Women Who Kill Their Men - Are They Violent Women or Women Against Violence

• NCJ Number: 105741
• Author(s): C E Rasche
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 25 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Presented to the American Criminological Society, 1986, Atlanta, GA, October 31, 1986.

Annotation

This paper contrasts the traditional view of women who kill their male partners as violent with one that sees such women as attempting to prevent future violence against themselves and their children.

Abstract

A review of the psychiatric literature reveals a view of women convicted of homicide as suffering from significant psychopathology. However, a case can be made that such studies suffer from gender bias, sex-role stereotypes, and a priori expectations. A different view of these women emerges from the sociological literature on interspousal violence. Mate slayings were found to be frequently victim-precipitated, and a much higher proportion of husbands than wives provoked their mates into killing them. In addition, a large percentage of women who killed their mates reported having been subjected to repeated physical, verbal, or emotional abuse and claimed the killing was in self-defense. While women who kill have traditionally been judged as guilty, incompetent, or insane, the self-defense plea has been used successfully in a number of homicides in which the woman had been physically abused by her victim. 37 references.