Why not femi(ni)cide?: The Cultural Politics of Naming Gender-Based Killing of Women in the US

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4: Investigating Cultural Ideas

Abstract

In this paper I analyze the failure of U.S. feminists to popularize the term “femicide” among feminists, and to make femicide–the killing of women because they are women–recognized as a social problem and as a crime. While the term "femicide" gained traction in Mexico, particularly in response to the killings of women in Juárez, it has been largely overlooked in the U.S. This paper examines why femicide, though initially coined in the U.S., failed to resonate culturally in American feminist discourse, and contrasts this failure with the term’s successful adoption in Mexico.

Author

• Carla D Escobar-Ortiz, Yale University