Labour will tackle ‘scourge of femicide’ to hit manifesto target, says minister
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Exclusive: Reducing rate of misogynistic killings is key to halving violence against women and girls, says Jess Phillips. Tackling the “scourge of femicide” in the UK will be a central part of the government’s promise to drastically reduce violence against women and girls, the minister leading the policy has said.
Revealing details of one of Labour’s central missions in office for the first time, Jess Phillips said the success of the government’s target to halve violence against women and girls had to include reducing the rate at which women are killed by men.
“A woman is killed by a man every three days. This is not just a statistic, these are real lives that have been taken. These are women with names, families, jobs and people who love them,” she said. “We must tackle the scourge of femicide – which is a fundamental part of our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.”.
The rate of femicide – the misogynistic killing of women and girls by men – is stubbornly high in the UK. According to the Femicide Census, a woman has been killed by a man, on average, once every three days over a 10-year period, with no tangible decline since 2009, the first year the organisation began recording deaths of women.
In 2024, the Guardian’s Killed women count project has recorded the deaths of 50 women, where a man has been charged with murder. “It is a herculean task,” said Phillips. “It’s genuinely a mission like going to the moon, because there is no country in the world that has managed it. It is going to take a lot, but the point of asking for it was to make the government sit up and will it. If you’ve got the will, you will find the means.”.
