One woman a week is murdered in Australia, but there has been little to no progress on reducing this grim statistic. In the wake of the Women’s Safety Summit, it is clear a multi-pronged approach is needed. In today’s analysis, Brenda Gonzales of the Data Feminism Network (@DataFemNetwork) provides an example of how a private citizen in Mexico initiated policy change to make women safer through contextualised data collection of feminicides.

Gendered violence and femicide

While gendered violence is a worldwide phenomenon, the way data is collected can make it difficult to identify and even more complicated to eradicate. Globally, women, trans women, girls and nonbinary people continue to risk their lives both by leaving the house and by returning home. For example, in Australia, at least one woman is murdered every week, and last year 55 women died violently. The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability reported 160 women died violently in 2020. Moreover, in both Canada and Australia, Indigenous women, girls and two spirit folks are murdered at disproportionately higher rates than other women, an issue often neglected by the media.

Femicide is the intentional murder of women (including trans or non-binary people) which is motivated at least in part by their gender. Here, we highlight the situation in Mexico regarding femicides, which provides an example of how certain data collection practices can make gender violence more visible and lead to policy reform.

Mexico’s story

Gender-sensitive data collection in Mexico is leading to policy change that is keeping women safer. Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

Mexico has suffered tragically high levels of violence with 1,841,189 crimes reported in 2020 and 1,180,328 up to July 2021. When murders of women started to increase, many people diminished or disregarded the situation, arguing that more men are murdered or attributing the situation to organized crime and general insecurity. The murders of women, however, were different. More and more often, women were murdered by their romantic partners or family members, and the bodies showed signs of sexual violence and/or were displayed in public spaces.

In spite of the general sentiment around femicides, a few women knew that these incidents were not solely due to crime and insecurity, but something more insidious. Human rights activist Maria Salguero filled the data gap caused by government inaction, documenting these homicides of women with special consideration of the context in which they occurred. In an interview conducted by Brenda Gonzales from Data Feminism Network, Maria expresses how an analysis of the context of each incident helps to provide better information and to halt victim-blaming.

Salguero started documenting femicides around Mexico with her own resources in 2016. [Editor’s note: There is a similar initiative to document femicides in Australia.] When asked what were the failures of public institutions that drove her to record the data herself, she emphasized the lack of information on how and why these incidents happened. In an article with El Universal (a well renowned Mexican newspaper), Salguero talks about how public institutions hide the real numbers of femicides, diminishing the gravity of the situation. She also acknowledges that while not all homicides of women are femicides, it is important to always consider gender when trying to understand the cause of the incident.

Important policy changes combined with practical local action

One of the first milestones in making femicides visible in Mexico was its inclusion in the Mexican penal code. Despite being on the rise since at least 2007, femicides were only included in the Mexican penal code in 2012. The Mexican penal code differentiates femicides from homicides when there are signs that gender dynamics were involved in the motive. This is evident if a victim of homicide shows signs of sexual violence, mutilation, and/or there was a friendly, familiar or romantic relationship between the victim and the perpetrator [editor’s note: These distinctions are still being debated in the Australian context]. Establishing that framework to differentiate femicides and homicides was crucial for two main reasons: first, because it gives data collectors clear criteria to identify femicides; and secondly, it revealed how many femicides were (and continue to be) misclassified as homicides. For example, in 2017, the Mexican state of Baja California recorded 2 femicides, even though the UN reported 337 women died violently that year. Moreover, only 554 femicides were recorded out of the 1,751 women and girls that were victims of homicide up to November of 2018 nationwide.

To tackle gender inequity and violence, the Mexican government introduced a new policy: the State of Emergency on Gender Violence Against Women (Alerta de Violencia de Género contra la Mujer in Spanish, AVGM) as part of the newly established General Law of Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence in 2007. The first AVGM was declared in 2015 and 20 others have followed with the last one declared in June 2021 in Baja California, a state that originally denied declaring the AVGM in 2016. This policy not only aims to make a specific geographic area safer for women, but it also promises to train government officials with an intersectional perspective to make data collection on femicides more accurate. While these are the main nationwide strategies addressing femicide, Salguero states that it has been insufficient to truly address the issue due to a lack of proper implementation; however, local government efforts have been more effective. Nevertheless, the AVGM is a unique strategy in addressing gender violence from the education and training of government officials to the implementation of safety protocols. This strategy can create a roadmap for other nations for addressing gender violence.

In Mexico, up until June of 2021, out of 1,899 women who were victims of homicide 508 were classified as femicides, averaging more than 10 homicides of women every day. In spite of significant efforts from policymakers and feminist activists like María Salguero, femicides continue to increase and to be misclassified. The situation in Mexico demonstrates that understanding how gender violence operates in different scenarios can help to identify effective responses. Some local governments, guided by the work of people like Salguero, have implemented strategies that work within their context of high levels of insecurity, including immediate response teams, justice centres and a wearable emergency call button.

In other contexts, collecting accurate, representative and contextualised data can help policymakers understand why and how gender violence operates differently when it is intersected with other vulnerabilities. For example, in places like Canada and Australia it can help clarify how gender violence differentiates for Indigenous women, girls and two spirit folks than for other women. These data collection practices, such as Salguero’s work, highlight the factors that put women, trans women, and non binary people in more vulnerable situations. In the case of Mexico, looking at the data with a feminist and intersectional perspective uncovered a major women’s rights issue and has put pressure on public authorities and international agencies to address the issue as an urgent matter of gender inequity.

At Data Feminism Network, we work to mobilize equitable and gender-sensitive data systems by equipping advocates with research and providing data scientists and decision-makers with the tools to identify and address their own biases. By promoting lessons from activists such as Maria Salgeruo, our goal is to advocate for the importance of data collection through a feminist lens. Join our movement in building a society where the safety and wellbeing of all genders are equitably protected.

This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.

Posted by @SusanMaury

Data collection, femicides and policy change: Lessons from Mexico