Women and Justice

Women and Justice

Women and the Law

A series edited by Roslyn Muraskin, Dept. of Criminal Justice, Long Island University, Brookville, New York Volume 1 Women and Justice Development of International Policy Edited by Roslyn Muraskin Additional titles forthcoming This book is part of a series. The publisher will accept continuation orders which may be cancelled at any time and which provide for automatic billing and shipping of each title in the series upon publication. Please write for details.

Women and Justice Development of International Policy Edited by

Roslyn Muraskin C.W. Post Campus Long Island University Brookville, New York Gordon and Breach Publishers Australia • Canada • China • France • Germany • India • Japan • Luxembourg Malaysia • The Netherlands • Russia • Singapore • Switzerland

Copyright © 1999 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. Published by license under the Gordon and Breach Publishers imprint. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ ing photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Singapore. Amsteldijk 166 Ist Floor 1079 LH Amsterdam The Netherlands British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Women and justice: development of international policy —(Women and the law; v. 1—ISSN 1028–0413) 1.Justice—Government policy 2.Women I.Muraskin, Roslyn 364′.082 ISBN 0-203-98503-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 90-5700-551-4 (Print Edition)

Contents

Introduction to the Series Preface List of Contributors

One Women and the Law: The American Way Roslyn Muraskin Two Women Professionals in Criminal Justice: A Global Perspective Edith E.Flynn Three Wife Abuse in South Korea Merry Morash, Vincent Hoffman, Yoon Ho Lee and Young He Shim Four Gender and Crime Across Social Contexts: The Case of the United States and Finland Candace Kruttschnitt Five Discrimination Against Women Under the Nationality Laws: Case Studies for Egypt and Lebanon Nawal H.Ammar Six Wife Rape in Great Britain Kate Painter and David P.Farrington Seven From Arrest Avoidance to Mandatory Arrest: Some Historic Social and Legal Forces that Have Shaped Police Spouse Abuse Policies in the United States Martin L.O’Connor Eight Violence Against Women in the Caribbean Zelma Henriques and Janice Joseph Nine A Research Note: Gender Differences in Crime Jolanta Juszkiewicz Ten Conclusion Roslyn Muraskin Index

vi viii xi

1 11 31 56

73

85 104

117 131 136

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Introduction to the Series

Women and the Law is devoted to examining the implementation and implications of various policies and practices as they affect women around the world. With emphasis on comparative analyses, attention will be focused on a wide range of subjects such as incarceration, domestic violence, the legal control of biological processes, sexual discrimination and harassment, women who work in the criminal justice field including law enforcement, and racial and ethnic discrimination, among others. This series aims to highlight those particular issues that concern women from a social, political, legal and economic perspective.

Preface

This is the first in a series of works on issues in justice that concern women. The common theme throughout this book is that, given the existing inequalities throughout the world as regards women, without active social intervention it will take a very long time before women attain full equality before the law and, therefore, rights in the social, economic and political spheres of their lives. Organizations such as the United Nations (see Edith Flynn’s chapter) and individual governments have taken proactive stances to provide necessary leadership in the quest for fair and equal treatment everywhere. Causes of inequality between men and women are inexorably linked with complex historical processes. The result is that the form of inequality is as varied as the economic, social and cultural conditions of the world community. While many nations have made significant progress toward improving the status of women, the work presented here indicates there is still much that needs to be accomplished. Women and Justice: Development of International Policy deals with an analysis of women as viewed from the point of specific systems of justice and issues of equal treatment before the law. It is not intended to include all countries but to present an overview of certain representative areas as a basis for comparison against our American form of justice for women. In chapter one, the tone for the volume is set by describing what has occurred in the United States regarding women’s gains and losses in striving for equality. Nowhere in any official document, such as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, is there mention of the word woman. It has taken years for women to gain some equality before the law and to make strides within the social, political and economic climate of the country. Yet, as indicated in this chapter, women still have a long way to go before gaining full recognition. Historically, women have been considered second-class citizens and were not afforded rights awarded to men. Edith Flynn (chapter two) talks about criminal justice systems throughout the world best characterized by their tradition of male dominance. Occupations defined as male have tended to provide few opportunities for women. Her work is the result of surveys conducted by the United Nations examining the kinds of career opportunities afforded women throughout the world, including areas of criminal justice. In South Korea, a characteristic of social structure has been exclusion of married women from the work force. Here, a wife’s social position has depended heavily on the status of her husband and his family. Merry Morash, Vincent Hoffman, Yoon Ho Lee and Young He Shim, in the third chapter of this book, examine the position of women in this

culture, demonstrating changes occurring within the social and economic structure of the country but pointing out there is much unrecognized domestic violence in South Korea. There appears to remain a generally high tolerance of violence within South Korean society that extends to tolerance of wife abuse. Women’s involvement in crime is lower than men’s throughout the world, yet societal forces influence the nature and extent of women’s criminal involvement. In chapter four, Candace Kruttschnitt compares Finland to the United States. Finland does not have social equality between women and men. Though Finnish women established themselves in political life earlier than American women, they still predominate in gender-segregated jobs and are paid less than men. Finnish women, she tells us, engage in crime. Do conditions under which they commit crimes, the nature of their crimes, or their probability of detection and official recognition differ depending on their relative status within a nation? Egypt and Lebanon both utilize French codes as the basis of their criminal and some civil legislation, but they differ in the influence that Islamic codes have had on their legal sys-tems. Nawal H.Ammar (chapter five) reviews the laws of both countries and their efforts to eliminate inequality and discriminatory laws against women. Merely being female deprives both Egyptian and Lebanese women of their unconditional rights as citizens. In Great Britain, the view of a wife as the sexual and physical property of her husband remained unchallenged until 1949. Kate Painter and David Farrington, in chapter six, talk about the crime of rape, which began as a common-law offense in England and still remains as such in Scotland. It was not until 1976 that a statutory definition of rape as it concerns marital relations was passed. In 1992, the Law Commission recommended that a husband’s legal immunity from prosecution for rape of his wife should be abolished and placed on a statutory footing. It took more than 250 years for English law to recognize a married woman’s right to sexual autonomy and freedom from rape in marriage. What historic, social and legal forces have shaped, and continue to shape, police response to spousal abuse in the United States? In chapter seven, Martin L.O’Connor outlines for us forces that have ranged from influence of religion, the infamous rule-ofthumb, common-law influence in America, and movements to outlaw beatings, to police policies that developed in response to violence against women. To further understand male violence in the countries of the Caribbean, Zelma Henriques and Janice Joseph (chapter eight) look at women’s present social status within the economic and political context of the society—in relation to men. Women’s marginal involvement in politics is due to the notion that politics, often perceived as corrupt and demanding, is no place for women. In the Caribbean the emphasis is still placed on women’s roles as mothers and wives, and aggressiveness is still associated with masculinity. In chapter nine, Deputy Director of the Pretrial Services Resource Center Jolanta Juszkiewicz presents a table of gender differences and case processing characteristics based on 1994 data obtained from the State Court Processing Statistics (formerly the National Pretrial Reporting Program), a data series of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, that presents for the reader a “broad sweeping picture of contemporary case processing in the United States.”

The development of policies as they impact on women is dominant throughout this book. If women are to gain full equality under the law as we approach the next millennium, programs need to be developed that address all their problems. Genderspecific policies throughout the world need to take into consideration the diverse socialization process that occurs for females. This work helps to point out the deficiencies as well as the progress made but suggests, at the same time, future policy implications for women and justice.

Contributors

Nawal H.Ammar is assistant professor of criminal justice studies at Kent State University. She is an anthropologist by training, and her research interests are comparative law and society, and women’s human rights. David P.Farrington is professor of psychological criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, United Kingdom; and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh. He is also president of the European Association of Psychology and Law, and presidentelect of the American Society of Criminology. Edith Elisabeth Flynn is professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. She has achieved national and international recognition as an expert in corrections and terrorism. Zelma Weston Henriques is professor in the Department of Law and Police Science at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Imprisoned Mothers and Their Children: A Descriptive and Analytical Study (The University Press of America). Vincent Hoffman is professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Janice Joseph is professor of criminal justice at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey. Jolanta Juszkiewicz is deputy director of the Pretrial Services Resource Center (PSRC), a private nonprofit national clearinghouse for information and assistance. Candace Kruttschnitt is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She has published extensively on the subject of female offenders. Yoon Ho Lee is professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Kyonggi University in Kyonggi-do, Republic of Korea. Merry Morash is professor and director of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, East Lansing. Roslyn Muraskin is professor of criminal justice at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, where she is also director of the Long Island Women’s Institute. She is editor-in-chief of the journal The Justice Professional and co-author and editor of Visions for Change: Crime and Justice in the 21st Century (1999, 2nd ed., PrenticeHall). Dr. Muraskin is currently working on the second edition of It’s a Crime: Women and Justice (1999, Prentice-Hall).

Martin L.O’Connor is an attorney and assistant professor of criminal justice at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. Prior to entering academe, he was the deputy police commissioner in charge of legal affairs for the Nassau and Suffolk County Police Departments in New York. Kate Painter is professor of criminology at the Institute of Criminal Justice at Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Young He Shim is professor in the Department of Sociology at Hanyang University in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Chapter One Women and the Law:

The American Way Roslyn Muraskin HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Women and the Law: The American Way introduces us to the legal issues that impact women of yesterday and today. The foundation of the American legal system allows society to define itself. If our Constitution gave us due process and equality before the law, how is that women were not included in these concepts? Historically, women were not considered citizens, let alone recognized as individuals with the same rights and privileges as men. Within the framework of our Constitution, citizenship belonged solely to men and women were given no legal consideration or legal place. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “were the state a pure democracy there would still be excluded from our deliberation women, who to prevent deprivation of morals and ambiguity of issues should not mix promiscuously in gatherings of men” (Sapiro, 1994:246). It was not only Jefferson but the majority of our founding fathers who believed that the presence of women would pollute and corrupt not only the morals of men but the system itself (Sapiro, 1994). Women knew their place; they belonged at home to give birth, raise the children and tend to the domestic chores that “belong to women.” They were not considered bright. In the words of Jean Jacques Rousseau, “the whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to counsel them, to console them, and to make life sweet and agreeable to them—these are the duties of women at all times and what should be taught them from their infancy” (Deckard, 1979:5). And in the infamous words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “nature intended women to be our slaves; …they are our property, we are not theirs. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to a gardener. What a mad idea to demand equality for women! …women are nothing but machines for producing children” (Deckard, 1979:5). The stereotypical image of woman was that all women were alike. Childbearing was meant to interfere with women fulfilling themselves as persons. Women belonged to man, she was considered his property. Women were to be given “correction” by men, as

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long as the stick used was no wider than his thumb. Women were viewed by the law as little more than chattel. When the Declaration of Independence was written, it stated that “all men are created equal” and that is what they meant, all men. Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States is the word woman used. The founding fathers of this country did not intend to bestow personhood on women. The rape of a woman, for example, was an infringement of the property rights of man. Woman was to be chaste, not to be handled by anyone other than the husband. If raped she was considered damaged goods. Women’s status or place in society should be determined by law. The women’s movement started when Abigail Adams told her husband, John, to “remember the ladies,” in writing the Constitution of the United States. The movement was more formalized at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The theme was continued with a speech at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio when Sojourner Truth, an old black slave, stepped up to the podium and delivered her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman” The man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain’t I a woman? [She pointed to a minister.] He talks about this thing in the head. What’s that they call it? [Intellect, whispered a woman nearby.] That’s it honey. What’s intellect got to do with women’s rights or black folks’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full? That little man in black there. He says women can’t have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn’t a woman. [She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire.] Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? [she thundered again] From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him! [The entire church now roared with deafening applause.]

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If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it rightside up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them. (Deckard, 1979:272)

The Seneca Falls convention of 1848 was viewed as the first organized movement of women. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…. … when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. It is their duty to throw off such governments and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under his government, and such is now the necessity which contains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled” (Muraskin and Alleman, 1993:46). These women viewed the history of mankind as a history of “repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman” (Muraskin and Alleman, 1993)…establishing an absolute tyranny over the woman. It was resolved at Seneca Falls that: • all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate…[have] no force or authority. • woman is man’s equal…[and] should be recognized as such • the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man…. • …being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the rights and duty of woman equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means. The sex of an individual as determined at birth should not violate the premise that legal burdens need to bear some relationship to individual responsibility. Women were relegated to a status inferior to man without regard to “the actual capabilities of its individual members” (Muraskin and Alleman, 1993). In this country women did not gain the right to vote until the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1920 and that involved work. In the case of Minor v Happersett in 1874, the court stated that women may be citizens but the question presented was whether all citizens are necessarily voters. The court said no: “Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be. If the law is wrong, it ought to be changed; but the power for that is not with us.” Consider the case of Bradwell v Illinois of 1873. Myra Brad-well graduated from law school and having fulfilled all the requirements to practice law was forbidden from doing so. The Supreme Court, in its wisdom, upheld an Illinois state law prohibiting female lawyers from the practice of law. Justice Miller delivered the opinion of the court: the civil law as well as nature itself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be women’s protector and defender. The natural and proper

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timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. [Justice Miller continued] I am not prepared to say that it is one of her fundamental rights and privileges to be admitted into every office and position…. …it is not every citizen of every age, sex and condition that is qualified for every calling and position. (83 U.S. {16 Wall} 130, 141–142, 21 L.Ed. 442 {1873}) Following the decision in the Bradwell case there followed the decision in Muller v Oregon (208 U.S. 412, 28 S. Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551 {1908}). This case also discussed the merits of women working. The state of Oregon prohibited women from working in establishments such as factories, or laundries for more than ten hours a day. The Court focused on the unique function of women’s ability to reproduce: As healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical wellbeing of woman becomes an object of public interest in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race. The two sexes differ in structure of body, in the functions to be performed by each, in the amount of physical strength…the influence of vigorous health upon the future well-being of the race…. This difference justifies a difference in legislation and upholds that which is designed to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her. (Mueller v Oregon) Therefore, the court decided that the limiting of women’s right to work in certain professions for more than ten hours a day was premised on the state’s interest in protecting the reproductive functions of women. Women continued to meet the same obstacles. As demonstrated in the Senate Report on Women in Industry published in 1911 regarding working women, the “natural inferiority of their sex (women’s) instead of being used as a justification to prevent women from working was instead used as an excuse to pay them wages less than those of men.” It was in 1963 that women won a major battle with the passage of the Equal Pay Act. Up until this time employers were allowed to discriminate in pay based on sex, notwithstanding similar work. Workers who perform the same job must now be paid the same wages. Title VII was added in 1964 to the Civil Rights Act. It was now unlawful “to discriminate against any individual with respect to…compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of that individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” Title IX prohibited sexism in educational programs. As laws continued to be developed, it was so done with the idea of protecting women for their own good. President Nathan Pusey, President of Harvard University at the height of the Vietnam draft call, was quoted as stating, “we shall be left with the blind, the lame and the women” (notes from R. Muraskin lecture on “Women and the Law”).

