44 women killed. Two just this week. Hardly a blip.

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Women who are killed don't even make the headlines anymore. 44 women have been killed in 2025. Yet Australia stays silent. Women continue to be killed by men they knew. Yet, there's no outrage.

On Sunday morning, before 8am, 38-year-old Zoe Walker was found dead in her home in Upper Ferntree Gully. A 46-year-old man, from the same suburb and reportedly known to Zoe, was arrested at the scene.

Watch: Women And Violence: The Hidden Numbers. Post continues below.

One week earlier, 62-year-old Amanda Rahman was allegedly stabbed to death in a unit at Mount Pritchard. Her 28-year-old son was charged with her murder.

On the same day, mother-of-six, Shafeeqa Hussein, was found dead in her home, allegedly killed by her husband, who took his own life soon after.

The day before, 81-year-old Jeanette McIver was allegedly killed by her husband, who was arrested and charged with her murder.

Four women dead this month, allegedly killed by men they knew. And yet, outside a handful of small headlines, our national response is silence.

Without the tireless work of advocates who share these atrocities online, many of us wouldn't have even known these women endured such violent deaths. 

Many, no doubt, still don't know.

Gendered violence and murder have become just another passing news item, another grim statistic, barely worth taking notice of, it seems.

This is how complacency sets in. This is how we become desensitised. And this is how male violence keeps killing women, year after year, with little to no action.

This year, dozens of women have been killed — 44 according to Australian Femicide Watch — most allegedly killed by men they knew. 

The list grows longer, the faces blur, and with each new tragedy, the national conversation grows quieter.

We're on the same horrifying trajectory as last year, a year which saw 101 women and 16 children killed.  And yet, the silence remains deafening. 

Four women dead — allegedly due to domestic violence — in less than two weeks should spark immediate, widespread outrage. It should dominate the news cycle.

And it should force leaders to speak up, to act, to front the public with solutions and accountability.

This active silence tells women exactly where we stand in the national hierarchy of urgency.

It tells us that despite being killed in our homes, on our streets, and in our workplaces, at the hands of partners or ex-partners or strangers who feel entitled to harm us — we don't matter.

And every time we fail to speak, we make it easier for the next man to kill.

Complacency is dangerous, but it doesn't happen overnight. It creeps in slowly. 

It tells us that these women's deaths were inevitable, that "there's only so much we can do," that it's "just how things are." It frames male violence as something we must endure, rather than actively prevent.

But men's violence against women isn't random. And it's not inevitable.

The Australian Femicide Watch, along with other incredible organisations and individuals, lists the names of women killed by violence each year. 

It's a confronting record because it strips away the anonymity that hides behind the statistics we're so accustomed to. Every name is a person. Every person has a story.

When you scroll through that list, and the stories behind the killings, patterns emerge. Most were killed by men they knew. 

The patterns are clear, and they do point to solutions, if you look hard enough: early intervention, consistent enforcement of protection orders, proper funding of specialist domestic violence services, cultural change programs in schools and workplaces and real consequences for perpetrators.

Yet year after year, the national will to implement these solutions stalls. The danger of desensitisation is that it doesn't just happen to politicians or the media, it happens to all of us.

Desensitisation happens when we scroll past that small news story without stopping to read it. It happens when we stop sharing those articles, when we stop talking about the women who've been killed, and when we stop demanding answers. 

It happens when we let the killing of women become background noise. We can't afford to become blasé. 

We can't afford to be silent just because the people with the power to change things are. Every woman killed is a national emergency.

It's up to all of us — the media, politicians, communities, and individuals — to resist complacency. To speak their names. To demand better. To refuse to let their deaths become just another story we scroll past.

Feature Image: Getty