N.W.C. Chimes in on Femicide
Thea Garcia-Ramirez
The trauma experienced by the four-year-old survivor and the fact that femicide is an issue that is still not being addressed, are among a number of concerns for Thea Garcia-Ramirez, the President of the National Women’s Commission. She says that enough is not being done to protect our women and girls.
Thea Garcia-Ramirez, President, National Women’s Commission
“A lot of the times what you don’t realise is that for a lot of women, one in three women – so if you know ten women, chances are that three of those women, inside their home is the least safe that they can be. It is inside the home where they are faced with domestic violence with gender based violence and all these killing of women and the disappearance of women is just another phase to gender-based violence. It’s the extreme. My personal opinion, if you are asking Thea Garcia-Ramirez, we are not doing enough. We are not doing enough for our women, we are not doing enough for our girls; we need to do more, we need to do better because one life loss is one life too many. We have to stop sending out press releases. It is disheartening, it is maddening. I mean I am not only disheartened, I am angry that this continues to happen and it seems with impunity because the rates are so low for conviction, the rates are so low for charges being levied. And I don’t mean that as a criticism of the police department, but you have to look at how well they are equipped, we have to look at what resources they are given. We have to look at legislature; the fact that femicide is not a thing in our law books, so we cannot even quantify the amount of women that have died and the cause of death is not labelled as what it is. Women are asleep in their homes and they are dying, they are literally dying and we cannot continue to normalize violence within the home and on the streets and we cannot continue to allow women to be missing and then found later in shallow graves, murdered. It cannot continue. And so the gender policy will allow us to ensure that steps are taken at a national level to ensure that women are safe, women are happy, women are productive and move our country forward.”
