Mapping Femicide: Homes as Extreme Risk Zones for Women

Original article: Cartografía del femicidio revela al hogar como espacio de riesgo extremo para mujeres

The project maps cases from 2020 to 2025 to illuminate gender-based violence and create a collective memory.

On November 25, the Interactive Mapping of Femicide and Memory in Chile (2020–2025) was unveiled, initiated by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development —Fondecyt— in honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This project emerges from deep concerns regarding the home as a continual threat to girls and women.

Led by researcher and gender equality expert Macarena Trujillo Cristoffanini, the initiative aims to serve as a tool to highlight this issue. The mapping provides a comprehensive visual representation of Chile, pinpointing where each femicide occurred, contrasting between public and private spaces, and offering additional insights about the lives and deaths of the victims.

Trujillo explained that the initiative was created to understand why the home, culturally seen as a place of belonging for women, remains a space of extreme risk. Thus, beyond being simple statistics, each point on the map signifies: «A story, a connection, an absence that continues to resonate,» she asserts.

This tool goes beyond highlighting extreme violence; it also serves as a mapping of memory, emphasizing that each case represents lives lost to patriarchal terror and violence. Here, violence is understood as part of a sequence of previous, everyday, normalized aggressions that collectively constitute a shared trauma for women.

Despite this advancement, the project’s development faced significant methodological limitations. Researchers had to work solely with «digital traces,» such as brief notes, police reports, and scattered or incomplete information. This endeavor necessitated ethical and political decisions, aiming to include data that allowed for an intersectional view of femicide in Chile.

Ultimately, the team acknowledged that investigating these cases was exhausting and heart-wrenching, but always with the commitment to «transform that pain into tools for denunciation, analysis, and collective memory.» Trujillo Cristoffanini expressed her gratitude particularly to the Chilean Network Against Violence Towards Women for their work since 2010 as an inspiration, as well as to every worker who contributed to the mapping.

Check out the Interactive Mapping of Femicide and Memory in Chile here.