Gendercide

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Gendercide is a neologism that refers to the systematic killing of members of a specific sex, either males or females.[1] The term is intended to be sex-neutral, but it is mostly used in feminism to refer to female victims (feminicide or femicide) but it has also been used to refer to male victims (viricide).[2]

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[edit] Male victims

The systematic killing of men, viricide, happens sometimes during war to reduce an enemy's potential pool of soldiers; this happened for example in the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurdish men in Iraq and in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosniak men and boys.[citation needed]

[edit] Femicide

Femicide is the systematic killing of women because they are women. Femicide is seen as a gender crime. It is attested from the 1820s.[3]

Feminicide or feminicidio in Spanish, refers to acts of femicide (femicidio) that are state-sponsored.

There have been reports of femicide in Guatemala City, Guatemala and in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The murders in Juarez also known as las muertas de Juárez ("The dead women of Juárez") and Guatemala were reportedly not investigated by the local authorities. Most of the women were raped before being murdered and some were mutilated, tortured and even dismembered. In Guatemala City about 20% of the over 500 women murdered in 2004 and 2005 were killed in pairs, due to an "intimate relationship" according to Claudia Acevedo of Lesbiradas.[citation needed]

There is also concern that femicide of Aboriginal women is taking place in Canada. Five hundred Aboriginal women have been reported missing or murdered since 1980, a disproportionate proportion compared to non-Aboriginal women. According to sociological studies these women are seen as easy targets because their race places them at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. Many of the missing women have been dismissed as prostitutes and their disappearances have gone uninvestigated. A major factor in bringing international attention to Canadian women was the murder of Helen Betty Osborne in 1971.[citation needed]

According to the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces between 113 and 200 million women are missing.[citation needed]

The most widespread form of femicide is in the form of Sex-selective infanticide in cultures with strong preferences for male offspring, notably in the mainland of the People's Republic of China, India, and South Korea. These practices result in demographic imbalance with an excess of males. The demographics of mainland China for example shows 1.13 males/female under 15 years, as opposed to a 'natural' average of 1.05.[citation needed] Sex selection in favour of females appears to be rare or non-existent.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Coined by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection[1]
  2. ^ Jones (1999)
  3. ^ 2006 Random House Unabridged Dictionary

[edit] External links

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