Violence Against Women Beyond the Numbers

International Women's Day, on the one hand, allows us to commemorate the successes of feminist’s movements in social, economic, cultural and political rights over the past decades, but on the other, it tells us that there is still a long way to go. Mexico ranks second regionally in femicide rates, with 898 reported deaths per 100,000 women, according to the United Nations Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean. Compared to other countries in the region, Mexico has a very large disparity, with 255 and 131 femicides for every 100,000 women in countries like Argentina and Peru, respectively.
Statistics show there were 35, 964 homicides in Mexico in 2018, that is, a ratio of 29 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants nationwide, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).  Of the total homicides, 32,141 were male and 3,663 were female. Some of the critiques question why women manifest their disgust, when 89. 3 percent of the murders had men as victims, and women accounted for only 10 percent. Moreover, the majority of the perpetrators of the homicides in Mexico were men, with 85 percent of the murder crimes committed by a man or a group of men, according to the National Survey of Victimization (ENVIPE).
Although numerically the homicides of men exceed that of women, there is a great difference in the causes for which men and women are victims of violence. The large part of the homicide rate of men in Mexico is usually associated with organized crime or drug trafficking conflicts, while female victims are associated with the simple fact of being women, according to the 2018 Mexican Peace Index. That means, while a man may walk in the street and fear that his belongings will be stolen, a woman walking alone in the street is afraid of not only have her belongings stolen but being raped, kidnapped to be sexually treated or disappeared after being raped and tortured.
That is why, if there is a difference in why women are being victims of violence in Mexico and the world, simply because they're women, it is necessary to rally in demand for freedom of violence and security on March 8th.  The rally is a manifestation against the femicide violence, but also against the sexist violence that women experience every day: in the street being harassed, being violated by a sentimental couple, being a victim of wage discrimination in a company and much more.