Female Perpetrators: Bias in Justice and Media Coverage

Genderless Violence: When the Aggressor is a Woman

A woman sentenced to 144 years in prison for murdering several elderly women was granted leave and, allegedly, killed another. This case, antiestéticatured in an online compilation of incidents, raises an uncomfortable question: are female aggressors treated with the same severity as male ones? According to available data, not always.

A Catalog of Female Crimes

The compilation includes dozens of cases of women accused of murder, ranging from infanticide to poisoning the elderly. A mother suffocating her 4-year-old daughter in Sant Joan Despí, another throwing her baby into the trash in Albacete, a nurse injecting insulin into a 98-year-old woman... The list is long and varied. There are also domestic violence cases: one woman stabbed her husband because he complained about VAR during a football match, another tried to kill him with high doses of medication in his food. Cases of violence against the elderly are also present: an 84-year-old man strangled by his daughter-in-law, or a woman stealing a pension from a 90-year-old man right after he left the bank.

Is the Justice System More Lenient Towards Them?

The most striking case is that of the woman sentenced to 144 years who received exit permission and, allegedly, killed another elderly woman. This fact fuels suspicion that the penal system is more lax with women. However, there is no conclusive data confirming this perception. What is true is that public opinion reacts with surprise when the aggressor is a woman, as if female crime were an anomaly. The irony is that, in a country where gender-based violence is a structural problem, violence perpetrated by women is treated almost as a rarity.

Media Bias and Invisible Victims

Criticism of the media is recurrent. In the case of the woman who stabbed her husband over VAR, the news focused on the football match, not the attempted murder. Furthermore, it is noted that male victims of domestic violence are not counted in official statistics. The list of men murdered by their partners or ex-partners does not appear in reports from the Ministry of Equality (Ministerio de Igualdad), generating debate on the asymmetry in how violence is treated. Meanwhile, the list of invisible victims continues to grow.

Social Reaction: Between Mockery and Outrage

Some comments sarcastically celebrate that women also commit crimes, while others point out that justice is not equal for everyone. Some remind us that violence has no gender, but others defend that these cases are exceptions within a structural problem. The discussion, in any case, reveals a latent tension: Spanish society is not prepared to accept that domestic violence can also have a female face.

Meanwhile, the list of invisible victims continues to grow. The unsettling data: in Spain, men murdered by their partners are not counted as victims of gender-based violence. Asymmetry, even in death.