Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 November 2020
It gives me no pleasure to speak in the debate. However, it is important that we speak.
Last year, the international day for the elimination of violence against women was marked in a debate that was secured by Rona Mackay, and it is an honour to follow her today. I welcome the Government’s motion, which reaffirms its support for “Equally Safe”, which is Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls. I am also proud to support both the Labour and Conservative amendments.
Last year, I began by pointing out that the term “gender-based violence” is euphemistic and, in my opinion, potentially misleading. I make no apologies for restating that we should call it what it is: male violence against women. We should do that no matter how squeamish it makes some men feel.
I also highlighted the global scale of the violence. There are 87,000 deaths a year, and I am very sorry that we have to acknowledge that the situation has become worse because of the circumstances of the pandemic. I welcome the measures that have been taken by the Government to tackle domestic abuse and violence during the pandemic, and I join in with the praise for organisations that are supporting women at this time.
In the short time that I have in which to speak, I want to draw attention to the fifth UK “Femicide Census”—as other members have. The census was published yesterday. As others have said, it is an analysis of the 1,425 killings of women by men during the past decade. It breaks down the backgrounds and characteristics of all victims and perpetrators, including the latter’s past offences, use of pornography and history of abuse as well as the official response in each case.
The census found that the number of women killed by men has stayed distressingly consistent during the past decade, at between 124 and 168 women per year in the UK. No other protected group is killed at that rate or on that scale. Therefore, it is surely time that we acknowledge it for what it is: a hate crime.
Many of those deaths were preventable. In more than half of the cases, the brutality amounted to what we call “overkilling”, which is defined as the use of
“excessive, gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to cause the victim’s death.”
If anyone could stomach reading the articles that followed the death of Peter Sutcliffe recently, they will know that overkilling was a feature of his misogynist crimes. However, how many of us know that 56 per cent of female murder victims experience Yorkshire ripper levels of excessive violence at the hands of men—not notorious mass murderers, but ordinary men who hate women?
The census shows that the perpetrators were not only intimate partners but were sons, stepsons and grandsons. In 13 per cent of cases in which the victim was aged over 66, the killer was a male robber or burglar. Those who meticulously compiled the census included many different circumstances in which men kill women, because—as they pointed out—the revelations about common causes, methods and misogyny are the same. In a statement, the femicide census founders said:
“This report gives the lie to the standard press releases that these killings of women are ‘tragic, unpredictable, isolated incidents’ which ‘give no cause for wider public concern’”.
The term “femicide” was first defined by the feminist Diana Russell in the 1970s as the misogynist killing of women by men. In December 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on femicide. It urged member states to undertake a range of measures to address the killing of women and girls, including the enhancement of data collection and analysis.
The UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women cited the UK’s “Femicide Census” to the UN General Assembly in her 2016 report as
“a laudable example of best practice in this regard”,
and she recommended that states
“collect and publish data on femicide and on other forms of violence against women.”
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comment that the Scottish Government is undertaking work on data to identify those women who are most at risk. I recommend that the unit looking into that should follow the rapporteur’s advice and should consult the UK “Femicide Census” and its authors as part of that work.