ABSTRACT
Every second day, on average, a woman or girl is killed in Canada. These women and girls are killed mostly by men. This chapter examines how these deaths are studied with a focus on the research produced by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA), launched in 2017. Consistent and reliable data about the killings of women and girls who were killed because of their sex or gender, known as femicide in the literature, is limited globally. Information about femicide in marginalised and racialised communities is even more lacking. Noting that existing official data-collection instruments are primarily designed to capture information about homicides, which are typically male-on-male instances of violence, the authors argue that femicide has specific gendered characteristics and that understanding these characteristics can help design prevention initiatives. In other words, women and girls remain at risk of femicide due to the lack of high-quality gender-sensitive data-collection tools, including race-based data. Despite the data limitations, CFOJA produces research on femicide drawing from media accounts and publicly available information on femicides, which are often enough to identify and discuss sex-/gender-related motives and indicators (SGRMIs) while continuing to engage in public advocacy about femicide. The chapter presents a snapshot of femicide in Canada and discusses the presence of SGRMIs, concluding that femicide is a public safety and human rights issue concerning all members of society and should be studied accordingly.
