In February 2025, at the biennial High-Level Segment on the death penalty, Mr Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern to the Human Rights Council about the gender dimension of the death penalty:
« There is ample evidence that States fail to take full account of gender-based mitigating factors in sentencing women to death, including a history of gender-based trauma and violence ».
Fewer women than men are sentenced to death worldwide. Women account for less than 5% of the total number of people sentenced to death across the world.
The year 2024 saw an alarming increase in executions in some countries, including of women. In Iran, at least 31 women were executed, the highest number for at least 17 years (22 women were executed in 2023, 16 in 2022). Saudi Arabia executed 9 women, the highest number of female executions in the country’s history, a 50% increase on 2023 when 6 women were executed.
Differences in treatment based on gender can be observed in law and in practice. However, they remain under-researched in criminal proceedings involving the death penalty, making it difficult to obtain accurate data. As a result, the ill-treatment suffered by women sentenced to, or at risk of, the death penalty cannot be properly described and quantified. However, there are particularly significant examples of this inequality around the world. In Iran, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man. In many countries, sexual and domestic violence go unpunished. In Iraq, “honour killings” are considered mitigating circumstances. In Singapore, a woman was executed for drug offences in July 2023, while her male co-accused was sentenced to life imprisonment for the same offences.
Although women do not make up the majority of those sentenced to death in prison, they are often indirectly affected by the use of the death penalty as relatives of men sentenced to death, whether they are mothers, wives, daughters, etc.
According to UN Women, women remain underrepresented in the executive, legislative and judicial branches. This has an impact on the formulation and application of legislation in relation to the death penalty, in particular with regard to women.
From accusation to conviction: the many forms of discrimination
Women face multiple forms of discrimination and do not have equal access to justice. In many countries, the majority of judges and lawyers are still men.
The vast majority of women are sentenced to death for offences arising in a context of gender-based violence of which they may have been victims, particularly severe domestic violence.
In 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stated in a report to the Human Rights Council:
Holders of the mandate on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have long argued that the imposition of the death penalty amounts to an arbitrary killing in cases where the courts have ignored essential facts of a capital defendant’s case. This should logically include a long history of domestic violence, including because of larger social patterns of gender inequality. Women facing capital prosecution arising out of domestic abuse suffer from gender-based oppression on multiple levels. For instance, it is exceedingly rare for domestic abuse to be treated as a mitigating factor during capital sentencing proceedings. Even in those countries with discretionary capital sentencing, courts often ignore or discount the significance of gender-based violence.
A number of women’s court cases have shown that their mitigating circumstances are less taken into account. In fact, there is a gender bias that women are incapable of violence. If they do, they appear to have transgressed their condition and the values associated with femininity. They are therefore more likely to be seen as cold-blooded criminals. This is a basic, biased and discriminatory reasoning that leads to a violation of their right to a fair trial. As a result, although their representation on death row remains relatively low, women accused of capital offences are judged more harshly and are therefore more likely to be sentenced to death.
Countries that severely criminalize drug trafficking, such as those in the Gulf and Southeast Asia, have a high proportion of women on death row. Often living in economic precarity, women are more likely to be involved at the lowest, most exposed levels of the drug trade and are thus most vulnerable to arrest for related offences that carry the death penalty.
Extract from the report “Data Mapping: Women on Death Row”, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (2023)
After sentencing, particularly discriminatory prison conditions for women
The experience of death row is regularly described as torture by international human rights organisations, because of the harsh conditions of detention, the length of incarceration and the anguish of awaiting execution.
Women on death row are likely to suffer further violations of their fundamental rights as their gender-specific needs are rarely taken into account, for a variety of reasons. Places of imprisonment do not always protect them from sexual and gender-based violence and/or guarantee access to gender-specific health and hygiene care. Women, more than men, are likely to be exposed to sexual violence in detention; when they are not separated from male detainees, when they are guarded by male prison staff. They are also exposed to different consequences in the event of sexual violence, such as becoming pregnant.
It is imperative to shed light on the reality of the issues surrounding the use of the death penalty against women and to advocate for intersectional justice, taking into account the multiple factors of discrimination to which they are subjected.
Combating sexual violence and the death penalty
The use of the death penalty as a tool to combat impunity for sexual violence against women is an issue at the intersection of the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.
The death penalty is regularly invoked as a repressive response to cases of violence against women and girls. More than a dozen countries still carry the death penalty for rape, yet they fail to address the root causes of sexual and gender-based violence, rape culture and the barriers to effective access to justice for victims.
Women campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty
Whether they are ministers, parliamentarians, representatives of national human rights institutions, judges, lawyers or human rights defenders, women face additional obstacles in their activism for the abolition of the death penalty. They are sometimes the target of hate messages on social networks, but in some countries they can also be arrested and subjected to various forms of gender-based violence.
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