Killed Women Count

A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK, yet most of their stories go unheard. The Guardian’s campaign Killed Women Count - a project highlighting the toll and tragedy of violence against women in the UK - wants to help change that.

Killed Women Count started with a conversation at the Guardian about how rarely cases in which a woman is allegedly killed by a man are covered in the media, and how rarer still it is for those cases to be recognised as part of a common problem.

The death of a woman every three days should not be background noise, so the Guardian decided to treat each of these women’s stories as newsworthy. As Karen Ingala Smith, co-founder of the Femicide Census has said: “Each of these women deserves to be remembered by name and as more than just another statistic”.

Led by senior reporter Alexandra Topping, an award-winning journalist with a track record in exposing the consequences of gender inequality, the concept is simple: and goes to the heart of what we do as journalists.

Since January 2024, the Guardian has reported on every woman allegedly killed by a man, highlighting the work of organisations like Counting Dead Women, the Femicide Census, Killed Women and others.

At times what we can report has, by necessity, been limited because of legal issues or lack of information, but the Guardian has committed to marking these women's lives through accurate, clear-sighted and empathetic journalism.

In addition to publishing a story about the death of each woman as they occur, we have also published pieces which gather together their stories together. We first published on March 8 to mark International Women’s Day, and updated that piece of work in August when the tally of women killed reached 50. We will do so again before the end of the year.

As well as giving bereaved families the opportunity to speak about their loved one, further stories have explored the policy changes needed, from a push to increase to the minimum sentence for murders to exposing how often a history of abuse towards victims is ignored, and an examination of the government’s pledge to halve violence against women in a decade.

The response from readers has been phenomenal, with many thanking the Guardian for putting a spotlight on this problem, or to let us know when a woman has been missed. It has also been praised by a key government minister, the domestic abuse commissioner and many leading charities in the field. Foreign embassies have asked the Guardian to speak about the project, while reporters have featured on news programmes and debates from Iceland to BBC Radio 4’s Woman's Hour.

The project will continue throughout 2024, and as cases progress through the legal system we will tell these women’s stories in more detail and help explain why they were killed and examine what society needs to do to start to tackle this intractable problem.