(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 11 and women. Prevailing unequal power relations between both sexes constitute the backdrop that makes women vulnerable to extrajudicial killings. In considering the factors that make women peculiarly vulnerable to extrajudicial killings I note in passing the difference between ‘factors’ and ‘causes’. ‘Cause’ is the immediate reason; ‘factor’ is the enabler. In legal parlance, cause is the causa causans, and factor the causa sine qua non. In the context of our subject, the extrajudicial killing of women encompasses killing within intimate social settings, the cause of which could, for example, be that family honour is at stake. Feminists do not only condemn violence against women in the private realm; they also link this abuse to violence against women perpetrated by the State.34 Killing in these circumstances is conceptualised as the most extreme form of violence against women. Literature shows that the contributory factors to this form of violence as well as to violence against women in general, fall within three broad categories, namely, socialisation, harmful cultural practices, and inadequate legal protection. 3.1 Socialisation Feminists subscribe to the view by Simone de Beauvoir that women are socialised or acculturated into becoming what society dictates.35 Socialisation is a socially learnt behaviour from childhood whereby an individual internalises and deeply embeds attitudes and adopts particular roles as instructed by society. Agents of socialisation include faith based organisations which play a key role in the propagation of gender imbalances that are constructed through teachings. For example, Christian teachings on gender relations, like the teachings of African custom, advocate divinely sanctioned male headship of the family and the subordination of the wife.36 These teachings help to reinforce traditional stereotypes. The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 2:9-14 directs Christian women to ‘wear proper clothes that show respect and self-control, not using braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes’. He instructs them to ‘learn by listening quietly and being ready to cooperate in everything’. He states that he does ‘not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to listen quietly, because Adam was formed first and then Eve. And Adam was not tricked, but the woman was tricked and became a sinner’. Islamic teachings also propagate a like doctrine of female subordination and submissiveness to men. indeed human rights: an African perspective on international feminism’ (1995) 17 Human Rights Quarterly 691; C Smart ‘Feminism and law: some problems of analysis and strategy’ (1986) 14 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 110; C Littleton ‘Reconstructing sex and equality’ (1987) 75 California Law Review 1274. 34 S McKay ‘Rape and incest in a violent male society’ (1985) Fortnight Magazine, 27 May 1985, 9. 35 The second sex, 1949 (reprinted 1961). 36 WLSA Multiple jeopardy: domestic violence and women’s search for justice in Swaziland (WLSA: Mbabane 2001) 73.