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WOMEN AS VICTIMS If women have been victimized by the laws passed to protect them, we turn now to the women who are in fact victims of physical violence. For example data from both the National Crime Victimization survey and from the Uniform Crime Reporting system demonstrate that between the years 1992 and 1994 the number of violent crimes against women reached a staggering fourteen million. In 1994, there was one rape for every 270 women, one robbery for every 240 women, and one assault for every 29 women. Women are about two-thirds as likely as men to be victims of violence. The rate has risen to a 43 per 1,000 women as compared to about two-thirds the 60 violent victimizations per 1,000 men. About two decades ago women’s likelihood of victimization was less than half that of men. Today’s trends indicate that the rates of victimization for men and women have converged—the rate for men decreasing and the rate for women remaining relatively stable or increasing. In 1995 the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system reported that females represented twenty-three percent of all known homicide victims in the United States. For both fatal and nonfatal violence, women are considered to be at higher risk than men. Female homicide victims are more than twice as likely to have been killed by husbands or boyfriends than male victims are to have been killed by wives or girlfriends. Females have experienced seven times as many incidents of nonfatal violence by an intimate as do males. Each year women are known to experience over 1,000,000 violent victimizations committed by an intimate, compared to about 143,000 incidents that men have experienced. We know that women are more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by a stranger. Statistics indicate that a majority of women victims (seventyeight percent) know the offender who victimized them. There is no evidence to suggest that different races have higher or lower risks of victimization by intimates. Domestic Violence Women are victims of domestic violence. The battering they receive is defined as physical assault ranging from painful slaps to homicide. If we desire to understand why men batter women, then we must comprehend the position of men in society historically. The existence of a caste/class kind of system has fostered the growth of inequality in social systems. Historically, men believe they had not only the right to own, control and dominate women but many believed it was their right to do so. There has always remained the masculine mystique of the macho image of the man as hard, unsentimental, and using aggressive behavior. While the woman, historically, was defined as someone who was dependent and needed to act “ladylike.” Lenore Walker’s theory of violence (1979) was an attempt to define the battering cycle. Phase one is the tension building stage where the woman recognizes the pressure that is building and knows that the inevitable explosion is about to occur. The woman’s reaction is to do as much as she can to calm this phase, but inevitably the beating comes. In phase two, we have the acute battering incident Here the beating occurs. It usually does not last long, but serious harm can befall the woman during this phase. Phase three is defined as the batterer showing kindness and contrite loving behavior. In this final

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phase the batterer promises he will never repeat such an act, states that his actions were a fluke, and attempts to make her love him. The woman becomes confused wanting to believe that this violence will never occur again. The batterer tries to rationalize his actions and oftentimes blames the woman for his acting so violently. In this country the term battered woman was introduced in the 1970s because of the political consciousness and organized activities contributing to the women’s movement. When victims of domestic violence began to fight back, it was not always perceived by the justice system as an act of self-defense. Self-defense is permitted by the law when it is believed that a reasonable person believes herself to be in imminent danger of harm. When the woman kills her batterer, and this happens, a defense of self-defense must demonstrate the following: absence of aggression or provocation on the part of the defendant; a real or apparently real necessity to kill to save herself from an immediate danger or serious bodily injury, or death; and, the defendant doing everything necessary to avoid the danger and demonstrating the need to take a life. Many women who do kill their batterer are convicted of serious criminal charges, usually murder or manslaughter and many spend a great deal of time in the prison system. What has developed is the battered womam syndrome in order to justify the killing outside the battering. This defense is not necessarily successful. Expert testimony is needed to establish a crime of self-defense when a spouse/girlfriend kills a spouse/boyfriend. The law requires witnesses to state what they saw or heard. This expert witness describes the three phases of violence and how the physical and psychological abuse escalated to such a point that such action was taken. Learned helplessness, depression and incapacitation affect battered women as well as the false hope that the abuser will change. Such feelings, the “experts” point out, lead a woman to perceive herself as having no choice but to kill. It is often difficult in a case of homicide for jurors to understand why a woman remains with the batterer rather than simply leaving. Of course why the man is not expected to leave is usually not asked. The jury needs to hear from both the expert witnesses and the woman to understand the reasons for such behavior. The battered woman syndrome defense is used in cases of homicide when the act is a non-confrontational type where an abused woman kills the batterer when he is not in the act of abusing her. The other time this defense is used is when the woman is responding to an actual physical attack where deadly force is used. The admissibility of expert witnesses varies from state to state. In varying degrees, the states of Maine, New York, California, Ohio and appellate courts in the states of Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota and West Virginia have held that expert testimony on the battered woman syndrome is admissible. However, not all courts have accepted the logic of this defense claiming that information on the battered woman syndrome is scientifically undeveloped and inconclusive. In the case of State v Stewart (1988), the supreme court of the state of Kansas overturned the jury’s finding that a battered woman had acted in self-defense when she killed her sleeping husband. The court stated that the “statutory justification for the use of deadly force in self-defense did not excuse homicide committed by a battered wife when there was no evidence of deadly threat or imminent danger contemporaneous with killing.” The court felt that to find it reasonable to kill a sleeping victim would lead to the execution of future abusers when there is no clear threat of imminent danger. The courts

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appear willing to treat the use of the battered woman’s syndrome on a case by case basis. Historically, what transpired inside the family was kept there. Family “secrets” were not discussed outside the household. With the understanding that there exist dysfunctional families, violence is more openly discussed than before. Feminists do not understand why there needs to be a special defense for cases involving domestic violence. It is felt that self-defense as a defense should be allowed. Many of the feminists believe that the battered woman syndrome does a disservice to women because it emphasizes their passivity and learned helplessness. And then there are those who are quick to point out that women are responsible because they have provoked the actions of the men. Until such time as the elements of the self-defense law are changed, the battered woman syndrome appears to be the only exception that is allowable in cases as. indicated by the legal system. Rape Men rape women. We are told that women’s bodies are the battlefield on which men engage in class war. Men do not rape women for sex, they do so for power, to demonstrate their aggression, to show their anger. Rape is an expression of conquest, it is seen as the perfect combination of sex and violence. Although the act is sexual (forcing a woman against her will to have sexual intercourse with a man), what is traumatizing to the victim is the life-threatening nature of the assault. Rape is the only charge that required corroborating evidence. There had to be a witness to the act or someone who saw the victim immediately following the rape act. The woman also had to demonstrate that she used force to stop the rape. The use of such evidence is no longer necessary to the extent that it was, but what other crimes called for an act to be corroborated in the manner assigned to cases of rape? The fact that a woman screams “no” is an integral part of the law of rape. The law historically reflected this perspective by requiring evidence that the woman forcefully resisted the intercourse to establish that the intercourse was non-consensual and therefore rape. Marital rape has also become a serious form of violence inflicted on a significant percentage of women in the United States annually. The estimate is that between fourteen to twenty-five percent of the rape cases in this country are between husband and wife. “If I resisted, he would beat me up, so I learned not to resist and I just gave in.” The majority of women who suffer such assaults believe that this is a one time event, that it will never happen again. There ensues shock, confusion, anxiety, fear and helplessness. Victims of marital rape learn early on that this one act is to be followed by future acts. Rape victims are forced to either develop coping strategies or learn the only way out is to end the relationship. Married women have been unable over the years to define their experiences as rape, as the term “marital rape” simply did not exist. Terms such as “domestic violence” and “marital rape” are recent entrants into our everyday language. Traditionally, women lacked a social definition allowing them to view abuse as anything more than a personal problem. There are those victims who see the act of rape as an extension of the battering that goes on in their relationships. “[Rape] is more awful than getting beat up. It’s easier to continue the denial.” Susan Brownmiller in her work, Against Our Will, stated that “women are trained to be rape victims. To simply learn the word ‘rape’ is to take instructions in the power

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relationship between males and females. To talk about rape, even with nervous laughter, is to acknowledge a woman’s special victim status. We hear the whispers when we are children: girls get raped. Not boys. The message becomes clear. Rape has something to do with our sex. Rape is something awful that happens to females: it is the dark at the top of the stairs, the undefinable abyss that is just around the corner and unless we watch our step it might become our destiny” (p. 343). Brownmiller further describes how women develop a victim mentality: Fairy tales are full of a vague dread, a catastrophe that seems to befall only little girls. Sweet, feminine Little Red Riding Hood is off to visit her dear old grandmother in the woods. The wolf lurks in the shadows, contemplating a tender morsel. Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, we learn, are equally defenseless before the male wolfs strength and cunning. His big eyes, his big hands, his big teeth—‘The better to see you, to catch you, to eat you, my dear.’ The wolf swallows both females with no sign of a struggle. But enter the huntsman—he will right this egregious wrong. The kindly huntsman’s strength and cunning are superior to the wolf s. With the twist of a knife Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are rescued from inside the wolfs stomach. ‘Oh, it was so dark in there,’ Red Riding Hood whimpers. ‘I will never again wander off into this forest as long as I live.’ (pp. 343–344) Is Red Riding Hood a parable of rape, as Brownmiller indicates? The tale of Sleeping Beauty, as well, we are told represents the woman waiting for the right man to come along. She is to remain passive and beautiful, he is to be the stronger, the more aggressive person. The man is always depicted as stronger and bigger as well as serving as the protector of the woman. Do women ask to be raped/beaten/assaulted? Is it so that the woman has made herself a willing participant in her own defeat? This cannot be the case. Do women want to be raped? The answer under law is/should be an emphatic no. Again, in the words of Susan Brownmiller, “do we crave humiliation, degradation and violation of our bodily integrity? Do we psychologically need to be seized, taken, ravished and ravaged?” (p. 347). Though American law has been reformed, its effect has been slow. The American justice system is still influenced “by attitudes that view women as sexual property, reproductive instruments of the state, and unworthy of belief. Such attitudes [continue to] shape police practices, prosecutorial discretion, judicial rulings and jury verdicts” (Miccio, 1995:147). Lenore Walker’s theory indicates that women who kill their abusers are left no choice due to the psychological problems associated with the beatings, yet “[I]t does a disservice to the woman to refer to a psychological state rather than to see her as someone who has reasonably appraised her choices. Perhaps the real challenge of the twenty-first century will be to transform a legal system crafted to protect male power into one that brings women to the center of human discourse. We can then create a new legal tradition in which women’s experience is no longer marginal” (p. 148). It has taken too many years for the law to be representative of both women and men. The violence against women that has existed over the centuries has been hidden behind the cloak of the privacy of families. For too many years cases of domestic violence

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eluded the police because of women’s disadvantaged position. “Women who have been trained all their lives to believe that they should adjust to men’s needs and fix any problems that arise in their relationships” found themselves trapped (Kesselman et al., 1995:276). This country has witnessed over the past twenty years a criminal justice system capable of meeting head on the problems of domestic violence and cases of sexual assault, namely rape. But rape still remains a widely under reported crime. “Racism [as well] has shaped the experience of rape in our culture, from the systematic rape of African-American women in slavery to the false charges of rape that were used as a pretext for lynching African-American men in the South in the early twentieth century. African-American rape victims are less frequently believed by white juries and African-American men are more frequently convicted. The popular myth of the black rapist clouds the reality that most rapes are committed by men who are of the same race as their victim” (Kesselman et al. 1995:277). Women who are victims of crime still look for the protection of the law. They look for full enforcement of the law and yet many of the same problems exist for women as victims of the very system that seeks to protect them. The due process that women have long struggled for and sought is within reach but still not quite there.

References Brownmiller, Susan (1975). Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster. Deckard, Barbara Sinclair (1979). The Women’s Movement—Political, Socioeconomic and Psychological Issues, 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row. Kesselman, Amy, McNair, Lily D., and Schniedewind, Nancy (1995). Women, Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company. Mabee, Carleton, and Newhouse, Susan Mabee (1993). Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York: New York University Press. Miccio, Kristian (1992). “Women and the law.” Reprinted In Women, Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology (eds. Amy Kesselman, Lily D.McNair, and Nancy Schniedewind). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company [1995]. Muraskin, Roslyn, and Alleman, Ted (1993). It’s a Crime: Women and Justice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice Hall. Sapiro, Virginia (1994). Women in American society: An Introduction to Women’s Studies. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co. U.S.Department of Justice, (January 1994). Violence Against Women: A National Crime Victimization Survey Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Walker, Lenore E. (1979). The Battered Woman. New York: Harper and Row.

Cases Bradwell v Illinois, 130 U.S. 21, L.Ed. 442 (1873). Minor v Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 22 L.Ed. 627 (1874). Mueller v Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551 (1908).

Chapter Two Women Professionals in Criminal Justice:

A Global Perspective Edith E.Flynn The fair and equal treatment of women is unalterably linked to many broader questions of social justice. Inequities in any society ultimately serve to restrict the contributions of both sexes. Therefore, the inclusion of women into the mainstream of development and social life should be seen as necessary to healthy social, psychological and economic growth in any nation. This chapter is about women as practitioners and administrators in criminal justice systems throughout the world. It points to the need for national commitments to basic changes that will integrate women into all spheres of justice systems: law enforcement, prosecution, courts, prisons and offender reintegration programs. To be properly understood, the employment of women in criminal justice must be considered within the context of global developments for women in the total labor force. Women have always worked, but their unpaid contributions in raising children and homemaking have often been undervalued and remain largely unnoticed. When they do work for pay, their status in the labor markets is not encouraging. Many women work to support themselves, and a majority work because economic conditions require additional family income. While the number of women employed approaches parity with men in many labor markets, some factors remain basically unchanged throughout the decades: women are overrepresented in low-status, low-paying occupations and underrepresented in high-paying high-status occupations. Earning differentials between men and women persist in most labor markets. The reasons for these differentials are directly attributable to factors such as the sexual division of labor, outright discrimination, and pervasively held stereotypes of what women want and can do. Given existing inequities it must be stated that without active intervention, it will take a very long time before women attain equal rights in the social, economic and political spheres. To hasten the process, world organizations such as the United Nations and individual governments have taken proactive stances to provide the necessary leadership in the quest for fair and equal treatment of women everywhere.1 Tracking its various initiatives, the United Nations periodically reviews, evaluates, and publishes the progress made by women globally. Predictably, progress has been slow and uneven. The causes of inequality between men and women are inexorably linked with complex historical processes and are derived from a host of political, economic, social and cultural factors.

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12

Consequently, the form of inequality is equally varied. Nonetheless, many nations have made significant progress in improving women’s status, employment, and working conditions, and toward promoting legislation to protect their rights. While these developments constitute important benchmarks for the achievement of women’s equality, they are best seen as a favorable beginning. The majority of the work remains to be done. In most countries, comparisons of the performances of men and women in every sector of social and economic life depict wide gaps between the opportunities available to men and those open to women. These findings hold regardless of the level of development or the type of economy in the country under analysis. Women are consistently underemployed, have less job security and fail to benefit equally from any increases in general employment when they occur. Women also continue to be relegated to work in the marginal and informal sectors of economic life and are shunted into “female dominated” occupations, where wages are depressed and major earnings differentials persist between men and women. Finally, lessons from the past clearly indicate that integrated strategies for the development of women work better than isolated measures.2 The United Nations has conducted periodic surveys of crime trends and the operations of criminal justice systems since 1986. These surveys serve a number of objectives, including (1) determining which data are generally available in national databases, (2) strengthening cooperation among member states, and (3) putting the review and analysis of national crime-related data into a broader, comparative context.3 The Fourth Survey (covering the years 1986–1990) was distributed to all member states of the United Nations in August 1992. The data presented here are preliminary pending further validation, verification, and analysis. Nonetheless, the combination of all surveys to date, offers an important source for charting global trends in crime and criminal justice. An important segment of the UN surveys consists of data designed to facilitate the global study of women and the administration of justice. As such, the databases contain information on female criminality, crime prevention strategies, the treatment of women under criminal justice custody, female victimization, and the role and status of women in the administration of criminal justice, as well as the role of regional and international cooperation in these important areas. It is the purpose of this chapter to (1) examine the status of women professionals in criminal justice settings; (2) review prevailing employment practices and women’s experiences within the different system components and (3) analyze the barriers to equal employment opportunities they continue to face in many nations. Changes in women’s employment patterns between the Third and Fourth UN surveys are also discussed.* Before proceeding, it is worthwhile bearing in mind the following: First, the survey data have been collected by many different systems, representing many different cultures and involving many different languages. This means that the survey data are subject to errors in legal definitions and terminologies. Second, there are also likely to be problems with the data itself, due to differences in key characteristics, the structure and function of the reporting criminal justice systems. As a result, the survey data are best seen as a first step in developing a future agenda for comparative research.

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WOMEN PROFESSIONALS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE Criminal justice systems the world over are best characterized by their tradition of male dominance. In general, criminal laws are promulgated and codified by male legislators. Laws are enforced by male police officers and interpreted by male judges. Postsentencing dispositions are administered by men, primarily for men. As a result, women have experienced great difficulty in gaining entrance to occupations within the systems. In fact, all branches of criminal justice, such as law enforcement, prosecution and defense, courts, prisons and after care have erected strong barriers to equal employment in most nations. Only recently have inroads been made by a number of nations providing women with a range of employment opportunities in law enforcement, the judiciary, and the corrections field. There are substantial differences in personnel practices and attitudes toward the employment of women. *The data featured in this chapter are derived from the Fourth UN survey. Tables and analyses based on the Third UN survey for the United Nations can be obtained by contacting the author.

