Femicide or feminicide is the intentional murder that exclusively targets women or girls because of their gender or murder that disproportionately targets women or girls. According to UN's 2023 estimates, the interval within the intentional murders of women and girls by their families, partners or non-intimate individuals globally is up to 10 minutes. Causes of femicide include bigotry, jealousy, revenge, male entitlement, gender bias, harmful gender roles, gender stereotypes, cultural beliefs such as so-called "honor killings", coercive control, social beliefs such as sati, and masculine hegemony that perpetuates the unequal power between men and women.

A spouse or partner is responsible for almost 40% of femicides, or homicides of a female victim. Additionally, femicide may be underreported due to insufficient evidence. Femicide often includes domestic violence and forced abortions. In China, femicide occurs as sex-selective abortions, while other cultures use gender-selective infanticide and geronticide to perform femicide.

Until recently, femicide was not considered as a visible phenomenon, but awareness is gradually increasing.

The term femicide was used in England in 1801 by John Corry to signify "the killing of a woman". In 1848, the term was published in Wharton's Law Lexicon. The term stems from the Latin femina, meaning "female" and -cide from the Latin caedere meaning "to kill".

The current usage arose with Second-wave feminism, which aimed to raise female class consciousness and resistance against gender oppression. The term has been used to call attention to violence against women. US author Carol Orlock is credited with using the term in her unpublished anthology on femicide.

Diana Russell publicized the term in 1976 at the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Belgium. She wrote: "We must realize that a lot of homicide is femicide. We must recognize the sexual politics of murder. From the burning of witches in the past, to the more recent widespread custom of female infanticide in many societies, to the killing of women for 'honor,' we realize that femicide has been going on a long time. But since it involves mere females, there was no name for it until Carol Orlock invented the word 'femicide.'" She first implicitly defined the term as a hate killing of females by males, but then went on to redefine it as "the killing of females by males because they are female" in later years. Femicide remains understudied in scientific literature.

Femicide may also be 'intimate.' Intimate femicide can be identified as such by using "severity of violence, such as access to and threats with firearms, forced sex, threats to kill, and strangulation" to determine whether a case can be considered an act of femicide or not. The definition of femicide also relies on "inequalities in gender 'in terms of education, economic level, and employment'".

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization as "the removal of part or all of the external female genitalia and/or injury to the female genetic organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons". Female genital mutilation results in femicide when women and girls die, due to unhygienic practices of FGM that result in infection or death, as well as the increased likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS because of FGM.