Oh, My Grace

I confess up front: I am a numbers guy. Philip K Dick wrote the novel on which the film Blade Runner was based: it was called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I don't know the answer, of course - and I am an extreme sceptic of artificial intelligence. But in any case, I dream at times about systems of linear equations, which is perhaps the next best thing.

I came across a link today in my daily feed from the aggregator upworthy.com. The site purports to provide "uplifting" news and information. In this case, the site asks the rhetorical question:

Don't Believe In The War On Women? Would A Body Count Change Your Mind?

I've long been critical of the talking point about a "war on women," created in the 2012 election cycle by the Democratic party to draw support from female voters, who are a fairly reliable demographic for them.

Previous attempts to frame political debates about wars on women had focused on policy - restrictions on access to contraception, opposition to federal laws regulating pay, Title IX in the schools. One can debate the motivations and implications of these policy differences, but calling murder a "war on women," with a specific reference to body counts, is a measurable quantity. The data can be examined, sifted, and assessed.

In the analysis offered, between 2001 and 2012 (the time of the article), just short of 12,000 American women were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

That is, of course, a shockingly high number. That more American women have been killed at home by partners than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined is shameful, to say the least.

But is it a "war on women?" Does violence in America have an exaggerated impact on women? What do the numbers say?

As it were, the FBI collect data on all sorts of crime in the US - homicide among them - and it is possible to look at the makeup of the victims and the offenders.

Based on the 2015 data from the FBI in the Uniform Crime Report for that year, men were the victim in just under 80 per cent of the homicides for which data are available. That is to say, men are four times more likely to be killed than women. At least where "murder" is concerned (justifiable homicides are not included;given that violent crime is overwhelmingly the domain of men - males committed 62% of the murders in 2015, based on the same data source - and thus it's likely that these killings skew more extremely).

The "upworthy" link does not describe how many men are killed by their wives/girlfriends for context, but the FBI data indicate that wives are more likely than husbands to be the victim of the crime by about 5-1. Similar trends are seen comparing boyfriends/girlfriends, where women are about 3.5 times more likely to be the victim of a murder than a man is.

So, the specific charge about domestic violence is correct - women are far more likely to be killed by a partner.

On the other hand, sons are more likely than daughters (50%) to be the victim, brothers 3x more likely than sisters. Not sure what to make of that.

The US is a violent country - far more violent in terms of murder than other western democracies (there were more murders in the city of Chicago in 2016 (762) than in the whole of France (682). By comparison, France is a nation of 65 million people, whereas Chicago is home to just under 2.7.

But a "war on women?" Using a "body count?"

Doesn't add up.