Some countries continue to question whether women should be brought into the justice system as practitioners or administrators, while others seek to determine how they can effectively alter traditional personnel practices and prevailing negative attitudes to ensure equality of opportunity regardless of sex. This discussion focuses on the structures, processes, and policies of complex organizations and the professions which affect the work behavior of criminal justice practitioners. It also centers on the consequences of these factors which cause women’s sex status to become salient in their work role behavior; for example, sex-typing of occupations as either male or female has consequences for entry into these occupations. In essence, occupations defined as male tend to provide a social context hostile or at least discomforting to women. The result is that fewer women seek entry into such fields and those who do are often blocked from their occupation’s opportunity structure. The problems for women in criminal justice derive from the fact that they are cast into particular work roles and placed within particular organizations which have a host of formal and informal structures which impact on them as workers. Results from the Fourth UN survey indicate that the majority of countries reported an increased participation of women in all national sectors, along with economic advancement, social change and modernization.4 In criminal justice, career opportunities were also expanding in most industrialized countries. However, the majority of women employed in the various subsystems of criminal justice continued to be typecast in supportive and clerical positions. To determine what governmental actions were being taken to enhance female employment, the UN survey requested information on specific factors which might have contributed to the changes. The responses of those who answered are illuminating. At least half of the respondents noted that some form of governmental policy or legislative action had led to the

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14

TABLE 2.1 Employment of Women in Criminal Justice Systems by Sector CJS SECTOR

DEVELOPED n=23

DEVELOPING n=27

LEAST-DEVELOPED n=4

Police Increased Other No info

65.20%

14.80%

–

0.00%

11.10%

–

34.80%

74.10%

–

26.10%

14.80%

–

8.70%

11.10%

–

65.20%

74.10%

–

60.90%

11.10%

–

4.30%

14.80%

–

34.80%

74.10%

–

47.80%

7.40%

–

8.70%

3.70%

–

43.50%

88.90%

–

Prosecution Increased Other No info Courts Increased Other No info Prisons Increased Other No info

Source: E.E.Flynn (1985), “Women as Practitioners in Criminal Justice Systems: The Fair Treatment of Women in the Criminal Justice System,” in Criminal Justice Processes and Perspectives in a Changing World, Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Document A/CONF. 121/17:40–69.

change. Another 25 percent credited changes to a variety of social causes, such as rising female criminality requiring more women corrections officers, or improvements in the social climate for women as a whole. The final 25 percent attributed positive changes to a combination of governmental policy, legislation, and general social causes. These responses confirm that governmental initiatives (legislative, judicial, or executive) are crucial to expanding women’s opportunities in the labor markets. Such initiatives not only lay the foundation for progress but are necessary preconditions before other organizations, including governmental agencies, will hire women. To increase the understanding of employment patterns of women in criminal justice as they relate to the various contexts, it is helpful to examine trends across nations of varying developmental status. Table 2.1, based on data from the Third UN survey, shows the employment of women in various criminal justice system sectors by countries classified according to their

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15

developmental status. In almost all criminal justice system sectors analyzed, increased employment of women is most often noted in countries of the developed world. As countries pursue economic modernization, social relationships change. At the same time, institutions governing socioeconomic and political activities will also be affected by change. Labor relations change, for one thing, labor mobility becomes a crucial condition for the development of rationalized economic systems. For another, the procedures for employment, assigning tasks and filling positions, become radically different from the primarily ascriptive basis of status in the least-developed countries. With development, labor relations and employment procedures begin to reflect norms relating to technical competence, merit placement, and impersonal judgements of performance. The need for managers, coordinators and intermediates increases disproportionately to other occupational functions and skill shortages emerge. Labor forces shift from primary production (agriculture and extractive processes) to secondary productions (mainly manufacturing) to tertiary production (services of various kinds).5 The sum total of these changes has major implications for a society’s willingness to involve women in development and work. First, sex-typing of occupations and sex-stereotyping of work becomes less rigid. Second, social systems tend to open up by permitting access of women (and minorities) to a wider range of occupations and by expanding opportunities for their recruitment and advancement in the world of work.6 Given the experiences of

Figure 2.1. Female criminal justice personnel as a percentage of all CJ personnel. Source: Fourth U.N. Survey (1994). developed and developing countries, it is hoped that the least-developed countries will follow suit and extend opportunities to women in due time. Even though many countries did not provide data on the gender of criminal justice personnel in the Fourth UN survey, a sufficient number did permitting a limited analysis.

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16

Figure 2.1 reflects the changes in employment of female criminal justice personnel as a percentage of all criminal justice personnel by profession between 1986 and 1990. For 38 countries reporting, women represented 12% of all personnel employed in law enforcement, a percentage that did not change during the reporting years. Thirty-five countries reported that women prosecutors represented 23% of all prosecutors in 1990. This constitutes an increase of 4% between 1986 and 1990. Forty-three countries reported that 24% of their judges were women in 1990. This represents another 4% increase from 1986. Finally, 26 countries reported that 10% of its prison staff were women in 1990. This percentage had not changed from 1986. Having discussed the global survey findings on the employment patterns of women in criminal justice, specific subsystems of criminal justice will now be examined. WOMEN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT Although women professionals entered the field of law enforcement in a number of countries as early as the mid-1880s, the policing profession has one of the longer standing records of staunch resistance to the employment of women. There has never been an international consensus concerning the proper utilization of women in law enforcement, but research on the historical evolution of women in policing does point to some similarities and thereby permits at least some preliminary crosscultural generalizations. First, the role of women in law enforcement generally reflects the prevailing norms and attitudes toward women in their societies. Second, women’s progress as professionals in policing has been painfully slow. Third, women in this segment of criminal justice have consistently been disproportionately utilized in supportive and clerical positions. Looking at contemporary developments from a global perspective, it is interesting to note the great variety of approaches taken by different nations to women in police work. While some countries have undertaken serious efforts to extend equal opportunities to women, others are not even considering the possibility of their employment. For example, Japan’s law enforcement used to be almost exclusively a man’s domain. Women police officers are empowered with all the authority of their male counterparts, but until recently, their responsibilities were limited to traffic, dealing with juveniles and communications. But, women officers are now assigned to a widening range of police duties, including crimi-nal investigations.7 As a result, interest among young women in law enforcement careers is rising. In another example, England and Wales have set standards for the employment of women in police functions. Women are employed by Scotland Yard, the state police, and as policewomen in major cities. Their assignments include patrol, investigation, traffic duties, and riot control. In Israel women perform a variety of police tasks and provide security patrols on roads, at the border, airports, hospitals, schools and other public places. Other countries reporting progress in utilizing women as police include Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Guyana, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. Analysis of the national data by region using the Third UN survey shows that countries in Europe and North America have by far the largest increases of women in law enforcement. Sixty-five point two percent of the reporting developed countries (N-23)

Women professionals in criminal justice

17

showed an increase in women’s employment, followed by 14.8% of the developing countries and zero percent for the least-developed countries. Data from the Fourth United Nations survey provides a more detailed picture of the employment of women in law enforcement for a selected number of countries. Table 2.2 shows percentage increases of policewomen between 1986 and 1990. It also reflects women police officers as a percentage of their male counterparts for the reporting countries. The selection of countries is purposive and designed to focus on different regional areas around the globe. In general, the participation of women in policing for reporting countries has increased over the survey period. Increases range from 11% in the Republic of Korea to 264% in Spain. The percentage of women police officers in relation to their male counterparts ranges from 2.7% in Turkey to 18.1% in Poland. Austria reports that 12.8% of its police force are women. In the Republic of Korea and the Netherlands women comprise 9.1% and 9.6% of their respective police forces. These percentages

TABLE 2.2 Total Police Personnel for a Sample of Responding Countries, Fourth United Nations Survey, 1986–1990 1986 MEN Austria

1990

WOMEN

MEN

WOMEN

25,545

2,391

24,573

3,132

Bulgaria

0

0

0

0

Chile

0

0

0

0

Japan

0

0

0

0

Rep. Korea

63,458

6,580

79,732

Netherlands

36,031

2,277

Poland

90,362

Qatar Spain

% CHANGE FOR WOMEN

WOMEN AS % OF MEN

1986–90

1990

30%

12.8%

7,273

11%

9.1%

34,654

3,334

46%

9.6%

15,355

94,585

17,146

12%

18.1%

0

0

0

0

118,638

97

118,961

354

264%

0.3%

Turkey

73,499

1960

84,859

2,301

17%

2.7%

Uganda

0

0

0

0

Zimbabwe

0

0

0

0

0=data not available. Source: United Nations (1994), The Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch.

are comparable to those reported in many U.S. police departments.8

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18

WOMEN IN POLICING: PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS Consonant with the United Nations findings there are good indications that the occupational status of women police is improving in a number of nations. For example, in the United States, legislative changes and court decisions have combined to increase the employment of women in policing. Those employed have also emerged from stereotypical assignments of working mainly with women and children as victims to serving on a level with their male counterparts. As a result, women constituted 8.8% of all full-time sworn personnel in local police departments and 14.5% of all full-time sworn personnel in sheriffs’ departments in 1993.9 Further, discriminatory police personnel practices toward women officers have decreased considerably during the past two decades. For example, police departments have begun to discard different height, weight, or educational requirements for male and female officer candidates. Such requirements, as well as male-oriented recruitment practices are now proscribed by law in the U.S. Police selection criteria, such as preference for veterans, background investigations, physical examinations, agility tests, written examinations and interviews are increasingly being applied equally to male and female applicants. Similar encouraging findings have been noted in Australia, Austria, England and Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In contrast to these encouraging findings, other nations report much slower progress. In the light of these mixed developments, it must be stated that the utilization of women as police officers with full powers of arrest and patrol duties is relatively recent, spanning the previous three decades. Even in countries with improved opportunities women continue to be vastly underrepresented in policing. There is also continued evidence that women police officers continue to be disproportionately assigned to vice and sexual offense control, juvenile delinquency and child welfare cases, work with female suspects, traffic, telecommunications, and clerical work. The barriers working against the full integration of women into law enforcement are as complex as they are pernicious. They are: (1) sociocultural perceptions of the role and function of police work, (2) specific characteristics of the organizational structure of law enforcement and the police subculture; and most important, (3) pervasive stereotyping of women police by their male colleagues, superiors and the public at large. SOCIOCULTURAL PERCEPTIONS OF POLICING The vast literature on law enforcement in any country under analysis is consistently characterized by almost universal perceptions that the police role consists mainly of physical suppression of crime and the control of violence. The police officer is principally seen as a crime fighter, involved in daily combat with criminals, pursuing desperate fugitives and dangerous psychopaths. Given this image, it should not be surprising that physical strength, stamina, aggressiveness, and a readiness to use force in volatile situations have become the hallmark of the ideal police officer. Unfortunately this perception is wrong.10 The police role is infinitely more complex. Judging from a plethora of empirically grounded studies, seventy to ninety percent of a police officer’s time is spent on community services and on the management of noncriminal situations.

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Since police work is more realistically described as order maintenance rather than crime control, understanding the contrast between the “order maintenance function” and the “law enforcement function” becomes fundamental to understanding the police role. Order maintenance implies consensual resolution of conflict situations. The concept is often used synonymously with such terms as social service. But since the true meaning of order maintenance goes far beyond that, the connotation of “situational management” must be added to the definition. Viewed in this more encompassing perspective, order maintenance becomes the central activity of law enforcement and is geared at service delivery as well as conflict resolution. With the advent of community policing, the parameters of the police role are being fundamentally changed. Instead of focusing on crime control, the new emphasis is on crime prevention. Reactive policing is yielding to proactive police work. Community policing involves decentralization, power sharing, empowerment of police, accountability to the public, customized police services, and to some degree the “demilitarization” of law enforcement. Early evalu-ations of community policing in the United States indicate that where its principles have been adopted, there is greater citizen support, greater job satisfaction, and improved internal relationships. Taken as a whole, community policing is the antithesis of the crime fighter image, and therefore conducive to the integration of the sexes in policing. CHARACTERISTICS OF POLICE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES The second major barrier to equal employment of women in policing is rooted within the organizational structures of law enforcement itself. Women to this day are still not readily accepted in the profession of policing. Rigid and arbitrary physical requirements still remain. Although anchored in history, these requirements have lost their basis in fact, given the changed mission of policing and the many technological advances of the twentieth century. Too often, police departments tenaciously cling to restrictive standards governing physical stature and condition, height, weight, or vision requirements, in spite of the growing body of research indicating that such requirements are unduly restrictive and result in many applicants (including most women) being summarily rejected. Because many physical standards have not been proven to be job related, they are being challenged in some countries by the courts and/or regulatory agencies with growing success. Beyond outmoded hiring practices, the combined effect of rigid police hierarchies, the usually limited number of advanced grade positions, the lack of meaningful promotion criteria, and the ingrained emphasis of physical prowess as the main qualification of police work, have all resulted in a continuing misconception of police work as an exclusively male preserve, and have affected the number of women in the profession. SEXUAL STEREOTYPING Of all the barriers to women police officers, sexual stereotyping is surely the most significant obstacle to their employment and advancement in the profession. From their

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20

entry into law enforcement as matrons in many countries over a century and a half ago, through today, women are met with discrimination, patronization and double standards. Research on attitudes toward women police officers documents persistent patterns of discrimination which continue despite their demonstrated competence.11 Even though the general public is beginning to accept women as law enforcement officers in many developed countries, it is the male officers as individuals and as a collective who are most resistant to granting equal employment opportunities to women. This is because women in uniform, wearing badges, riding in squad cars, carrying guns, empowered to effect arrests, and acting like men in the performance of their duties, challenge deeply held cultural perceptions regarding the role and function of men and women in most societies. The notion of having women superiors and being commanded by women is particularly jarring to many male officers. To comprehend the full dimensions of the problem faced by policewomen, it must be remembered that the law enforcement profession has consistently stressed traditionalism, conservatism, and authoritarianism. Given the traditional function of police to uphold and defend existing social orders, it is easier to understand that the very idea of women as equal co-workers (and superiors) not only violates men’s self-image but affronts culturally conditioned beliefs and organizationally reinforced values. This tenacious resistance to accepting women into policing contradicts a wealth of empirical studies, most of which point to the effectiveness of policewomen.12 Of particular note is an assessment of eight performance evaluations of women officers in the critical areas of patrol capability, the relationship between height and weight and performance, and the incapabilities as traffic officers. It was found that men and women police officers performed in a highly similar fashion when interacting with angry or violent citizens, although women officers were less likely to damage community relations than males.13 Physiological research shows that women in general are not as physically strong as men,14 but these findings do not mean that the physical job requirements of police officers are beyond the physical ability of all women. Given adequate training, most women can be trained to achieve a level of fitness well within the demands of any type of police work. Further, there is no evidence to suggest that women cannot successfully perform line officer and patrol jobs, once they have acquired the necessary physical skills. In fact, women have served and continue to serve with distinction in all capacities on police forces in many countries. In summary, having reviewed key barriers to the employment of policewomen, it is easy to recognize the enormous difficulties they face getting the job and staying on the job. Considering the compounded effect of these barriers, it is remarkable that so many women have managed to prove their competence. It also lends credence to the oft repeated statement that women officers have to be better, tougher, and more competent than men.15 WOMEN IN THE COURT SYSTEM Despite recent impressive gains in the scope of women’s social and political rights and the general expansion of female labor in recent years, there have been few extensions of

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21

sex-linked boundaries in one of the most prestigious, male-dominated professions: the law. Consistent with the practices of related professions (such as medicine and academia), which offer economic and political power to their members, the legal field continues to be an almost exclusive male domain. With few notable exceptions, exclusionary practices begin with law school admissions. Once in school, women tend to be scruti-nized more severely than men and must overachieve to keep pace with their male counterparts. As graduates, women tend to have substantially greater difficulty finding positions and are consistently underrepresented in prestigious law firms in spite of proven scholarship and competence.16 Once on the job, women are paid less than men. Sexual stereotyping not only casts women into the lowest paying specialties of their profession, such as criminal law, but also drives them into circumscribed specialties, such as trusts, estates, and domestic relations. But while men use governmental jobs as stepping-stones into political office or to enhance a subsequent private practice, women tend to stay in these jobs and make them a career.17 Within government, women are employed as public prosecutors and public defenders, as well as agency lawyers. But few receive appointments to clerkships under distinguished judges, a recognized avenue to the bench in many countries. Fewer still become judges. Beyond their numerical under-representation, women judges face additional problems of discrimination. They too find themselves subjected to patterns of specialization and isolation on the bench. Reflecting the stereotypical thinking about women in general, they are assigned mostly to matrimonial and juvenile courts rather than trial courts. The few women judges who reach higher court levels remain tokens and highly visible exceptions to the rule. Considering these findings, women’s role in the legal professions of some countries is best characterized as marginal. Before looking in more detail at these employment patterns, it should be noted that sex-typing within the legal profession of many countries cannot be attributed to any inherent nature of the work. This is demonstrated by the fact that in many countries women comprise a substantial portion of the very professions considered male domains by those who discriminate. For example, many former socialist countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Cuba, made their mark by offering women work opportunities in this field. The results of the Third UN survey illustrate the low participation of women in the legal profession in many countries. Again, wide disparities in response rates and styles prohibit direct comparisons. Nonetheless, responding countries noted a 29.6% increase in female employment in their judiciary. Cuba and Poland reported comparatively large percentages of women in judgeships, magistracies and lay judgeships. In Spain, women comprised almost half of its judges and magistrates. Analysis of the data from the Fourth UN survey featured in Table 2.3 depicts some interesting changes in several countries. Austria reports that almost one third of its professional judges are women (29.3%). This reflects a 25% increase between the years of 1986 and 1990. In Bulgaria 136% of its professional judges are women, reflecting a 36% increase between 1986 and 1990. In Chile, 38.2% of its judiciary are women, reflecting a 31% increase over 4 years. There is a 42% increase of women judges during the survey years, with women judges representing 5.3% of its current judiciary. Almost half (46.1%) of the judges in the

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Netherlands are women. Finally, Turkey reports a 4% increase of women judges during 1986 and 1990, with 5.5% of its judiciary being women.

