Some argue that if you call a murder “femicide” it means that “you don’t consider women human and that you are going back to the days of ‘I have two boys and a girl'”.

“femicide” is an international term adopted by the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Union.

First of all, it should be noted that not every murder, every murder of a woman is defined as “feminicide”. The term “femicide” means killing a woman because she is a woman, a partner, maybe a wife, mother or daughter. We will not have “femicide” if someone invades, for example. in a bank, in a department store and commit an armed robbery involving women. Even if someone kills a woman over property disputes.

In most cases, “femicide” is perpetrated by a partner or ex-partner who habitually engaged in abusive behavior, threatened, abused and/or intimidated the woman, who is very often in a state of physical and/or financial weakness towards him.

“Femicides”, like killing women for being women, should not be hidden behind the mask of “crimes of passion” or “honor crimes”. It’s a subset, or so to speak, a subset of homicide, just like racist or homophobic crimes, domestic violence crimes are a subset.

The legal qualification in the legislative order of the crime “feminicide” as a premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances or as a separate crime will also play a social role.

I should add here that “crime of honor” may not be used anymore, but we often hear or read “family tragedy” for cases where the father of a family kills his wife and children. A “family tragedy” is the loss of a wife or child as a result of an accident, illness, and not because some other family member decided to “get rid of” her, even if he later committed suicide.

Femicide is not only a crime against life, it is a crime against women and the culmination of gender-based violence. Women killed by a man in a family or intimate environment are killed solely because of their gender, explicit or implicit gender relations within the patriarchy, outdated ideas. If we do not name this, then it will not be seen how the possessive conception of women’s life leads to its elimination.

Thus, this is the end and culmination of a spectrum of continuous violence, starting with sexist bullying, sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence, etc. In order to raise awareness of the issue, to take the first step at the level of awareness, it is necessary to include in the criminal charge in such a way that so that it does not lose its real dimension, and also does not lose its depth and legal characterization as a “gender crime”.

In Greece, on the basis of Article 299 of the Criminal Code. intentional homicide is punishable. “Femicide”, that is, the malicious taking of the life of women on the grounds that they are women, is not recognized by the legislature and is not punished more severely. In Europe, Spain and Italy are more sensitive to gender-based violence, with crimes being treated as “gender neutral” (the gender of the victim is not taken into account). Countries such as France and Belgium introduced aggravating circumstances, penalizing cases of femicide more severely.

The legal qualification in the legislative order of the crime “feminicide” as a premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances or as a separate crime will also play a social role. A more severe punishment is important, it is conditioned by the social need and the requirement to “suppress” the phenomenon of violence against women, which has reached enormous proportions.

* Ms. Margarita E. Dakoronia is a lawyer.