They include 27-year-old Carol, who was killed by her ex-boyfriend who hit her with a hammer and then dumped her dismembered body off a cliff, 40-year-old Elisabetta who died after being “stabbed dozens of times” by her husband and 74-year-old Silvana whose husband beat her to death with a stick.Job losses, government inaction, judicial backlogs and many other factors contributed to what the United Nations has called a “shadow pandemic of violence against women and girls.”According to a UN report, 45,000 women worldwide were killed by their partners or other family members last year.In Greece, where 17 women were killed in 2021 according to public broadcaster ERT, the government was criticized for rejecting an opposition amendment that would have established institutional recognition of the term femicide.In November 2021, after a 48-year-old woman was stabbed 23 times by her husband in Thessaloniki, opposition leader Alexis Tsipras posted on Facebook: “There should be no political disputes when we dramatically experience the effects of gender based violence on a daily basis.”In the United Kingdom, following the kidnap and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in March 2021 by a serving male police officer, and a heavy-handed police crackdown on a vigil in her memory, activists criticized what they say is a culture of misogyny within policing.On January 1 of this year, three women were killed in France, each allegedly by a partner or ex-partner, in what feminist campaigners described as an “unbearable” start to another year’s tally of violence."