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Article
Patriarchal Family Ideology and Female Homicide Victimization in Fiji
Journal of Comparative Family Studies (2001)
  • Mensah Adinkrah, Dr.
Abstract
The article examines female homicide victimization in Fiji using an 11-year period homicide data. Scholarly interest in female homicide victimization, or femicide, has burgeoned in recent decades, as evidenced by the abundance of published material that has accumulated on the topic in the past 20 years. In the United States in the 1970s, partly in response to a perceived increase in the violent victimization of women and the gratuitous deaths emanating from such violence, feminist writers coined the term "femicide" to denote the homicide of females, to highlight the prevalence of the phenomenon, and to raise public consciousness about its dire effects. The relative paucity of research and information on female homicide victimization in non-Western societies is regrettable because it hinders efforts to attain a fuller and more accurate understanding of femicide as a behavioral phenomenon. Currently, it is unclear whether conceptual categories and theoretical models developed from studies of female lethal victimization in modern Western societies have cross-cultural validity or universal applicability. In an effort to remedy the neglect of Third World women and girls in the literature regarding femicide, this article contributes to scholarship on the topic by focusing on the patterns of female homicide victimization in Fiji and the varied circumstances under which these crimes are committed.

Keywords
  • patriarchy,
  • homicide,
  • femicide,
  • Fiji,
  • family
Publication Date
2001
Citation Information
Mensah Adinkrah. "Patriarchal Family Ideology and Female Homicide Victimization in Fiji" Journal of Comparative Family Studies Vol. 32 (2001)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mensah_adinkrah/27/