TABLE 2.3 Total Professional Judges for a Sample of Responding Countries, Fourth United Nations Survey, 1986–1990 1986 MEN Austria

1990

WOMEN MEN WOMEN

% CHANGE FOR WOMEN

WOMEN AS % OF MEN

1986–90

1990

12,214

284

1,214

356

25%

29.3%

Bulgaria

287

379

295

402

36%

136%

Chile

325

102

350

134

31%

38.2%

Japan

2,701

99

2,682

141

42%

5.3%

840

12

1,015

29

141%

0.3%

824

380

Rep. Korea Netherlands Poland

0

0

0

0

Qatar

0

0

0

0

Spain

0

0

0

0

Turkey

4,914

269

5,122

281

Uganda

0

0

0

0

Zimbabwe

0

0

0

0

46.1%

4%

5.5%

0=data not available. Source: United Nations (1994), The Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch.

The increases in women judges reported by these countries are certainly welcome news. However, continuing substantial variations in the employment of women as judges and their evident underutilization by other nations raise questions concerning the factors that limit their participation and achievement in these important occupations. Again, the answers are similar to those found in policing. Among the more critical factors working against the full participation of women as judges, prosecutors and lawyers are those deeply embedded in the structures of the professions: sex-typing of legal occupations, which reinforces exclusionary practices by linking occupational roles with sex roles, structural characteristics of the legal professions with their attendant patterns of formal and informal social interactions (such as networking and mentor systems), which hinder the participation of women, and inequitable selection processes which have the effect of barring women from the professions.

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SEX-TYPING IN THE LEGAL PROFESSIONS With some notable exceptions, the occupational hierarchy of women and men in law is largely segregated by sex: judges, prosecutors, court administrators and lawyers tend to be men, while clerks, paralegal workers, and secretaries are women. The major reason for the low participation of women in law is discrimination and typecasting based on sex. The practice of law has historically been perceived as “man’s work,” calling for an aggressive, authoritative personality, and a disciplined, logical mind. Equally retrospective views have never attributed such traits to women. The roots of these perceptions can easily be traced to deeply held cultural views of women in general and to highly ingrained social views of the roles women have traditionally performed in society. Inevitably, these roles have been tied to the necessary by highly limited functions of motherhood, homemaking, supportive services and helpmate to the dominant male in a woman’s life. It bears remembering that the discriminatory division of labor is institutionalized in any society and therefore becomes self-per-petuating. Different perceptions of work opportunities, combined with different utilization of women and men reinforce one another and become self-fulfilling prophecies that tangibly restrict employment opportunities for women. The effect of these processes is to undermine women’s aspirations and motivations for professional careers, work against their entry into professional life, and decreases their chances for success within their chosen field. STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION The study of the structural characteristics of professional organizations shows that they tend to be guided by general goals, specifying an area of activity (rather than a specific activity), from which a system of norms, values, and attitudes evolves that governs the behavior of the members. Characteristics include (1) a grounding in systematized theory and knowledge of specialized techniques, (2) authority based on the claim of unique, specialized knowledge and expertise, (3) monopolies over particular markets for particular services, (4) long periods of intensive academic training and/or apprenticeships, (5) professional codes of ethics regulating the educational process as well as the relations between members and the public, (6) strong commitment to the profession based on long investment in professional training, system socialization, and identification with the work, and (7) autonomy over the selection and training of new entrants, in the exercise of skills and techniques, in the application of knowledge, and in the control and evaluation of professional practice.18 Based on a common denominator of widely shared norms and attitudes, the legal profession tends toward homogeneity. Part of that homogeneity is maleness. The profession also serves its members by keeping them relatively immune from ordinary social pressures. As a result, they are more free to chart an unpopular course, take risks, or make unpopular decisions. To facilitate effective work, substantial autonomy is granted to individual members. Such autonomy is limited only by one’s individual conscience, even though the profession does exercise its authority through censure or expulsion of peers in extreme cases. An integral part of the

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professional structure of law is the fact that its practitioners are predominantly male. Women therefore do not easily fit into that structure.19 In summary, it is fair to state that the legal systems in some nations have embarked on the long road toward extending equal employment opportunities to women. Yet, the principles of equal employment opportunity seem to have been more openly applied in the private sector and in public sectors other than the judiciary, and the legal profession as a whole, where their application is best described as glacially slow. Given the evident reticence of so many legal systems concerning parity, it is difficult to be sanguine about women’s progress in this area. WOMEN IN CORRECTIONS SYSTEMS Corrections, the last subsystem of criminal justice also continues to be a male dominated profession. Akin to policing, corrections systems place much emphasis on physical characteristics and strength as key employment criteria and adhere to other requirements that disproportionately disqualify women. Since the vast majority of prisons across the globe are single-sex institutions, one of the basic issues facing corrections anywhere is whether women can overcome the major obstacles to equal employment opportunity and become more fully integrated into their nation’s corrections processes. Women who do manage to work in corrections are concentrated in clerical, nursing, teaching, and other support staff positions. Although the number of women technicians has increased somewhat in recent years, they remain excluded from line officer or similar protective service positions, which hold the greatest potential for career advancements. This is because managers and administrators are traditionally selected from the ranks of institutional personnel. This practice, combined with the fact that the number of institutions for males is much larger than the number for women, means that women are effectively excluded from management and upper echelon administrative posts. To the extent that women do occupy positions as professionals and administrators, they tend to work predominantly in institutions dedicated to female and juvenile offenders. Looking at correctional employment practices across the globe, the results of the Third survey reflect limited participation of women in correctional practice. A total of 29 countries from Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, reported utilizing women in their corrections systems. Less than one fourth (22.2%) of these countries reported an increase in the employment of women in their prisons. Women’s share of the total number of prison staff as reported by individual countries, ranges from a high of 25.4% to a low of 0.6%. Costa Rica corrections utilizes by far the largest percentage of women, 26%. Sweden follows closely with 25.4%. Chile, England and Wales, Greece, and Holland follow with about 10% women as part of the total work forces in corrections. Looking at women in managerial positions, highly variable rates are noted. Costa Rica leads with 58.%, England and Wales with 52%, and Argentina with 38%. In the low range are Bangladesh with 0.5%, Japan with 1.1%, and Northern Ireland with 3.5%.

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TABLE 2.4 Total Management Staff Adult Institutions for a Sample of Responding Countries, Fourth United Nations Survey, 1986–1990 1986

1990

% CHANGE FOR WOMEN

WOMEN AS % AS MEN

1986–90

1990

MEN

WOMEN

MEN

WOMEN

Austria

70

56

70

58

Bulgaria

165

8

131

8

Chile

1,061

93

1,154

100

7%

8.7%

Japan

2,080

37

2,098

46

24%

2.2%

Rep. Korea

1,530

2

1,548

4

100%

0.3%

Netherlands

106

12

208

27

125%

13.0%

Poland

484

108

368

84

-22%

22.8%

Qatar

27

3

36

6

100%

16.7%

Spain

0

0

0

0

Turkey

452

0

465

0

Uganda

262

8

304

11

37%

3.6

Zimbabwe

251

5

209

7

4%

3.4

3%

80% 6.1%

0=data not available. Source: United Nations (1994), The Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Crimtnal Justice Systems, Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch.

The Fourth Survey indicates little change from the earlier findings. Table 2.4 shows the total management staff for adult institutions for a sample of responding countries. Only Austria reports a large percentage of its institutional management staff to be women (80%), reflecting a 3% percent change between 1986 and 1990. The next highest percentage of women managers is in Poland (22.8%). But that country also reports a 22% decrease in the employment of women managers in corrections over the reporting period. Women managers comprise 8.7% of all managers in Chile, 13% in the Netherlands, 6.1% in Bulgaria, and 2.2% in Japan. The picture does not improve much when examining the employment situation of custodial staff.

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TABLE 2.5 Total Custodial Staff Adult Institutions for a Sample of Responding Countries, Fourth United Nations Survey, 1986–1990 1986 MEN

1990

WOMEN

MEN

WOMEN

% CHANGE FOR WOMEN

WOMEN AS % OF MEN

1986–90

1990

Austria

2,404

231

2,221

233

0.8%

0.5%

Bulgaria

1,281

72

1,317

72

no change

5.5%

Chile

2,589

225

2,622

258

14%

9.8%

Japan

10,699

532

10,566

572

8%

5.4%

Rep. Korea

5,169

231

5,431

282

22%

5.2%

Netherlands

2,882

323

4,550

784

142%

17.2%

11,477

359

8,467

209

−41%

2.5%

Qatar

140

20

156

23

15%

14.6%

Spain

6,065

688

8,500

1,321

92%

15.5%

Turkey

15,032

1,308

16,862

1,584

21%

9.4%

Uganda

2,223

460

2,618

407

−11%

15.5%

Zimbabwe

2,582

116

2,443

181

56%

7.4%

Poland

Source: United Nations (1994), The Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch.

Table 2.5 reflects total custodial staff in adult institutions for our sample of responding countries. It also shows the percent changes from 1986 to 1990 and depicts women custodial staff as a percentage of male custodial staff in 1990. The largest increase occurred in the Netherlands (142%), with women representing 17.2% of the total custodial force. Spain follows with a 92% increase over the reporting period and 15.5% women of the institutional custodial personnel. In Uganda, 15.5% of the custodial staff are women, but the country registered a negative percent change of −11%. Poland also reports a serious decline in women corrections officers. They currently represent 2.5% of all custodial staff and experienced a percentage decline of 41% over the reporting period. In Chile and Turkey women represent about 10% of the custodial staff and show double digit growth over the reporting period. The overall picture confirms that the corrections field has been extremely slow to extend working opportunities to women and that it will take serious efforts on the parts of governments and their respective judiciaries to remedy the situation.

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BARRIERS TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN CORRECTIONS Looking at the main objections to women in corrections, one encounters a familiar tone. Women are viewed by male administrators and correctional officers as being too weak physically and emotionally to deal with male inmates.20 Their characteristic traits of warmth, sensitivity, compliance and dependence are simply not deemed conducive to project the necessary authority and responsibility thought necessary for the work. Their capacity to maintain order and discipline is doubted. Men’s prisons, it is said, are filled with tension and violence. They are therefore too dangerous for women. Further, since most prisons hold predatory sex offenders, women’s presence might further destabilize the prison environment.21 If all else fails, it is argued that women working in cell blocks violate inmates’ inherent rights to privacy. In the face of these criticisms, it is useful to look at multiple research efforts evaluating the performance of women corrections officers in male institutions. Contrary to dire predictions, women officers experience few problems with male or female inmates.22 They perform as well as their male counterparts. They are also widely accepted by inmates and exert positive effects on the behavior of most prisoners.23 Women have also proven themselves capable of handling security assignments and have caused no more loss of control over inmates than their male counterparts. At least in the United States, it is no longer unusual to find women in charge of security in high security facilities ranging from jails to prisons.24 In summary, the employment record of women working in male corrections institutions, including maximum security prisons, attests to their utility and effectiveness in such settings. This record, supported by a growing number of studies, contradicts not only prevalent myths concerning women’s suitability for corrections work but an array of statutory, executive, and jurisprudential prohibitions continuing to stand in their way. While the desire to protect women from the hazards of contact employment in corrections is no doubt chivalrous, it cannot be accepted as valid ground for excluding them from those occupations. As long as women are qualified and able to meet the requirements of their employment, they should not be denied access to the field or unduly burdened with legal or regulatory restrictions. CONCLUSIONS This chapter has examined the status of women professionals in criminal justice systems from a global perspective. By identifying factors affecting the recruitment, placement and advancement of women in the field, it highlights way to develop a well grounded agenda for special programs and incentives designed to broaden women’s greater participation and advancement in criminal justice. The data from the United Nations surveys clearly show that countries differ sharply from one another in the extent to which women have access to work outside their homes. Some nations fully subscribe to the concept of equal employment opportunities for women, and their actual practices reflect genuine progress

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toward that goal. Other countries explicitly endorse the ideology of occupational equality between the sexes but implicitly restrict women’s access to work through a variety of discriminatory means. Still other countries offer few, if any employment opportunities. They isolate women by seclusion consistent with cultural prescriptions and deeply held values associated with religious decrees. Given the vast differences in employment practices and opportunities, women’s progress in labor force participation has been varied. Their work opportunities and labor force participation are indisputably tied to the characteristics of their respective social systems. Specifically, participation increases with economic development, modernization and industrialization. Still other factors affecting women’s labor force participation are the stability of the family and kinship systems, as well as the degree to which the power of social control is vested in family units.25 Consequently, countries with stable kinship and family systems are less likely to have large proportions of women in the labor force compared to those characterized by instability. Among the indicators of the latter are high divorce rates and weakened family control so often found in developed, highly industrialized countries. Perhaps the most significant factor affecting women’s employment patterns is related to social stratification. Specifically, income inequality seems to be a major determinant of women’s work force participation: when it is high, women are less likely to participate in the work force. Thus the combined effects of high income inequality, low levels of development, and high the factor of women bearing children function to keep women out of the labor market. Obversely, women’s participation in work increases with rapid industrialization, declining fertility and the abatement of income inequality. But even with changing conditions women’s quest for parity with men remains elusive. More often than not they are segregated in low paying, low status occupational positions. Cross-national data, including those featured in this chapter, consistently show women’s predominance in clerical, service, and supportrelated occupations. In spite of this chapter’s deliberate emphasis on problems and barriers to women’s employment and advancement in criminal justice systems, there are reasons to conclude with an optimistic note. The barriers, although significant, are not impenetrable. The road toward equality, is being traveled successfully by an ever increasing number of competent, dynamic and determined women in an equally increasing number of countries. Changes in women’s employment patterns, although inextricably entwined with socioeconomic and political development in their respective countries, have shown many improvements. In many countries, women have successfully breached occupations that were heretofore culturally and traditionally reserved for men alone. The importance of these achievements should not be underestimated. As women move into higher echelon positions and prove their competence, they open the way for others to follow. The basic consideration at issue here is that as nations move to make possible a more fair and full contribution by women, they will reap untold benefits in terms of productivity, human dignity and social justice.

Notes 1. United Nations initiatives on behalf of women span several decades and include: Report of the World Conference on International Women’s Year, Mexico City, 19 June–2 July 1975, Document E/CONF.66/34, UN Publication; Report of the World Conference of the United

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Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace (1980), Document A/CONF.94/35:8 Copenhagen; Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (1990), Document A/CONF.144/17, Havana, August/September; Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace (1995), Beijing, September (this conference produced a system-wide mediumterm plan for the advancement of women, 1996–2001, designed to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Document A/CONF. 177/20); and the report of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (1996), Report of the Fifth Session, Economic and Social Council Supplement No. 10, May 1996, New York: United Nations. 2. For a discussion of legislative, judicial, and administrative initiatives undertaken on behalf of equal employment opportunities in the United States see: E.E.Flynn (1982), “Women as Criminal Justice Professionals,” Judge, Lawyer, Victim, Thief (eds., N.H. Rafter and E.A.Stanko), Boston: Northeastern University Press. 3. United Nations (1994), The Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch. 4. E.E.Flynn (1985), “Women as Practitioners in Criminal Justice Systems: The Fair Treatment of Women in the Criminal Justice System,” in Criminal Justice Processes and Perspectives in a Changing World, Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Document A/CONF. 121/17:40–69. 5. C.Clark (1940), The Conditions of Economic Progress, London: Macmillan. 6. W.E.Moore (1964), “Social Aspects of Economic Development,” in Handbook of Modern Sociology (ed., R.E.L.Faris), Chicago: Rand McNally. 7. R.J.Terrill (1997), World Criminal Justice Systems, Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing. 8. S.Ehrlich Martin and N.C.Jurik (1996), Doing Justice, Doing Gender, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, p. 56. 9. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1995 (1996), Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, p. 39. 10. For a good discussion of women in policing in the United States, see S.Ehrlich Martin and N.C.Jurik (1996), Doing Justice, Doing Gender, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 11. Ibid. 12. H.W.Bartlett and A.Rosenblum (1977), Policewoman Effectiveness, Denver: Civil Service Commission and Denver Police Department. 13. R.D.Townsey (1980), National Information and Research Center on Women in Policing Performance Evaluations, Washington, DC: The Police Foundation. 14. M.T.Charles (1982), “Women in Policing: The Physical Aspects,” Journal of Police Science and Administration 10(2): 194–205. 15. M.Bass (1982), “Stress: A Woman Officer’s View,” Police Stress 5(1): 30–33. 16. S.Homer and L.Schwartz (1990), “Admitted but Not Accepted: Outsiders Take an Inside Look at Law School,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal Annual 5:1–74. 17. M.Patterson and L.Engelberg (1982), “Women in a Male Dominated Profession: The Women Lawyers,” in The Criminal Justice System and Women (eds. B.R.Price and N.L.Sokoloff), New York: Clark Boardman, pp. 385–397. 18. W.J.Goode (1969), “The Theoretical Limits of Professionalization,” in The SemiProfessions and Their Organization (ed. A. Etzioni), New York: Free Press, pp. 266–313; W.R.Scott (1964), “Theory of Organizations,” in Handbook of Modern Sociology (ed. E.L.Faris), Chicago: Rand McNally, pp. 485–529. 19. A.Etzioni (1964), Modern Organizations, Englewood Clifs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 76–93. 20. J.B.Morton (1991), “Women Correctional Officers: A Ten-Year Update,” Change, Challenge, and Choices: Women’s Role in Mod-ern Corrections, Laurel, MD; American Correctional Association. 21. For a good discussion of the basic arguments against women as line officers in corrections, see Dothard v. Rawlinson, 97 U.S. Supreme Court 2720 (1977).

