In 2021, an estimated 4,970 women were murdered in the United States. At least one third were killed by an intimate partner. Nearly three women are killed by an intimate partner every single day. 

Yet the United States has no federal definition of femicide and no national system designed to identify and track gender-related killings.

Women who are killed are counted as homicide victims, but the circumstances surrounding their deaths are often lost within broader crime statistics. Without a consistent way to identify femicide, policymakers, researchers, and law enforcement agencies cannot fully understand the patterns, risk factors, and warning signs that precede these deaths.

In 2024, researchers from Emory University and Sacred Heart University published a peer-reviewed call to action in Frontiers in Public Health, identifying urgent policy failures and concrete remedies. We are asking Congress and state legislatures to act on the legal gaps they identified.

Our Demands 

Demand 1 

Define femicide in the U.S. penal code

 The U.S. currently has no separate penal code for gender-related killings. Without a clear legal definition, femicide cannot be consistently identified, charged, or prosecuted as what it is.

We call on Congress to establish a comprehensive legal definition of femicide that aligns with international research and recognizes the various forms it can take, including intimate-partner femicide, family-related femicide, hate-motivated femicide, and other gender-related killings.

Demand 2

Create a National Femicide Surveillance System

Women who are killed are counted as homicide victims, but the circumstances surrounding their deaths are not consistently recorded in ways that allow officials to identify, track, or prevent femicide.

We call on Congress, the Department of Justice, and the FBI to establish a national femicide surveillance system with standardized reporting requirements for all female homicide cases. This system should collect information about victim-offender relationships, prior histories of violence or stalking, indicators of gender-based motivation, and other contextual factors necessary to identify and track femicide.

Without consistent data collection, gender-related killings remain hidden within broader homicide statistics — and patterns that could save lives go undetected.

Why This Matters
We are not asking decision-makers to start from scratch. Researchers, public health experts, advocates, and policymakers have already documented the problem and proposed practical solutions.

What is missing is the political commitment to recognize the killing of women as a distinct and measurable form of violence.

Every woman who is killed deserves to be counted.

Every family deserves answers.

Every policymaker deserves accurate information about who is dying and why.

Sign this petition to demand that Congress define femicide in U.S. law and establish a national system to track it.

If we do not name it, we cannot count it.

And if we do not count it, patterns that could save lives will remain invisible.

Research Basis
Lewis, P.C., Kaslow, N.J., Cheong, Y.F., Evans, D.P., & Yount, K.M. (2024). Femicide in the United States: A Call for Legal Codification and National Surveillance. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1338548.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1338548

This is a sponsored petition. Learn more here.