knows, 1 in 2 by a partner or ex-partner, and 98% of adults prosecuted for sexual offence's are male. Across countries,
Globally, the vast majority of femicides are committed by men, and most by men the victim knew intimately — a pattern that holds in every region of the world. In the UK, 6 in 7 rapes are committed by someone the survivor knows, 1 in 2 by a partner or ex-partner, and 98% of adults prosecuted for sexual offence's are male. Across countries, the same picture emerges: violence against women is overwhelmingly committed by men, most often men the victim knows.
Naming this as a male violence epidemic is not about blame — it is about clarity. We cannot prevent what we refuse to name. Change starts with consent education that teaches respect from an early age, laws that are strong enough and actually enforced, and systems that step in early, because femicides rarely happen without warning signs. I
Naming this as a male violence epidemic is not about blame — it is about clarity. We cannot prevent what we refuse to name. Change starts with consent education that teaches respect from an early age, laws that are strong enough and actually enforced, and systems that step in early, because femicides rarely happen without warning signs. It means holding the platforms that host and spread abuse accountable, and it means refusing to accept this as an inevitable part of life. An epidemic can be stopped — but only when we stop treating it as normal, name its source, and act.
Sources
The information on this page is drawn from leading global studies and reports, including data from the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women, & UNODC
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