Measuring Femicide Empirically. Theoretical Challenges and Methodological Dilemmas

The term femicide features prominently in the media lexicon and common parlance, with nuances that often depart from its original conceptualization as formulated by the feminist sociologist Diana E. H. Russell in the second half of the 1970s. Despite this wide use of the term, much remains to be done in developing an operational definition of the concept whereby femicide can be more accurately gauged from the many available datasets, starting with a quantification of its extent. This paper assesses the potential and limitations of the operational definitions of femicide that have been proposed to date in Italy and internationally, in the light of current data. In doing so, we will rely heavily—though not exclusively—on new data concerning Italy which have never before been used for this purpose.