A new database covering the murder of women is being set up in the Netherlands to investigate the role of gender in femicide, the Volkskrant has reported.

In the Netherlands a woman is killed every eight days, figures show. In six out of 10 cases the perpetrator is the woman’s partner or ex, who, in most cases, is male.

“The debate about femicide is still largely based on case studies,” initiator and professor Marieke Liem told the paper. “But if you base policy on individual cases you may lose sight of the bigger picture. We are going to investigate how gender played a role in the murder of women and if it was a determining factor.”

Liem already heads the Dutch Homicide Monitor which contains data covering 25 years of murder and manslaughter in the Netherlands. For the femicide monitor, Liem will analyse 400 murders of women, including the “red flags” that preceded them.

One of the types of femicide Liem will be examining is that involving elderly men who kill their sick wives because they can no longer care for them.

“A man in that position may think, it is better if I kill her and myself. If he has never been violent police will have no information on him. But other organisations might if they are alert enough. Often the most attention will go to the most impactful cases: a man hits his wife, she leaves him, he kills her,” she said.

In every case of the murder of a woman, the question is what the data can teach us and if and when we could have intervened, Liem said.

Rijswijk mayor Huri Sahin will be an ambassador for the Femicide Monitor. In April,  she called on women who felt threatened to email her. Some 60 women and aid organisations did and in some of the more acute cases, Sahin intervened personally.

“We need both science and policies to put effective measures in place, and this database will help us do that,” she said.