Quantitative analysis of the use of the term feminicide in news headlines about the murders and disappearances of women in Ciudad Juárez, published by the CIMAC News Agency (Comunicación e Información de la Mujer A.C.)

Abstract

This paper intends to sum up a very complex phenomenon that is related with usage of the term femicide in the media, specifically in the gender news agency CIMAC, (Comunicación e Información de la Mujer A.C). In 1993 started in Juarez, México, one of the most shocking slaying of women of the recent history. Little by little, mass media started to pay attention to this situation and to cover it due to its international impact. Despite of that, there were not many media that kept a comprenhensive and thorough cover of the events related to this problem. CIMAC was the exception since 1999 when it started a non stop coverage of all the situations related to the salyings and dissapearences of women in the border with the United States. Just from the begining the media started to use many different terms to refer to the slayings of women such as murder of women, disappearances of women, murders and disappearances of women (all together), violence against women or just the most simple one: the name of the city, Ciudad Juárez. However, there was one concept that achieve what seemed impossible: to substitute any other word and summarize all the terms related to the problem. This word was the concept femicide and its achievement was not inmediate. In fact it took at least a decade to alternate or even substitute any other words related with the problem. Thus, this paper presents a cuantitative analisys that explains how femicide sustitute (in the headlines of the gender news agency CIMAC) any other word referring to the slayings of women and which words were the most used till the feminist concept appears.