Ten Years After the Not One Less Femicides Are on the Rise and Women's Rights Are Receding

On June 3, 2015, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets to demand justice and put the devastating effects of gender-based violence on the agenda with a single cry. What is the outcome after a decade of struggle?

In May 2015, Chiara Páez was just 14 years old. A few months earlier, she had begun a relationship with 16-year-old Manuel Mansilla. They both lived in Rufino, Santa Fe province. On the night of May 9, they met to talk. She was two months pregnant, and her boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion. But she refused. She was beaten to death, and her body was found a day later in a well at the home of the young man's grandparents, who confessed the crime to his father.

Chiara Páez was not the first, and sadly, not the last. She was, nothing more, nothing less, than the one who lit the spark that found in weariness the fuel necessary to spread a fire that spread across the length and breadth of the country, pushing hundreds of thousands of women into the streets to demand justice and put the devastating effects of gender-based violence on the agenda under a single cry: Not One Less.

Together and Organized

Between Chiara's femicide and the June 3rd demonstration, journalist Marcela Ojeda issued a stern warning on social media with a tweet that read: "Actresses, politicians, artists, businesswomen, social leaders... women, all of them, well... Aren't we going to raise our voices? THEY'RE KILLING US." What followed was a series of meetings—centered at The House of Meeting—aimed at shaping this movement, which took place in more than 80 Argentine cities and was replicated in Latin America and Spain.

“The first meeting was cathartic, as Marcela Ojeda says, who posted the tweet, which was later joined by other journalists and later volunteers from La Casa del Encuentro (The House of Meeting),” recalls Alejandra Benaglia, Communications Coordinator at La Casa del Encuentro. Founded in 2003 to design a feminist project for the human rights of women, children, and adolescents, it has been producing its own Femicide Report since 2008. In the absence of official statistics on femicides in Argentina, it launched the Adriana Marisel Zambrano Femicide Observatory a year later, under the direction of Ada Beatriz Rico, president of the Civil Association.

“The unintended purpose at the time was to show that we were being killed, that we were turning up in ditches or buried, and that nothing was being done, nothing was happening, and that the issue wasn't entrenched in society, nor was it related to the patriarchal system and the prevailing machismo. Later, the list of objectives that were going to be requested began to emerge, which was what was finally set out in a document that is now public,” she recalls.

And she adds: “Ni Una Menos / Not One Less was the impetus we needed for women's movements to take a stand and broaden our demands. It was a turning point. Making this violence visible and promoting the participation of more women showed that nothing is achieved in isolation, but rather through collective action.”

The Gender Parity Law in Elective Offices, the Legal and Free Safe Abortion Law, the Micaela Law, the formation of the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, and, above all, putting the impact of patriarchy and sexist violence on the makeup of society on the agenda are some of the main milestones of this collective struggle. However, femicides did not decrease in number, and in recent months, some of these achievements have begun to be threatened by a State willing to backtrack on women's rights.

Alarming Figures

According to data from the Adriana Marisel Zambrano Femicide Observatory, 286 femicides were recorded in Argentina in 2015. Nine years later, in 2024, that number reached 294, and in 2018, the lowest figure was 273. So far in 2025, 103 femicides and related murders of women and girls have been recorded—59 percent of them at the hands of partners or ex-partners—leaving 100 children motherless, 47 percent of whom were minors. Sixty-seven percent of the women were murdered in their homes—demonstrating that the most unsafe place for a woman experiencing violence continues to be her own home. Only 18 of them had previously filed a complaint. In absolute terms, Buenos Aires remains the province with the most cases, followed by Santa Fe, Córdoba, and Mendoza.

Behind each of these numbers, the victims multiply by hundreds: sons, daughters, parents, siblings.

What we talk about when we talk about femicides

Femicide is one of the most extreme forms of violence against women. It is the murder committed by a man against a woman whom he considers his property. The term was coined by American writer Carol Orlock in 1974 and used publicly in 1976 by feminist Diana Russell before the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Brussels.

The Civil Association La Casa del Encuentro created the term "Linked Femicide" to highlight the actions that the femicide perpetrates to achieve his goal: to kill, punish, or psychologically destroy the woman over whom he exercises domination. And, furthermore, under this umbrella, it adds two more figures: those who are murdered by the femicide perpetrator—while trying to prevent the femicide, or who were caught "in the line of fire"—and those with family or emotional ties to the woman, who were murdered with the aim of punishing and psychologically destroying her.

Ten years after that historic Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), despite the achievements and in the face of a still adverse reality, the feminist collective will march again this Wednesday, June 4th, to the Plaza del Congreso under the slogan "the debt is with us" and will once again uphold some of the tenets of that first manifesto, which stated: eradicating violence against women may be difficult, but it is not impossible. Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) is a collective cry; it means stepping into places where people previously looked the other way, it means reviewing one's own practices, it means beginning to look at each other differently, it is a social commitment to build a new never again. We repeat: We do not want any more women killed by femicide. We love every single woman alive. All of them.