English Department Syntax and Communication III Professor: Nelson Hernandez C.

Student: Laura Maroto Granados

Violence against Women Violence against women has received increasing international attention as a public health and human rights concern. However, femicide, one of its extreme manifestations, is still not well understood. While a number of studies have been conducted, mainly in high-resource areas, reliable and globally comparable data on its nature and prevalence remain scarce. Femicide has been addressed in different contexts, including intimate partner violence, stranger violence, rape and other sexual violence, and honour and dowry practices, as well as murders associated with gang activity and political violence. A number of definitions have been proposed by researchers and activists, leading to methodological differences in the collection and interpretation of data. The following distinctions between femicides are also made, based on the relationships between killers and their victims: 1. Intimate-partner femicides, for example: husbands/exhusbands, lovers/sex partners, ex-lovers/sex partners, boyfriends/ exboyfriends. 2. Familial femicides, for example: fathers/stepfathers, brothers/ stepbrothers/half-brothers, uncles/step-uncles, grandfathers/ stepgrandfathers, fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law. 3. Femicides by other known perpetrators, for example: male friends of family, male authority figures (teachers, priests, employers), male coworkers. 4. Stranger femicides: male strangers In addition, a range of methodologies has been used in different contexts to collect data on femicide, including population-based studies; analysis of service records; homicide, police, hospital, court, and mortuary statistics; domestic fatality reviews; verbal autopsies; and review of newspaper articles. Each methodology has advantages and disadvantages with

respect to the ease with which data can be collected, the rigor of the data, and the use of data in advocacy efforts. According to United Nations statistics, million women who should be 60 alive have disappeared as a consequence of gender violence. It is estimated that 5 out of every 7 women will be subjected to some form of aggression by their companions. In Costa Rica, 34% of the women that have been assassinated have died at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends or companions; 6% of them have been killed by former companions; and 26% have been killed by their fathers, cousins or some other family member; the remaining 24% have died at hands of an unknown person. In conclusion, it is widely recognized that the perpetrators of femicide are people who have family links with their victims and mostly of them have a violence background in their relationship history, for that reason is so important to educate the new generations, men and women about healthy relationships; how communicate each other and how recognize the sings of violence like jealousy in the early step of the relationship.

http://www.inamu.go.cr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=1359