Home is the most dangerous place for a woman
According to a study on femicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, 50,000 women died at the hands of their intimate partners or family members in 2024.
“The home remains a dangerous and sometimes lethal place for too many women and girls around the world,” says John Brandolino, acting executive director of UNODC. This number accounted for 60 percent of the recorded 83,000 women who were killed intentionally last year.
As it turns out, while some of the women in our lives equip themselves with pepper spray and regularly share their location with trusted friends and family, the most dangerous place isn’t that alley she has to walk through at night.
The most dangerous place is actually at home, where she should feel safest in the first place.
United Nations: “A woman is killed every 10 minutes”
Femicide, according to the United Nations, is “driven by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes or harmful social norms.” It’s differentiated from homicide, where the motivation isn’t necessarily gender-based.
In that same UN study, while men accounted for 80 percent of all homicide victims in 2024, 60 percent of femicides were family- or intimate partner-related. Meanwhile, only 11 percent of male homicides occurred within the family.
Asia recorded 17,400 femicide victims in 2024, becoming the second highest region just behind Africa with 22,600.
“Femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behavior, threats, and harassment, including online,” says Sarah Hendriks, director of UN Women’s Policy Division.
In short, these violent acts don’t occur on a case-by-case basis—instead, a result of a deficiency in education and policy, which places women and their needs under men.
Violence against women in the Philippines
A 2022 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reveals that 17.5 percent of Filipino women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical, sexual, and emotional violence from their intimate partners.
According to the Philippine Commission on Women, this is encouraged by several behaviors and beliefs that continue to persist in our culture.
Case in point: Divorce in the Philippines is yet to be passed, making the country (still) the only country in the world without divorce, excluding the Vatican. Women aren’t only trapped in loveless marriages but also kept powerless in cases where any form of abuse is present. Divorce naysayers may argue that passing such a law would ruin the sanctity of marriage and ruin families.
But if we’re keeping it real, the sanctity of marriage and family was already ruined the moment the man laid a hand on the woman to begin with.