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22. R.Johnson (1987), Hardtime: Understanding and Reforming the Prison, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole. See also N.C.Jurik (1988), “Striking a Balance: Female Correctional Officers, Gender Role Stereotypes, and Male Prisons,” Sociological Inquiry 58:291–305. 23. N.J.Harm (1981), “Female Employees in Male Institutions,” Proceedings of the 110th Annual Congress of Corrections, College Park, MD: American Correctional Association, pp. 269–274. 24. E.E.Flynn (1997), Managing Elderly Offenders, A National Survey, Report to the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC. 25. J.A.Giele and A.C.Smock (1977), Women, Roles and Status in Eight Countries, New York: Wiley.

Chapter Three Wife Abuse in South Korea*

Merry Morash, Vincent Hoffman, Yoon Ho Lee, and Young He Shim INTRODUCTION Theoretical explanations of wife abuse in South Korea tend to highlight either features of Korean culture, which is assumed to include values and norms that promote husbands’ domination of their wives, or characteristics of social structure, *The order of author names does not imply unequal contributions to the chapter. Merry Morash coordinated the research and writing. All authors contributed to development of research instruments, gathering data, translation of information, analyzing and interpreting data, and writing the chapter. Working as graduate assistants at the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice, Youn Hee Shin was extensively involved in translation of materials and development of the research instrument, and with Rosie Cherrie in organizing, conducting, and analyzing data from focus groups. Dr. Hae Sun Kim, Director of the Women’s Hotline in Seoul, conducted and recorded information from the interviews in South Korea. Hoan Bui, a doctoral student at the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice, contributed to the review of literature and the preparation of the final draft of the chapter.

which is marked by a rigid hierarchical structure as well as the exclusion of married women from the work force, particularly from positions of authority within business, education, and the government. Related to women’s position also is the practice of arranged marriages, depicted in traditional symbolism as women’s departure from their families to join their husbands’ families. Although in contemporary Korea many women maintain strong ties to their family of origin, wives typically assume numerous obligations to their in-laws, including the obligation to please both them and their son. In this context, a wife’s social position depends heavily on the status of her husband and his family, which combined with minimal opportunities for earnings through employment would make it difficult for women to leave abusive relationships. As with research on any group or subgroup, it is essential to avoid accepting stereotypes of culture, or assumptions about social structure, and instead make them the focus of study. For instance, there is a popular belief that Asian women are taught to be submissive, and Asian men to be dominant, with a resulting power imbalance that supports male violence. It is imperative to empirically examine such ideas, since particularly in studying cultural or national groups, unsupported assumptions can

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substitute for theoretical explanations. One result is “ethnicity” or “culture” blaming, marked by reductionist reasoning that wife abuse is caused by “someone else’s culture.” Such reasoning absolves researchers and policy makers of the need to determine whether structural inequality, changing norms, or other factors have a part to play. It also reflects the fallacies that (1) there is a uniform culture—in this case Asian or Korean, and (2) that this culture is static and unaffected by forces within or outside of particular geographic locations. Although some social scientists have viewed culture as a static set of ideas that govern thoughts and actions, the more comprehensive conceptualization is that behavior can also influence the system of cultural beliefs (Harris, 1997; also see Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1963). Harris presented an example that clarifies how, within a culture, ideas about gender can be influenced by behavior. Although before the 1970s many U.S.women and men accepted the cultural norm that wives should be dependent on their husbands’ income, this changed after a rise in the cost of living resulted in many women’s entry into the labor market in order to maintain their families’ standard of living. Of course despite some changes in cultural values related to the status of women, many contemporary cultures still maintain a dominant ideology that supports and reproduces patriarchal arrangements. Feminist scholars have emphasized these commonalties in cultures that support patriarchy (for a review of this work, see Franklin et al., 1991:173). Nevertheless, culture-specific research is valuable in revealing “the very real differences between women and the resulting specificities in the forms of their oppression” (Franklin et al., 1991). Whether and how culture-specific beliefs and/or cultural change do indeed promote wife abuse are important questions, and they are addressed in the exploratory research described in a later section of this chapter. However, these are questions, not empirically supported explanations, and alternative explanations are offered by several of the theories developed to explain patterns of wife abuse within South Korea. These alternative theories have not focused on culture, but rather have focused on structural explanations. Like cultural explanations, theories in which structure is the salient explanation of abuse are suggested, but require further testing with empirical evidence. Particularly in urban centers, where a large proportion of the population is concentrated, the status of women in South Korea is undergoing escalating change, with divorce rates increasing, women entering the work force in increased numbers, newly passed laws that promote women’s entry into positions of authority, and changing expectations in couples’ relations to their in-laws and in spouses relations to each other. Changes in the law include the passage and evolution of both the Sexual Equality in Employment Act and The Family Law. The 1988 Sexual Equality in Employment Act was a declaration and did not contain specific prohibitions even against wage discrimination based on gender. As might be expected, sanctions in response to violations were nearly nonexistent. The first revision in 1989 stipulated that there should be equal pay for work of equal value, provided a definition of discrimination, and placed the burden of proving that there was not discrimination on the employer. The second revision in 1990 prohibited direct and explicit sexual discrimination, for example based on employee characteristics unrelated to job performance (e.g., appearance), in the recruiting and selection process; prohibited discrimination in the fringe benefits and welfare provisions (e.g., family wage, loans); and expanded the leave of absence for child care to

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male workers with wives in the work force. During 1997, there has been an effort to further change the law to include prohibitions of indirect discrimination, for example discrimination resulting from a distorted sex culture in the workplace. Similarly the family law, which was initially passed in 1958, and revised in 1962 and 1977, was significantly changed in 1990 to make it possible for women seeking divorce to receive custody of their children, and to ask for division of the family’s property. It is important to develop theoretical explanations of wife abuse in South Korea in light of current laws, cultural beliefs and structural conditions. To respond to the need to consider contemporary realities, this chapter will first summarize prior research on the patterns of wife abuse, as well as South Korean scholars’ theoretical explanations for these patterns. To generate new explanations and to underscore the relevance of existing hypotheses linking current realities in South Korea to women’s experience of wife abuse, we conducted focus groups with individuals who were temporarily away from South Korea. The second part of this chapter summarizes the methods and the results of these focus groups. The third section links the South Korean scholarly literature and the focus group results to broader international research and theory. The fourth section provides results of exploratory research conducted to learn how South Korean women view their options, including their potential for receiving help from the law and the police, and to link selected hypothesized causes of women being in abusive situations with various levels of abuse. In conclusion, we assess the state of wife abuse in South Korea, and identify additional research that is needed. PATTERNS AND THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS OF WIFE ABUSE Patterns of Wife Abuse Emphasizing that there is much unrecognized domestic violence in South Korea, Shim (1992) reported on her survey of women in 1,171 households. She found that for a oneyear period beginning in July 1990, there was husband-to-wife violence of some type in over one-third of families. She further described the situation: Among these, serious violence which can be called wife beating occurred in 10.6% of the households…. 13.2% had instances of the husband throwing objects at the wife; 18.1% had instances of the husband pushing, grabbing or shoving the wife; 11.4% had instances of the husband slapping the wife; 9.6% had instances of the husband kicking or hitting the wife with his fist; 3.2% had instances of the husband hitting or trying to hit the wife with an object; 1.9% had instances of the husband beating up the wife; 1.6% had instances of the husband threatening the wife with a knife or other dangerous object; 0.6% had instances of the husband using a knife or other dangerous object on the wife (p. 168). Shim documented a much lower incidence of wife-to-husband abuse for the same period, with wives engaging in less physical violence than husbands for all of the areas considered. Moreover, compared with men, women were found to be at

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greater risk for the most serious violence (beating) by their spouses. (Shim, 1992) In a 1990 article, Kim describes the operation of “the Women’s Hotline,” which initiated operations in 1983. At the time his article was published, he documented that this nongovernmental organization, located in Seoul, handled 3000 cases each year through either telephone or in-person communications, and that approximately 45% of them were battered wives. There are additional organizations (e.g., the Violence Victim Clinic of Hanyang University Hospital and the Korean Legal Aid Centers for Family Relations) which also respond to family violence in Seoul, and of course many abused women do not seek assistance from any organizations, so many individuals seeking help in that city would not be known to the Women’s Hotline. In his article, Kim cited much prior research indicating rates of 50% or more women reporting physical abuse at some time during their marriage; with fairly high estimates of wives also physically attacking their husbands, though these estimates are lower than those for husbands’ violence towards wives. He also presented considerable clinical evidence of the severity of injury among battered wives coming to a medical clinic (e.g., with 61% having problems such as bone fractures, eye injuries, stab wounds, or abortion due to injuries); and in a psychiatric setting, with 85% diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Cho and Kim (1990) have reported on a survey of 707 women and 609 men. Using the Conflict Tactics Scale developed by Strauss to measure abuse, they conclude that in the year prior to the data collection, the rate of being battered was “37.5 percent in women and 23.2 percent in men [and for] serious battering was 12.4 percent in women and 3.7 percent in men” (p. 149). Cho and Kim found somewhat more violence in lower-class families, however they questioned the reliability of this finding. Establishing actual rates for abuse is difficult for several reasons. The studies cited above rely heavily on the Conflict Tactics Scale developed by Strauss (1979). This scale has been much criticized for it assumes that an act such as a slap by a man is equivalent to a slap by a woman, which is questionable in light of the usually larger size and greater strength of men. Also, the scale does not reflect the degree to which women’s acts are defensive. Unfortunately, data on injury in Korea are limited to injury and psychological harm to women (Kim, 1990); and it may be that there are not nearly comparable levels of harm to men, due to men’s greater strength and women’s defensive posture. Despite the difficulties in establishing actual rates of wife abuse, it is clear that there is a substantial problem in South Korea, it results in both physical and emotional trauma to women, and that it exists at least to some extent across social classes. Theoretical Explanations Theoretical explanations developed by South Korean scholars implicate a variety of factors in the etiology of wife abuse. These include: women’s very limited participation in the work force and men’s related burden of responsibility as wage earners, Confucian beliefs about men’s and women’s status in the family, related patriarchal beliefs about men’s authority—and the State’s lack of authority—in the realm of family matters, and the consequences of divorce for women. Another explanation is that there is generally a

Wife abuse in South Korea

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high tolerance for violence within South Korean society, and this extends to tolerance of wife abuse. There is no question that women have been limited in their participation in the labor force, and although many women do work, there is a pronounced difference in levels of educational achievement and, for married women, in labor force participation rates. For married people in 1990 (the most recent year for which data are available) 47.1% of women and 88.1% of men participated in the labor force (Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1995:131). The current available data on education (1990) similarly reveals a similar gender disparity, with 20.1% of men but just 8.3% of women obtaining a college or university education, and 38.9% of men but only 28.4% of women completing high school (Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1995:86). Although the gender bias coupled with lower educational attainment limits women’s entry into many positions, such discrimination is now prohibited by the Sexual Equality in Employment Act. The law coupled with a cost of living that makes it difficult to support a family on one income suggest that there will be an increase in the proportion of working wives. The entry of more women into the work force is complicated, however, because there are complex implications for children and social pressures against women’s working. Education is highly valued in South Korea, and many mothers are heavily involved in supplementing public education, particularly for elementary school aged children. There is limited availability of child care, and also limited availability of alternative supplements to the public education process, within which a competitive advantage in achievement is absolutely essential for a child to secure access to a university education and/or to a desirable job. Other constraints, more subtle than bias in hiring, also operate to limit women’s work opportunities; for example, there is social pressure for women who do work to have positions of equal status with their husbands, and the highest status positions are the most difficult for women to obtain. Thus, although laws have become more supportive of women’s entry into the work force, there remain a set of barriers to women’s working outside of the home, particularly if they have children. Despite employment and family-related constraints on women, there has been an increase in the divorce rate. In 1980 there were 5.8 divorces per 100 marriages, but by 1993 the rate was 15 per 100 (Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1995:67). Probable explanations for the increase include a change in women’s consciousness resulting from reduced stigma associated with the label “divorcee,” women’s reduced dependence on husbands, and a related increase in women’s aspirations to be independent and active outside of the home. The reduction (though not elimination) of sexual discrimination and increased employment opportunities also no doubt contribute to women’s willingness to divorce. The women’s movement has been active in promoting social and legal changes throughout South Korea, and provides a context for changes in consciousness and opportunity. The gender imbalance in work force participation has been used to explain wife abuse. The economic dependence of women places men in a dominant position in relation to their wives, and violence is one way that men exercise their power. In support of this explanation, Kim’s (1995:95) interviews with South Korean men who had battered their wives revealed that the men reasoned that the only purpose for exerting themselves in their jobs was to support their families, and thus they felt entitled to exercise power and their rights to dominate at home. They perceived their wives’ rejection of their claims to

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authority as challenges to their dominance, and they saw violence as one tactic for establishing dominance in the face of such a challenge. Kim’s (1995) analysis of interviews with men who batter also showed a variant on the attribution of wife abuse to men’s dominance. Men who were unable to provide adequate economic support for their families feel frustrated and degraded, and violence towards the wife was in some cases a way to assert one’s power in the family, even if there was a sense of powerlessness in the workplace. This is exacerbated by the economic realities in South Korea, where many men feel they must work in inappropriately lower-status positions in a system of capitalistic hierarchy. In other words, they work in organizations characterized by vertical relationships, where taking orders from superiors is expected and mandatory. Men working in such situations feel there are few if any possibilities for locating alternative work, a perception that is rein-forced by the societal value placed on not changing jobs. They also experience their relationships to superiors as indicative of their own lack of status. Some men adapt to this situation by being masochistic in relationship to their superiors, but sadistic in relationship to their wives. Kim and Shim (1992:134) developed and supported this explanation with results from their survey of 1,200 men and women in Seoul. The survey revealed that most people are tolerant when men with high tension and stress at work hit their wives. Some theorists attribute wife abuse in South Korea to Confucian beliefs. Confucian beliefs emanate from ancient China, where they originated almost 1000 years ago. They were integrated into a religion, and embraced throughout Korea. Although Confucianism is not a common religion in contemporary South Korea, most Koreans incorporate Confucian ideals as their traditional values and as a part of their culture. Traditional Confucian beliefs are that the husband is dominant within the household, and that women are expected to respect their husbands, and to be patient and tolerant of them, without voicing their own ideas and concerns. Men are to lead their families, and women are to be submissive and follow their husbands. Empirical research supports the influence of this patriarchal ideology on wife abuse. The highest levels of abuse characterize families with both husband and wife strongly supporting Confucian ideals about men’s domination in the family (Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1993:48–52). In additional research on traditional ideology, Kim (1995:97) wrote that the influence of Confucian thinking is confirmed by his finding that abused women believed that they should carry out their responsibilities as wives and mothers regardless of abuse by the husband. He obtained further confirmation from his interviews with wife batterers, who argued that if wives did not talk back to them, were submissive, took orders and followed them, and did what they were asked to do, there would not have been any violence (Kim 1995:98). Although the rationalizations do implicate Confucian ideas, it should be noted that these same or similar rationalizations have been used by batterers who are not Korean and who have no knowledge of Confucian ideals, so it is somewhat unclear whether a particular value system, or any value system that offers a rational for wife abuse, is causally related to men’s propensity to abuse their wives; or whether men use these rationalizations to explain their actions after the fact, drawing on whatever ideology offers plausible justification.1 The influence of in-laws in inciting abuse is raised both by Confucian ideals and more pragmatic realities. Consistent with Confucianism, men feel considerable responsibility for their parents, and even their siblings. Their wives are expected to similarly be

