Negotiating Gender Difference in the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

As the previous chapters highlight, law reform is the primary strategy adopted by feminist academics and political lobbyists to redress perceived inequalities facing women who kill their spouses. The central concern is to formalise in law the reality of the circumstances in which many women kill. This has meant challenging the criteria for defences in cases of homicide for women who kill their partners by exposing the exclusion of women’s different experiences and circumstances. The project of law reform has also involved indicating how women’s experiences are not incompatible with the present structure of legal defences to homicide. This argument has been that it is necessary to give con sideration to the events leading up to the homicide event, rather than just the act of homicide itself, in order for justice to be meted out fairly. Feminist writers have supported the goal of legal equality for eradicating the discriminatory treatment of female homicide defendants in the criminal justice system (Schneider 1986; Gillespie 1989; O’Donovan 1991; Radford 1993). Some feminists, however, have also raised questions about how women’s differences are addressed through the commitment to equality and equal treatment in law.