The Significance of the Black and White Photo Challenge as It Relates to Femicide

In recent days, there have been a plethora of black and white images posted by women on social media. This is a challenge where women nominate each other to post a black and white image of themselves and then caption “Challenged Accepted”, followed by the hashtag #womensupportingwomen. I was nominated to partake in this and my first though was, I have no idea what this is about so I’m not taking part.

However, I changed my mind when one of my friend posted a monochrome selfie of herself and directed others to her Instagram stories where she re-shared what someone wrote about the meaning behind the white and black images as it relates to the femicide in Turkey. This was the real reason behind the viral Instagram trend. While women supporting women is always a worthy cause to partake in, there’s a much bigger issue at hand that we should be highlighting, and that is, the senseless killing of women across the world.

The incident that triggered this challenge was the killing of Pinar Gutelkin, a 27-year-old woman who was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend, who strangled her and tried to burn her body. According to Dictionary.com, femicide is “the act of killing a woman, as by a domestic partner or a member of a criminal enterprise”. In addition, there’s widespread protest because the Turkish government is trying to roll back legislation that is meant to protect women from domestic violence. Several news reports have reported that in 2019 alone, there were over 470 women killed by either their husbands, ex-partners, or relatives in Turkey alone.

Women in the western world are fortunate in that we have made tremendous progress when it comes to fighting for equal rights compared to other women in most countries. Do you know that it was only since June of 2018 that Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, finally lifted the ban on women driving? Not only that, but women require the consent of a male guardian for them to have an education. It’s mind blowing!

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime did a “Global Study on Homicide” in 2018 that was specifically focused on gender-related killing of women and girls. They found that a total of 87,000 women were intentionally killed in 2017. More than half of them were killed by intimate partners or family members, meaning that 137 women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day. The largest number (20,000) of all women killed worldwide by intimate partners or family members in 2017 was in Asia, followed by Africa (19,000), the Americas (8,000) Europe (3,000) and Oceania (300). I was just baffled by that number.

Where do we go from here? I honestly don’t know. While an unprecedented number of countries have laws against domestic violence, sexual assault and other forms of violence against women, there are still many challenges in implementing these laws. I’m only one and there’s not much I can do but I can use my voice to bring awareness to the issue and hope that the massive outcry by women all over the world will lead to some kind of change similar to what we have been seeing with racial injustice in America.