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responsible to in-laws, and in the past it has been usual for wives to regularly do shopping, household chores, and provide meals to their in-laws. It also was common for husbands’ parents to intervene in the lives of their sons and daughters-in-law. South Korean families often live in close proximity to each other, with the population concentrated in a small number of densely populated metropolitan areas. Even if couples do not live in the same city as their parents, because of the small geographic size of the country, few people live more than one day’s driving distance from their in-laws. The continued importance of contact with in-laws is graphically evident as the county’s highways become congested to the point of coming to a standstill when couples travel to visit their parents each Saturday at noon, at the close of the official work week. Thus, possibly with the stimulation of Confucian ideals, there are a number of factors that can promote in-law conflict with the wife, and can result in violence by the husband. A somewhat different explanation of wife abuse in South Korea is that there is a high level of tolerance for violence in general, or that particular subgroups of men are tolerant of violence towards women (Kim and Shim, 1992; Kim, 1995:99–100). Some theorists claim that police use of force against citizens, corporal punishment of children by parents and teachers, corporal punishment by superiors in the military (in which all males serve for two years), and the media’s reinforcement of a tolerance or preference for violence contribute to general acceptance of violence (Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1993:45–52). Kim (1995:102–103) did find that men who batter reported exposure to television scenes showing wife abuse, and that men in these scenes were abusive because their wives deserved such treatment. Moreover, Kim and Shim (1992:132) found that in a sample of 1200 people, the majority of men (55.5%) and nearly one-third of women (32.2%) agreed that “wives are beaten because they did something which made them deserve the beating.” However, in this public opinion survey, there was not widespread tolerance of various acts of aggression, with 10% or fewer of the study respondents indicating acceptance of particular acts of pushing, hitting, or beating. Thus, there is mixed evidence of a general tolerance of violence which extends to wife abuse in South Korea. There is, though, evidence that many people tolerate the specific form of violence, wife abuse, which might explain this phenomena. A final set of factors that Korean theorists have identified as relevant to wife abuse include the law, the realities of its implementation, and the aftermath of divorce for women. Drawing on medical and psychiatric clinical samples, Kim (1990:126) concluded that “only 1 to 2 percent of the battered wives have reported it to the police, and only 8 percent of them expressed their will to divorce at the initial interview.” Laws stipulate beating or abusing elderly members of the family as an assault. There is a movement to formulate a “Domestic Violence Prevention Act,” and political parties and women’s movement organizations have proposed the legislation. At the time of writing this chapter, the proposed law was under review in the Congress, but not yet passed. Because assault between unrelated individuals is illegal, some women have filed for divorce, and have then been able to use the legal system to charge the husband for an assault, since he is then considered as unrelated. Yet, the legal response that would be possible if the Domestic Violence Prevention Act is passed is as yet unrealized. Until very recently, most married women in South Korea found it impossible to escape abuse by their husbands by divorcing them. The realities of women’s lives after divorce can be very harsh in South Korea. Divorced women often do not have custody of their

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children, and when they leave the family, they cannot fulfill the important expectations for mothers in the education of their children. It is not unusual for women fleeing to shelters to leave their children with the husband, so that the children’s education and support system will not be disrupted. Moreover, the phenomenon of losing face is quite powerful. Although in recent years there is some amelioration of the stigma of being divorced, a divorced women still can experience a loss of social standing and shame. Women are aware that divorce can cause not only their own loss of face, but the same negative outcome for their parents and their children. Consistent with the negative outcomes of divorce, Kim and Shim (1992:111) documented that 40.2% of abused wives said they would stay in their homes, living with an abusive husband. The reasons were in most cases because of children (57.2%, n=63), or because a woman “must be married” (25.5%, n=28); smaller proportions said they would stay because of economic constraints, pity for the husband, or social status concerns. The severe consequences of divorce for women can act as a constraint on their leaving abusive relationships, and also can contribute to men’s sense of impunity if they are abusive, since their wives are unlikely to leave. In the legal and the social context described above, it is not surprising that both informal and formal interventions into wife abuse have been viewed as difficult and/or inappropriate for neighbors and law enforcement officials. The feminist movement within South Korea has taken the initiative to define wife abuse as a social problem, and the research of Kim (1995) and others (Kim and Shim, 1992; Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1993) has been a force in this move-ment. Currently, several feminist organizations are active in providing support to women through shelters, assistance in finding jobs, and the provision of legal services. Before 1990, Kim (1995:127) reported that public opinion had shifted, and that according to the 1989 Korea Survey Gallup Polls, “65.7 percent [of respondents] recognized wife-battering as a serious problem, 49.1 percent approved legal punishment of the batterer, and 54.4 percent did not tolerate wifebattering under any conditions.” These shifts were most prevalent among younger and better-educated people. Nevertheless, the availability of services is limited, and it is rare for people to call the police for help when they are aware of or experiencing wife abuse. FOCUS GROUPS To supplement the literature on wife abuse in Korea and open the possibility for theory development a series of focus groups was held at Michigan State University, which is located in the Greater Lansing area. Michigan State University has a population of nearly 1,000 Korean students, many of whom have spouses who have accompanied them to the United States. There also is a Korean population indigenous to the Greater Lansing area. The focus groups with students and spouses were constituted to include a variety of people including, from the university community, two groups of married women, and one group each of married men, unmarried women, and unmarried men. An additional group of Korean women who live in the area but are unaffiliated with Michigan State University were in a sixth group. This last group included women aged 40 or older who had lived in the United States for a period of time. The total number of people participating in the groups was 27. Participants in all groups were recruited through a

Wife abuse in South Korea

39

snowball approach, with a faculty member fluent in Korean and integrated into the student and local Korean community networks, and a masters degree student from Seoul who lived in the student housing where many Korean students resided, encouraging participation of individuals known to them, and obtaining recommendations of other people. Efforts were made to include individuals from a variety of academic and professional fields, who would bring alternative viewpoints to the discussions. Potential participants were told that we were designing research on family violence in South Korea, and that we sought their insight as a way of ensuring that we had an adequate understanding of Korea to develop a useful research project. All of the focus group participants were from South Korea, and most had spent less than two years outside of the country. Many had some knowledge of English, all were from the middle and upper middle class, and all had at least an undergraduate degree from a Korean university. The women in particular were knowledgeable about social issues and circumstances in Korea, and were interested in the subject of wife abuse, as well as the related topics of justice and opportunities for women in Korea. We did not ask focus group participants about their own experience of abuse, but about their perceptions of abuse among Korean women, its causes, and potential methods for prevention. Consistent with focus group methodology, participants were provided with a series of questions, and there was considerable discussion within the group regarding alternative answers. The focus group facilitators concentrated on recording information and guiding the group discussion so that all of the questions were addressed within approximately one hour. Most focus group facilitators were bilingual, and conversation switched between English and Korean, with considerable attention to clarifying terms. From the six focus groups, which were taped and then transcribed into English, participants specified five factors that they thought were salient causes of wife abuse in contemporary South Korea. In developing a survey instrument for use in exploratory research (described below), measures were developed for variables identified across different types of groups (as well as by just one or a few groups) as well as causative factors identified in selected theoretical explanations which were reviewed earlier in this chapter. The groups identified the following factors as causes of wife abuse: • Lack of formal laws relating to abuse, with particular emphasis on public knowledge of the laws and perceptions of whether the police would take any actions. • Social status of husband and wife, with some participants saying that wife abuse is a “lower class” problem, or a problem of people with limited education. • The economic marginality of women, who are limited in opportunities for earnings. • Tolerance for violence, particularly by men who had been treated brutally by superiors during their military service. • Conflict with in-laws, particularly between the mother-in-law and the wife. The consensus in all but one focus group was that there were considerable generational differences in the experience of wife abuse, and related beliefs and relationships of family members. For example, groups talked about parents’ greater willingness to assist a daughter in leaving an abusive relationship, some mothers-in-law’s views that their sons should help their wives in the home, reduced family size which has made it possible for parents to afford an education for daughters as well as for sons, and mass media’s

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influence on women to view abuse as unacceptable. The focus group participants also spoke about the degree to which Western ideas had impacted Korean women. They described two dynamics related to abuse, with women’s rebellion against men’s domination resulting in abuse in some families, but in other families men’s acceptance of Western ideas resulting in lower levels of abuse. A third area of consensus was that wife abuse could be prevented by improving the economic status of women, which would increase their independence, and through education of adults as well as school children about the problems of wife abuse. INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH Although the international and comparative research on wife battering and other abuse consists of aggregate data generated in a small number of developed nations (especially Great Britain, the United States, and Canada), or ethnographic data for a nonrepresentative sampling of countries and cultures (Kruttschnitt, 1993), this literature is a useful supplement to Korea-specific research and theory. The broader international work confirms the importance of some common etiological factors that are not specific to Korea. In particular, South Korean feminist activists and scholars have asserted that there is a high level of wife abuse, and the international literature identifies several features characteristic of Korea that predict high abuse levels. Summarizing crosscultural and ethnographic research, Kruttschnitt (1993:261) concluded that wife battering is most likely when women do not have close bonds with exclusively female economic groups, family members, or work groups, and when men dominate all aspects of family life. Female economic groups are not characteristic of the Korean economy, and most wives do not participate in work groups at all. The Korean family structure is in some ways quite patriarchal, which Nash (1992), consistent with Kruttschnitt, found to be characteristic of societies with high levels of abuse, although in some families women exercise considerable decision making power and control of resources within the household. Throughout the world, wife beating is most frequent where the male dominates all aspects of family life, including restricting the female’s access to divorce (Levinson, 1989; see also, Sanday, 1981). Thus, many but not all of the phenomena associated with high levels of wife abuse internationally are found in contemporary South Korea. Also consistent with Korean scholars’ and focus-group participants’ attention to women’s limited work force participation and their history of being disadvantaged by the law, there is considerable evidence that at the aggregate level, U.S. women who are most at risk for wife abuse are structurally disadvantaged relative to men, that is they are in states where women lack economic resources (e.g., jobs, especially those with high status and income), education (e.g., high school graduation, positions of authority in higher education), political resources (e.g., representation in government), and legal resources (e.g., fair employment practices, rape shield laws) (Yllo, 1983a,b; Yllo and Straus, 1988). Women’s capability to challenge men’s status because they do have resources also seems to be related to their being abused, albeit at the second highest rate for the U.S.study (Yllo, 1983a,b; also see Yllo, 1984 and Yllo and Straus, 1984)

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41

Research outside the United States also implicates women’s challenge to patriarchal family and economic structures in the etiology of wife abuse (Gartner et al., 1990:597). Patriarchy is: “A structure, in which men have more power and privilege than women, and an ideology that legitimizes this arrangement” (Smith 1990:266). In extremely patriarchal countries, women who attempt to escape traditional domestic and economic roles (but have not yet completed the transition) may, therefore, be at greatest risk of being beaten and killed by their spouses (see also, Allen and Straus, 1980; Daly and Wilson, 1988; Wilson and Daly, 1993). However, the risk associated with a challenge to existing patriarchal arrangements is conditioned by social class. As noted earlier in this chapter, focus-group participants and Korean scholars have asserted that higher-status women are less at risk. In her research on several countries, Gartner et al. (1990:608) provided empirical evidence that women with higher socioeconomic status, specifically as measured by their education, are at lower risk for victimization. Thus, although women’s risk is generally higher when they are in a patriarchal society and are more involved in nontraditional roles (i.e., delayed marriage, divorce, single parenthood, and labor force participation), the risk is reduced for women with high levels of education. In South Korea, the increased feasibility of divorce as a solution to abuse, related changes in The Family Law, and the work opportunities created by The Sexual Equality in Employment Act increase women’s possibilities to escape abusive marriages, but this also can put them at risk for abuse, since “women who attempt to escape traditional domestic and economic roles (but have not yet completed the transition) may, therefore, be at greatest risk of being beaten and killed by their spouses” (Kruttschnitt 1993:261). Again, the legal and social context in South Korea would seem to be conducive to wife abuse unless there are countervailing forces in particular families, such as the woman’s high educational attainment. Mirroring the notion that Confucian beliefs promote wife abuse, researchers with an international focus have used data from different countries to document a connection of wife abuse to belief systems that support patriarchal family arrangements. Smith (1990:266) reported that Toronto women’s perceptions that their husbands had beliefs supportive of a patriarchal family structure were predictive of wife abuse. Studies in several countries have provided additional evidence that separate codes of conduct for women and men, an element of patriarchy, is consistently related to wife abuse (Counts, 1992; Gallin, 1992; Hegland, 1992; Lateef, 1992; Le Thi Quy, 1996; McKee, 1992; Miller, 1992). In contrast to societies with the most patriarchal arrangements, those characterized by belief in gender equality and women’s view that they are not inferior or weak had low rates of battering (Kerns, 1992; Lambek, 1992; Mitchell, 1992). In a similar vein, Dobash and Dobash (1979) found from research on Scottish women in shelters that when men think their wives have violated norms that support the patriarchal family arrangement, they respond by battering them. Extrapolating from these studies, we would expect that in South Korea, Confucian and other cultural beliefs provide an ideology that legitimizes the greater power and privilege of men in comparison to women, and women are therefore at risk for abuse particularly when they challenge these beliefs. The international literature has demonstrated the importance of the legal system and the availability of divorce in the etiology of abuse. The flip side of patriarchal beliefs about men’s authority in the family is the lack of the State’s authority in the realm of

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family matters. Nash (1992) found that in selected societies, a legal system that provided resources for resolving family conflict accounted for low incidence of violence against women. Access to divorce as an option, and the related view that divorce is not stigmatizing, is characteristic of societies with low levels of battering (Lambek, 1992). Wife abuse is more common where divorce is difficult and results in women’s stigmatization (Hegland, 1992; Lateef, 1992; Miller, 1992; Swirski, 1991). In South Korea, the legal system has been of quite limited use in providing a response to abuse that assists women; and as we have previously emphasized, it is recently that laws regarding divorce have been changed and the stigma of divorce has been somewhat reduced. Parallel to focus-group members’ assertions that conflict between women and their mothers-in-law contributes to abuse, there is evidence from other countries that mothersin-law encourage sons to be abusive, or are themselves psychologically and/or physically abusive of young wives (see review of relevant literature by Fernandez, 1997). Kandioti (1988) attributed this pattern to a “patriarchal bargain” in which women preserve benefits granted to them by men by supporting a system that subordinates other women. She challenged the common assumption by U.S. and European scholars that the family is organized around the husband-wife relationship, and described organization in many countries (including South Korea) around an extended family. As we have described, inlaws typically play an important role in the lives of most South Korean couples, and thus could contribute to wife abuse. A final area of international research that is relevant to understanding the dynamics of abuse in South Korea concerns the level of tolerance for all sorts of violence within a society. There has not been research that has provided evidence of the connection of a general tolerance of violence with variance in wife battering. Instead, studies provide countryspecific case examples of the connection between abuse and general tolerance of violence. Several researchers have found that a general tolerance of violence characterizes countries where symmetrical violence of husband and wife towards each other is common (Carucci, 1992; McDowell, 1992). Hageland (1992) described one country which is high both in general tolerance of violence and a high rate of asymmetrical wife abuse (i.e., husband’s abuse of the wife, but not abuse by the wife). Also some societies which do not tolerate violence other than wife abuse, are characterized by rarity of wife abuse (Kerns, 1992; Lambek, 1992; Mitchell, 1992; Nash, 1992). While these country-specific studies provide case examples of tolerance of violence and levels of violence, they do not explain variation in wife abuse. EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON WOMEN IN SOUTH KOREA The focus groups, along with prior theoretical writings and research, suggested several factors that might constrain woman from leaving abusive relationships, and/or that could contribute to abuse in the first place. Whether these factors are causative or prevent women’s leaving, they would be associated with high levels of physical abuse. These factors were considered in exploratory research conducted in 1997 in Seoul. The research was designed to: develop items and reliable scales to measure the various factors expected to be associated with a woman’s living in an abusive relationship, adapt and

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translate the resulting survey instrument for use in South Korea, determine the validity of scales, and provide an exploratory test of hypotheses linking selected factors to women’s being in abusive relationships. Focus group data and prior research and writing suggest that: •Women cannot leave abusive relationships because they do not have family and friends to provide social and economic support, and support will be particularly lacking if they are separated or divorced from their husbands. •Wives are also constrained from leaving abusive husbands because they feel the law and the criminal justice system will do little or nothing to assist them. •Abuse results when there is considerable imbalance of power, indicated by men’s greater influence on key decisions within the family, and by women’s greater responsibility for family “chores,” for example housekeeping and child care. •Conflict with in-laws, particularly between the mother-in-law and the wife, contributes to wife abuse. •Fighting about changing norms and values contributes to wife abuse. Areas of contention include women’s participation in the work force, division of housework responsibilities, expectations for children’s behavior and education, and responsibilities for supporting in-laws. •A society’s general tolerance for all sorts of violence, both in and outside of the family, contributes to wife abuse. A woman’s beliefs in equality with men might have opposing effects on wife abuse. If a husband and wife do not have similar views on women’s equality, this could be a point of contention, leading to violence by the husband. Alternatively, women with strong beliefs in women’s equality—and the concomitant rejection of beliefs supporting women’s submission to or acceptance of abuse—might result in their intolerance of abuse, and subsequently their refusal to remain in an abusive marriage. Sample and Abuse Experience A purposive sample of 22 women in Seoul was drawn to include women in a battered woman’s shelter and an equivalent number of women who were of similar social class, but who were not known to be in abusive relationships. Thus, abused women were overrepresented in the sample. The sample is small, and is not intended to satisfy the requirements for making statistical inference to the general population. It was designed to provide information needed to refine the research questions and the data collection instrument, and to provide descriptive data useful in determining the value of testing particular hypotheses, and suggestive of additional hypotheses that would fruitfully be tested. Abuse by husband and wife were measured with the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) items developed by Straus (1979). In response to criticisms of the CTS, items were subjected to factor analysis, and two dimensions, one indicating violence and the other expression of anger, were identified. Included in the violence dimension were: throw objects at you, push or grab, slap, kick or bite, hit or tried to hit, beat, choke, threaten with a knife or gun, use a knife or gun, and force sexual activity.2 Expression of anger included: insult or swear at you, refuse to talk, stomp out of the room, cry, do spiteful

