NCJ Number
115350
Date Published
1982
Length
19 pages
Annotation
In its various manifestations, violence against women is an outcome of both social structural and ideological conditions of male dominance.
Abstract
Crimes against women are both politically defined and depend on the particular historical relationships that exist between men and women. For example, women condemned as witches were often healers of the poor; and the violence committed against both witches and midwives (who often were the same individual) occurred frequently as men took over legal control and economic monopoly of medicine. Conversely, changing roles and relationships associated with the women's movement have called attention to wife battering and sexual assault as crimes against women that will no longer be tolerated. Through time, women have been directly and indirectly victimized by institutionalized male dominance in their three gender-specific roles. As childbearers they have been victimized through involuntary childbearing, forced sterilization, surgical mutilation, and unsafe contraceptives. As sex objects, they have been victimized by rape and marital rape, incest, and pornography. As nurturers, they are scapegoated when things go awry and battered by mates for perceived failures in the nurturing role. The elimination of women's victimization depends upon the elimination of gender domination and will require a radical reordering of society. This entails an understanding of both the individual and systemic forms of violence against women, as well as changes in the structural features of criminal justice interventions with both victims and offenders that strengthen or condone the ideological supports of sexism. 32 notes. (Author abstract modified)