When a Woman Kills Her Man: Gender and Victim Precipitation in Homicide

This research revisited the claim that victim precipitation (VP) is especially prevalent in situations where women kill their male intimate partners. Using administrative data from the Finnish Homicide Monitor (N =1,494), we created a typology of homicide incidents to examine variation in VP across three factors: the gender of the offender, the gender of the victim, and the intimacy of the victim–offender relationship. The results from regression models demonstrated strong support for the assumption that killings by women of their male intimate partners are more likely to have been victim precipitated than other types of homicide. This homicide type stood out as having the strongest association with each measure of VP included in the analysis. We did not observe statistically significant differences in VP among other homicide types. For example, we did not observe gender differences in VP in homicides that did not involve intimate partners. This pattern of results contradicts prior evidence suggesting that VP is a general feature of female-perpetrated killings, independent of the gender of the victim and the intimacy of the victim–offender relationship. As such, the present study underscores the importance of replication in studies of interpersonal violence. Theoretically, the results support the gender–partner interaction hypothesis over gender differences hypothesis of VP.