More than 50 percent of women who die of homicide are killed by intimate partners, according to the CDC's most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
For the report, CDC researchers analyzed female homicide data compiled in the National Violent Death Reporting System from 2003 to 2014. Among more than 10,000 female homicide victims listed in the NVDRS, 55.3 percent were killed by former or current intimate partners.
"We found that approximately one in 10 victims of intimate-partner-violence-related homicide experienced some form of violence in the preceding month [before their death]," Emiko Petrosky, MD, a science officer at the CDC and an author of the report, told NPR. "[W]hen we look at it for the non-intimate-partner-violence-related homicides, that was less than 2 percent. So this indicates that there could have been potentially an opportunity for intervention for those women."
Researchers also found black and indigenous women are murdered at higher rates than women of other races. Homicides among black women occur at a rate of 4.4 per 100,000 people; among indigenous women the rate is 4.3 per 100,000. Women of all other races had a homicide rate of between 1 and 2 per 100,000.
To read the full CDC report, click here.
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