Black women in the United States of America face a femicide crisis that is structural, persistent, and measurable.
Femicide Indicators
The risk of femicide increases for Black women in America based on the concentration of structural racism where they reside.
Firearms kill Black women at rates no other weapon approaches. Nearly three out of four Black female femicide victims die by gunshot. That proportion has climbed 47% since 2011. Guns do not cause femicide. But they determine who survives it.
Black women are most often killed by someone they love, trust, or share a home with. Nine out of ten victims knew their killer.
Coercive control is a sustained campaign of domination — not a single incident, not a difficult relationship, not ordinary conflict. It is one person’s systematic removal of another person’s autonomy, identity, and freedom. It happens in intimate partnerships, in families, in workplaces, and within institutions. It leaves no bruises. And until recently, the law had no name for it. This…