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things, threaten to hit, or throw objects around.3 Items developed by Sullivan et al. (1991) were used to obtain a separate measure of emotional abuse of women by their husbands.4 There was a relatively strong connection between reports of physical and emotional abuse (χ2=4.7, df=1, p=0.03). Most women (87.5% or 7) reporting a high level of physical abuse also reported a high level of emotional abuse. Fewer but still a substantial percentage (38.5% or 5) of the women reporting little or no physical abuse also had experienced high levels of emotional abuse. Thus in a sample selected to ensure that half of the women were in physically abusive relationships, 33.3% reported high levels of both physical and emotional abuse, 4.8% (1 of 21) of physical abuse only, and 23.8% (5) of emotional abuse only. Just 38.1% (8) reported low levels of both physical and emotional abuse.5 Correlation and mean scores further reveal the nature of abuse. The average score for women’s physical violence against men was 1.5, with a range between 0 and 13. The scores for men were considerably higher, with an average of 12.9, and a range from 0 to 49. Some researchers (e.g., Carucci, 1992; McDowell, 1992) have identified situations of “mutual combat,” also called symmetrical violence, in which husband and wife engage in approximately equivalent levels of physical violence against each other. In our sample, when the husband is physically abusive of his wife, there is little or no physical violence by the woman. This imbalance is seen in Table 3.1. Thus, mutual combat was not present in our exploratory sample, with the possible exception of the 21st case listed in Table 3.1. In this case, the score for violence by the wife was approximately equivalent to the mean score for violence by the husbands (13), and the score for violence by the husband was very low (3); however, the score for emotional abuse by the husband was quite high (66 as compared to the average score of 34.4).6 Additional findings confirm the gender imbalance in abuse (Table 3.2). The correlation between the husband’s and the wife’s physical abuse of each other is low (.13) and is not statistically significant. The correlation between the hus-

TABLE 3.1 Mean Scores for Abuse Scales HUSBAND ABUSIVE

HUSBAND ANGER

HUSBAND EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE

WIFE ABUSIVE

WIFE ANGER

6

35

72

0

6

26

26

46

1

8

37

34

44

8

9

7

20

52

3

6

18

20

59

0

3

37

29

39

3

9

20

24

38

2

9

37

38

80

0

17

49

42

29

0

4

23

39

0

4

Wife abuse in South Korea

45

29

28

56

1

9

0

3

6

0

7

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

16

0

0

0

5

7

0

3

1

13

9

1

13

2

11

3

23

66

13

30

4

16

45

0

2

0

4

0

0

6

3

0

19

0

0

band’s abuse and the wife’s angry behavior is also quite low (.27). It is only women’s expression of anger—as opposed to their physical abusiveness—that is positively and statistically significantly related to men’s expression of anger towards them (.52), and men’s emotional abuse of them (.50). The connection of women’s expression of anger to their husbands’ violent abusiveness also is not particularly strong (.27), and it is not statistically significant, though this may be due to

TABLE 3.2 Correlations Among Scores for Abuse Scales

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

HUSBAND ABUSIVE

HUSBAND ANGER

HUSBAND EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE

WIFE ABUSIVE

WIFE ANGER

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

1

.81* n=21

.48* n=21

.13 n=21

.27 n=21

1

.78* n=21

.28 n=22

.52* n=20

1

.35 n=21

.50* n=20

1

.74* n=20 1

the small sample size. These several findings suggest that in our sample there is an extreme imbalance in abuse, with men as the protagonists, and that when men are physically abusive, even women’s expression of anger is constrained. Thus, when men’s violent abusiveness is high, women do not respond with physical aggression. Another pattern revealed by the correlations is that physically abusive men typically express their aggression towards women through a constellation of attacking behaviors,

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including threatening and throwing objects around. They also tend to be emotionally abusive, though this correlation is moderate (.47) because a sizable proportion of men are emotionally but not physically abusive. Women who are at all physically assaultive of their husbands in addition often express their aggression through non-assaultive, angry behaviors. Context of Abuse Findings from the exploratory study confirm the existence of economic and other constraints on South Korean women, but also highlight that there is heterogeneity in the experience of these constraints. Specifically: • In the majority of families, women do not contribute any earnings to the couple’s household spending. For women categorized as experiencing high levels of physical abuse, 62.5% (5) contribute no earnings to household spending, and 53.8% (7) of women in the no-abuse group contribute no earnings. One-third of the 21 women responding to this question contributed half or more of the family funds through their earnings, and this was true for both the abuse and noabuse groups. • Most women feel that if they are divorced, they will “probably” have, or be able to earn, money to live on (36.4% or 8) or that they “definitely” would (31.8% or 7). Much smaller proportions felt that they probably would have no money to live on (18.2% or 4), or they definitely would have none (13.6% or 3). There is not a clear, strong tendency for women in abusive situations to be more negative about their financial prospects than women who are not experiencing abuse. • Women do not usually see their own families as a probable or definite source of financial support, with just over one third thinking that assistance would be available from their families following divorce. More (50%) felt they would receive some support from their husbands. Thus, contrary to the assumption that women feel they are totally financially dependent on their husbands, and see no way to support themselves if they are divorced, in fact many

TABLE 3.3 Women’s Expectations Regarding Quality of Life if Divorced, by Their Experience of Abuse QUALITY OF LIFE

EXPERIENCE OF SERIOUS ABUSE NO

YES

TOTAL

Worse

64.3% (9)

12.5% (1)

45.5% (10)

About the same

14.3% (2)

12.5% (1)

13.6% (3)

Better

21.4% (3)

75.0% (6)

40.9% (9)

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of the women in our small, but contemporary, urban sample contribute substantially to the family income, and several think that if they are divorced, their husband will continue to provide them with financial assistance. Quality of life is a much broader concept than financial support, and would be expected to involve women’s weighing the economic benefits of remaining in a relationship with the negative results of being abused. Table 3.3 provides a summary of women’s assessment of changes in quality of life should they divorce. There is a clear pattern for women who are not experiencing physical abuse to see that their quality of life will worsen, and for women who are abused to think it will improve after divorce. In our small sample with several abused women who had made the decision to flee to a shelter, the financial constraints do not seem to be of a magnitude that completely outweighs the good that would ensue for themselves from leaving. The perceived situation for children is quite different. The numbers in Table 3.4 demonstrate that the vast majority (71.4%) of women think that divorce will reduce the quality of life for their children. Only a tiny proportion, even among those experiencing abuse, feel that their children will be better off after a divorce. Moreover, women usually think that after a divorce, they are unlikely to have custody of the children, with 31.8% (7) saying that husbands always receive custody,

TABLE 3.4 Women’s Expectations Regarding Children’s Quality of Life if Divorced, by the Women’s Experience of Abuse EXPERIENCE OF SERIOUS ABUSE NO

YES

TOTAL

Worse

78.6% (11)

5.1% (4)

71.4% (15)

About the same

14.3% (2)

14.3% (1)

14.3% (3)

Better

7.1% (1)

28.6% (2)

14.3% (3)

an equal proportion feeling that husbands usually receive custody, and 9.1% (2) saying that neither parent will have custody. Fewer than one-third (27.3% or 6) of women thought that husband and wife were equally likely to have custody of any children, and none thought that women were more likely than men to have custody. Women’s view that leaving the husband will curtail their involvement as parents, and will negatively affect the children’s quality of life appears to be a compelling reason for women to remain in abusive relationships. Several survey items further reflect on particular difficulties that women expect for themselves or for their children should they divorce. • Nearly one-quarter (22.7%) of women think that a divorced woman will “definitely” lose face, and 50% say that she “probably” will. • More than half of women think that if their husband hit them, their own parents or siblings would “probably” (36.4% or 8) or “definitely” (31.8% or 7) blame them. All but one woman said that their families, however, would try to stop the husband from hitting them.

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• Most women (72.7%) thought their parents would give them a place to stay, or money to live on a temporary basis; but only 18.2% said this would continue on a permanent basis. The exploratory study revealed a mixed picture of the degree to which women see the law as failing to help them. • Regardless of their personal experience of physical abuse, half of the women say that in South Korea, it is illegal for a man to hit his wife, and under 15% say that it is legal, with the remaining women stating they are unsure about legality. • Most women (77.3%) think that when women are divorced, they typically get less of the couple’s property than men, and small proportions think they get either none (13.6%) or an equal share (9.1%). • Nearly one-third (31.8% or 7) of the women interviewed think that police will respond to a call regarding a husband hitting his wife “rarely or never,” and 45.5% say they will come “less than half the time.” A small proportion of the women (12.7% or 5) said that the police respond over half of the time, or in almost all cases. Not only do women expect that the police are unlikely to even come if they are hit by their husbands, but at best they think the police will warn their husbands to desist. For many women, this is all that would be expected, for just 42.9% said that police would “probably” physically force the husband to stop beating his wife, and 9.5% said that the police would “definitely” do this. Just a few women (only 1 of the 21 responding to the question), said that the police would “probably” make an arrest. Correlates of Abuse The variables with the highest positive correlations with a husband’s physical abuse of his wife are: his tolerance of a

TABLE 3.5 Correlation of Factors with Abuse ABUSE OF WIFE

EMOTIONAL ABUSE OF WIFE

ABUSE OF HUSBAND

Wife social support

.20

−.14

.14

Husband’s decision influence

.40**

.71*

.38**

Husband housework

.00

.05

−.32

In-law conflict

.07

.23

−.07

Conflict over norms

.13

.10

.50*

Wife’s belief in equality

−.19

.31

.05

Man: General violence tolerance

−.11

.10

.27

Man: tolerate hitting wife

.69*

.42**

.25

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Man: tolerate hitting husband

−.07

.34

.60*

Man: tolerate in-law hitting

.01

.27

−.10

−.42*

−.20

−.21

Woman: tolerate hitting wife

.19

.11

−.04

Woman: tolerate hitting husband

.05

.43*

.10

Woman: tolerate in-law hitting

.23

.20

−.04

Woman: general violence tolerance

man hitting his wife (.69) and his domination in the family decision-making process (.40).7 (See Table 3.5 for listing of all correlates.) The wife’s general tolerance of violence was relatively high, negatively correlated with physical abuse (−.42). The patterns of correlations were similar for a husband’s emotional abuse of his wife, except that there is not a statistically significant correlation between emotional abuse and the wife’s general tolerance of violence. An additional variable that is significantly correlated with emotional abuse of the wife is the wife’s tolerance of a woman’s hitting her husband, suggesting that in some couples an emotionally abused woman sees it as acceptable for a woman to strike her husband. However, it should be noted that our research showed no statistically significant correlation between a man’s emotional abuse of women and the women’s actual physical abuse of their husbands. An attempt to develop a reliable scale for a general tolerance of violence, which was hypothesized to predict specific violence against the wife, suggests that this is not a valid concept. For both women’s reports of their own tolerance, and the tolerance of their husbands, responses to the following items formed a reliable scale: attitudes about superior officers hitting soldiers, attitudes about a parent hitting a disrespectful child, and attitudes about a teacher hitting a student.8 However, attitudes reported for both wife and husband concerning wife hitting a husband, husband hitting a wife, or in-laws hitting a wife were unrelated to each other, and were unrelated to the other measures of tolerance of violence. They therefore were considered as separate items in the analysis. Focus groups and existing literature have highlighted the involvement of a husband’s parents in a couple’s life. In our sample, few (9.1%) of the women lived with their inlaws at the time of the interview; but over half (52.4%) had previously lived with them. Just 20% of the women had daily or weekly contact, with the majority having contact “several times a year.” None of the women said that they rarely or never saw their inlaws. Although existing theory and focus groups point to conflict within the wife’s inlaws as factor related to her abuse, there was not a significant correlation to confirm this hypothesis.9 We did not find significant correlations of wife abuse with: a wife’s perception of her network of social support, a husband’s contribution to housework, or a wife’s belief in the equality of women. Perceptions of social support,10 that is help with a variety of

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problems from people besides husbands, had quite low correlations with all measures of abuse. The scale to measure husband’s contribution to household tasks11 had a correlation close to zero with measures of the abuse of the wife, and had a larger negative, but not statistically significant, correlation of −.32 with the wife’s abuse of the husband. It is possible that a larger sample would reveal that women, who in our study were rarely found to be physically aggressive towards their husband, are even less aggressive if they live with husbands who are helpful with household tasks—perhaps indicating a particularly cooperative marital relationship. A wife’s belief in women’s equality,12 though not significantly related to any of the measures of abuse, was positively correlated with emotional abuse of the wife, which is suggestive of a dynamic in which the husband is emotionally abusive when a woman believes in her own equality; a larger sample would allow for exploration of the validity of this interpretation. Conflict over norms13 was not related to abuse by the husband, but did have a significant and positive correlation (.50) with abuse of the husband. Again, although women in general in our sample reported low levels of physical aggression towards their husbands, these levels were more elevated when the couple disagreed about basic norms and values. CONCLUSION The existing literature and the exploratory research summarized in this chapter leave some important questions about wife abuse in South Korea unanswered. Most of the research has been conducted in urban areas. Rural areas are probably less affected by change, and more traditional. Empirical research is needed to explore the implications for level of wife abuse and for its etiology. Also, in our exploratory study women experiencing high levels of physical abuse reported extremely low levels of violence against their husbands. It is not clear whether larger samples would reveal exceptions, or why there are no examples of the symmetrical violence that is found in other countries. Clearly, more can be learned through case studies and larger-sample surveys designed to test multi-causal explanations of wife abuse, and to examine women’s inability to escape abusive husbands. Several themes do run through the work of Korean scholars, the focus group data, and our exploratory study. Traditional patriarchal family arrangements and related beliefs, women’s place in the traditional social structure, as well as the contemporary context of challenges to tradition, are important in understanding the dynamics of wife abuse in South Korea. The culture-specific circumstances of marriage, child rearing, Confucianist ideals, and shame associated with divorce can play a role in the cause of wife abuse, and/or in constraining women from leaving abusive husbands. Exploratory study findings illustrate that it is in families in which patriarchal power arrangements are extreme—that is, in which husbands believe it is acceptable to hit their wives, and they dominate family decision-making—that the highest levels of wife abuse are found. Women’s lower levels of labor force participation and educational attainment in comparison to men, the difficulty for women leaving abusive husbands to remain involved with their children, the lack of long-term parental assistance for many abused women, and the lack of immediate help through the legal system are additional factors that contribute to wife abuse.

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At the societal level, the women’s movement is pressing for stronger legal prohibition of wife abuse. At the individual level, our exploratory study findings suggest that many women feel they can manage on their own, and even have a better quality of life, if they leave an abusive husband. However, the importance of maintaining the marriage, despite wife abuse, for ensuring children’s quality of life and mothers’ full involvement with their children appears to be a critical pressure keeping women with abusive men. In the South Korean context, parental custody of children is a salient consideration for women coping with abuse. The problem of wife abuse is by no means static. The women’s movement within South Korea, revisions in employment and family law, and changes in some women’s and men’s consciousness are features that alter the etiology and context of wife abuse. In some families, perhaps more often when women have greater educational resources, changes could result in lower prevalence of wife abuse; in other families, the result could be wives’ challenges to traditional arrangements, which are met with husbands’ attempts to reassert their dominance through violence. In light of the degree of change, it is not surprising that focus group participants for our study emphasized generation differences in women’s experience of abuse, and that survey research has shown increased public disapproval of wife battering. Tradition and change are both critical factors in explaining wife abuse in South Korea. Notes 1. Consistent with the view that alternative religious ideologies can be used by men to justify their abuse of wives, in half of the six focus groups (described in detail in a later section of this chapter), participants said that Christianity reinforced the view that women and men are unequal, thereby contributing to wife abuse; and in two of the groups participants said that Christianity taught that women and men are equal, and this viewpoint prevented wife abuse. 2.. Violence by the husband ranged from 0 to 49, and the alpha equaled .95. Violence by the wife ranged from 0 to 13, with alpha equal to .76. 3. Men scored on the scale reflecting expression of anger between 0 and 42, with alpha for the test of reliability equal to .94. For women, the scores ranged from 0 to 30, with alpha equal to .81. 4. Scores on the measure of emotional abuse ranged from 0 to 80, and the alpha reflecting reliability was .96. 5. For both emotional and physical abuse, scores above the mean were categorized as “high,” and scores below the mean were categorized as “no-abuse.” 6. Of course, with one case example it is impossible to draw a strong inference about the reason for the wife’s higher level of abusiveness. In this anomalous case, there was evidence that the wife had been socialized by her parents to assert her desires in the marriage. 7. The 10-item scale to measure man’s dominance over family decisions had an alpha of .74. One item indicated a man’s tolerance of husbands’ hitting their wives in certain situations. 8. The alpha to indicate women’s tolerance of violence was .84, and the alpha to indicate women’s assessment of husbands’ tolerance was .88. 9. The items to measure conflict involving in-laws were frequency of conflict between wife and in-laws because of expectations for wife to help in-laws with housework and transportation; conflict with husband about in-law expectations for such help; wife’s conflict with motherin-law about her meddling in couple’s business; and couple’s conflict about mother-in-law meddling. The alpha-statistic for reliability for this scale was .89.

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10. The alpha for the four items to measure perceptions of social support was .82. Questions asked about availability of help with illness, financial problems, children, and problems with the husband. 11. The alpha for the six items measuring husband’s contribution to household work was .63. 12. The alpha to reflect reliability in the seven-item scale for women’s belief in equality with men was .82. 13. The alpha for the six items to indicate conflict in the areas—whether wife works, who does household chores, changing norms/values, child’s education, how permissive to be with child, supporting family—was .77.

References Carucci, L.M. (1992). “Nudging Her Harshly and Killing Him Softly: Display of Disenfranchisement of Ujelong Atoll.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 111–123. Cho, Y.K., and Kim, K.I. (1990). “ Nation-Wide Epidemiological Survey of Spousal Violence in Korea.” Journal of Korean Neurop-sychiatric Association 29:190–196. Counts, D.A. (1992). “‘All Men Do It’: Wife Beating in Kaliai, Papua New Guinea.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C. Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 63–75. Dobash, R.E., and Dobash, R.P. (1979). Violence Against Wives: A Case Against the Patriarchy. New York: Free Press. Dobash, R.P., Dobash, R.E., Wilson, M., and Daly, M. (1992). “The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence.” Social Problems, 39:71–91. Fernandez, M. (1997). “Domestic Violence by Extended Family Members in India: Interplay of Gender and Generation.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 12(3): 433–455. Franklin, S., Lury, C., and Stacey, J. (1991). “Feminism and Cultural Studies: Pasts, Present, Futures.” Media, Culture and Society 13:171–192. Gallin, R.S. (1992). “Wife Abuse in the Context of Development and Change: A Chinese (Taiwanese) Case.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A. Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 219–227. Gartner, R., Baker, K., and Pampel, F.C. (1990). “Gender Stratification and the Gender Gap in Homicide Victimization.” Social Problems 37:593–612. Hegland, M.E. (1992). “Wife Abuse and the Political System: A Middle Eastern Case Study.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 203–217. Kandioti, D. (1988). “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2:274–290. Kerns, V. (1992). “Preventing Violence Against Women: A Central American Case.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 125–138. Kim, Hae Sun (1995). A Study of the Occurrence and Maintenance Mechanisms for Wife Battering. Doctoral Dissertation. Hanyang University. Kim, Ik Ki, and Shim, Young Hee (1992). A Study on the Prevalence and Policy Implications of Domestic Violence in Seoul. Seoul: Korean Institute of Criminology. Kim, Kwang-iel (1990). “Family Violence in Korea: Current Status and Problem.” Mental Health Research 9:121–130. Korean Women’s Development Institute (1993). The Prevention and Countermeasures of Domestic Violence. Seoul, South Korea.

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Korean Women’s Development Institute (1995). Statistical Yearbook on Women. Seoul, South Korea. Kruttschnitt, C. (1993). “Violence By and Against Women: A Comparative and Cross-National Analysis.” Violence and Victims 8(3): 253–270. Lambek, M. (1992). “Like Teeth Biting Tongue: The Proscription and Practice of Spousal Abuse in Mayotte.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A. Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 157–171. Lateef, S. (1992). “Wife Abuse Among Indo-Fijians.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Borwn, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 185–201. Le, Thi Quy (1996). “Domestic Violence in Vietnam and Efforts to Curb It.” In Vietnam’s Women in Transition (ed. K.Barry), New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 263–274. Levinson, D. (1989). Family Violence in Cross Cultural Perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. McDowell, N. (1992). “Household Violence in a Yuat River Village.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 77–87. McKee, L. (1992). “Men’s Rights/Women’s Wrong: Domestic Violence in Ecuador.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C. Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 139–156. Miller, B.D. (1992). “Wife-Beating in India: Variations on a Theme.” Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 173–184. Mitchell, W.C. (1992). “Why Wape Men Don’t Beat Their Wives: Constraints Toward Domestic Tranquillity in a New Guinea Society.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C. Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 89–97. Nash, J. (1992). “Factors Relating to Infrequent Domestic Violence Among the Nagovisi.” In Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives (eds. D.A.Counts, J.K.Brown, and J.C.Campbell). Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 99–109. Shim, Young-Hee (1992). “Victimization of Domestic Violence in Korea.” Journal of Social Science Studies 11:167–184. Smith, M.D. (1990). “Patriarchal Ideology and Wife Beating: A Test of a Feminist Hypothesis.” Violence and Victims 5:257–273. Straus, M.A. (1979). “Measuring Intrafamily Conflict and Violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 51:75–88. Sullivan, C.M., Parisian, J.A., and Davidson, W.S. (1991). The Index of Psychological Abuse: Development of a Measure. Paper presented at the 99th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. San Francisco. Swirski, B. (1991). “Jews Don’t Batter Their Wives: Another Myth Bites the Dust.” Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel (eds. B.Swirski and M.Safir). New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 319–327. Wilson, M., and Daly, M. (1992). “Who Kills Whom in Spousal Killings? On the Exceptional Sex Ratio of Spousal Homicides in the United States.” Criminology 30:189–215. Wilson, M., and Daly, M. (1993). “An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Male Sexual Proprietariness and Violence Against Wives.” Violence and Victims 8:271–294. Yllo, K. (1983a). “Sexual Equality and Violence Against Wives in American States.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 14:67–86. Yllo, K. (1983b). “Using a Feminist Approach in Quantitative Research: A Case Study.” In The Dark Side of Families: Current Family Violence Research (eds. D.Finkelhor, R.J.Gelles, G.T. Hotaling, and M.A.Straus). Beverly Hills: Sage, pp. 277–288. Yllo, K. (1984). The status of women, marital equality, and violence against wives. Journal of Family Issues 5:307–320.

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Yllo, K., and Straus, M.A. (1984). “Patriarchy and Violence Against Wives: The Impact of Structural and Normative Factors.” Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare 1:1–13.

Chapter Four Gender and Crime Across Social Contexts:

The Case of the United States and Finland Candace Kruttschnitt It is common knowledge that in virtually all times and places, women’s involvement in crime has been substantially lower than men’s; however, the magnitude of this gender disparity can and does vary substantially by type of crime, social context, and historical period (Archer and McDaniel, 1995; Kruttschnitt, 1994, 1995). For example, the proportional involvement of women in spousal homicides is particularly high in the United States, relative to other English-speaking industrialized nations (Kruttschnitt, 1995; Wilson and Daly, 1992) while women’s relative contributions to national crime rates have shifted in selected nations over time (see, e.g., Wilson, 1983). Nevertheless, cross-national research which could shed light on these types of variations has been extremely limited. The bulk of this work has encompassed aggregate-level studies of the emancipation hypotheses as formulated by Adler (1975) and Simon (1975) and continues despite a lack of either (i) consistent evidence which supports the proposition that indicators of economic and social development are positively correlated with female crime rates or (ii) a clear understanding of how these relationships may influence particular types of female offending during particular historical periods (see, e.g., Kruttschnitt, 1995; Steffensmeier and Streifel 1992). This chapter seeks to provide another perspective on how societal forces may influence the nature and extent of women’s criminal involvement. Beginning with the claim by feminist theorists that gender relations affect social institutions in fundamental ways (Daly and Chesney-Lind, 1988:504), I forego trying to establish cross-national generalities in favor of obtaining more detailed information about women’s lives and their relative contribution to offending in two nations with, ostensibly, very different gender relations: Finland and the United States.1 The chapter begins with an overview of some of the most notable contrasts in gender relations between these two nations. Because no one has explicitly formulated a hypothesized relationship among gender relations, social institutions, and female offending (beyond the liberation thesis), I draw on two conventional perspectives on the social distribution of crime (strain and control) to derive hypotheses about the nature of the gender gaps in crime in these two nations. Neither of these conventional perspectives was designed specifically to explain gender differences in crime. Nevertheless, to the degree that gender moderates the effects of key components of these perspectives, they should provide important insights into the social

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contexts of women’s relative rates of offending. Finally, I examine the extant data in light of these explanatory frameworks. Specifically, I review trends in female offending in the United States and Finland, focusing on not only the relative gender gap in crime in these two countries but also on the nature of women’s involvement in crime and whether such involvement has shown signs of changing over time. My goal, then, is to begin to gain a better understanding of whether and how gender relations influence social institutions that are thought to be responsible for crime rates. Therefore, this chapter should be viewed, as is much of the existing cross-national work on crime, “as introductory rather than conclusive, a departure point for future work rather than an exhaustive” comparative analysis (Ruback and Weiner, 1995:3). SOME CONTRASTS IN THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS OF WOMEN’S LlVES IN FINLAND AND THE UNITED STATES Finland, a country which is much smaller geographically and which has a much more homogeneous population than the United States, offers an interesting comparison to the United States in terms of gender relations. Social equality between women and men in Finland has not been fully achieved; yet, Finland ranks highest in the world (along with Sweden) on various indicators of social equality between women and men (Population Crisis Committee, 1988). Women’s integration into Finnish society appears to have originated before the initiation of the welfare state.2 According to Julkunen (1990), the typical bourgeois model of gender relations found in the middle and upper classes of the industrialized nations of Europe, which kept women out of the paid labor market, was never strong in Finland. Because Finland was a poor agrarian society, women’s labor was sorely needed in both industry and agriculture.3 For most of this century, then, it served Finland’s economic needs to ensure that its women were educated and employed and that they participated actively in political life. Nevertheless, the most significant changes in women’s lives in Finland appear to have occurred over the past two decades. Below, I attempt to sketch some of these changes. As is true in the United States and much of the western industrialized world, the proportion of Finnish women from age twenty to retirement who report being gainfully employed increased dramatically over the past few decades (Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992; Julkunen, 1990). However, relative to the United States, Finnish women have always comprised a larger percentage of their country’s total workforce: 39% in 1960, 46% in 1965, and 47% in 1990; for the same years, the comparable figures in the United States are 32%, 39%, and 41% (Niemi, 1995:6). Moreover, Finnish women are less likely than American women to leave the workforce when they have children. Eighty-five percent of all mothers with children under 18 are employed in Finland (Manninen, 1993; 9) whereas in the United States only 59% of women with preschool children, and 74% of those with school age children (6–17 years), work (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1992). Most scholars believe that it was the expansion of the welfare state (which provided numerous childcare benefits to working women) and the service sector economy (where women dominate the job market) that account for the rapid growth in women’s

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proportional representation in the Finnish labor market (Haavio-Mannila, 1990; Julkunen, 1990). Finnish women are not, however, fully integrated into all segments of the labor market and their participation tends to be concentrated in sex-segregated occupations (e.g., clerical, sales, nursing, daycare, teaching) much as it is in the United States. A gender gap in the salaries of male and female workers also remains in Finland in both blue-collar and white-collar occupations, even when disparities in factors that are thought to explain such salary differentials (e.g., occupational position/job title, working hours, age and education) are held constant. Again, however, as in the United States, it appears that this gender-gap in salaries is least pronounced among women who hold nontraditional jobs for women (Haavio-Mannila, 1992:15). A woman’s employment status can also have an impact on the amount of time she spends doing household labor relative to that of her spouse. Finnish women whose education and income is below that of their spouse spend more time doing housework than their husbands with higher status (Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992; Nieme and Pääkkönen, 1990).4 In general, however, time use studies show that in Finland, women have decreased the percentage of time they spend on housework (from 67% of the total time spent in housework in 1979 to 64% in 1987) and their proportional efforts in the home remain lower than those of women in the United States (67% in 1987) (HaavioMannila and Kauppinen, 1992). Widespread opportunities for women’s employment also contributed to Finnish women establishing themselves in political life somewhat earlier than their American counterparts and to their greater success in obtaining political representation. Finnish women initially received voting rights and were eligible to hold public office in 1906. The first woman cabinet minister appeared in Finland in 1926, and by the late 1980s, about one-third of the parliamentary seats were held by women (see Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992; Haavio-Mannila et al., 1985b). Although there is controversy over whether the increased representation of women in political life in Finland has made a difference for women, there is no question that women politicians in Finland tend to focus on women’s interests (especially in the areas of reproduction and health care) whereas men focus on matters related to production in society. (Haavio-Mannila et al., 1985a,b). The combined effects of increase in women’s labor force participation and political representation, and the expansion of the welfare state, which helped to ensure the right to paid work and benefits to women (Waerness, 1989), have also had a significant impact on shaping family relations. Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between gender relations in the United States and Finland more striking than with regard to the family sphere. State policies aimed at working men and women in Finland have placed women in a much more equal position to men than their counterparts in the United States. The role of state policy in the family sphere can be seen in family planning, maternity leaves, and childcare (Julkunen, 1990). Finland was the first country to grant the right to a legal abortion to every woman who wanted it during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy; however, abortion rates are low (219 per 1000 in 1986) relative to other countries (Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992:229). Women who have children are given up to twelve months parental leave with 80% compensation for their lost income. Further, after the twelve-month paid parental leave, parents can choose between two alternatives: (1) either parent can stay at home until the child is three years of age with financial compensation and a job guarantee, or

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(2) communities must arrange for child care for the parents who return to work (HaavioMannila and Kauppinen, 1992). Parents are also allowed to shorten their work day until the child reaches the age of four years and they will receive full pay for three to four days to care for a sick child. Another striking aspect of the Finnish (and more generally, Nordic) parental policies are their efforts to support and strengthen the paternal role. “In Finland, the father can take leave for the last seven months of the twelve-month maternity-parental leave…and the father has a right to an additional six to twelve ‘daddy days’ in connection with the child’s birth” (Haavio-Mannila and Kaup-pinen, 1992:232– 233). Financial compensation at 80% of salary is also available for Finnish fathers who take advantage of these ‘daddy days.’ Data indicate that the percentage of fathers in Finland taking paid leave, as a percentage of all fathers who are eligible for this compensation, increased dramatically over the 1980s (12.4% in 1978 to 34.0% in 1989; Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992:233). Finally, some regard the expansion of day care facilities as one of the most important social reforms that has occurred for Finnish women over the past two decades. According to Julkunen (1990:152), in 1970 only about 7 percent of children under school age who needed a childcare placement received it. However, by 1990, 70 percent of children between three and six years of age in Finland had a place at a municipal child care center or in a family day care center (HaavioMannila and Kauppinen, 1992:232); and, a 1995 legislative act entitles all children between the ages of one and six to publicly financed daycare either in a municipal daycare center or at home (with financial compensation for the parent or another person in the case of home care). Gender relations in Finland are relatively advanced but remain uneven. While women have gained a strong foothold in the paid labor market, they still predominate in gendersegregated jobs, they are generally paid less than men, and they still do the majority of the household work. Yet, relative to women in the United States, and in fact most other countries, their gains have been considerable. As the Population Crisis Committee (1988) suggested after evaluating data on the relative positions of women in ninety-nine countries, women in Nordic countries rank higher than all of their counterparts on their proportional representation in political life, economic equality between the sexes and equality in marriage and the family. The interesting question then arises as to whether these relative advantages in gender relations outweigh the remaining disadvantages so as to either reduce the extent or change the nature of Finnish women’s proportional involvement in crime. Based on conventional theory, I drew several predictions. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE GENDER RELATIONS, SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND WOMEN’S RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO CRIME RATES Strain/Motivational Perspectives According to these perspectives, the combination of cultural success goals (notably in many western industrialized societies, economic affluence) and an unequal distribution of legitimate means to their attainment (through educational and occupational opportunities)

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produces a societal condition of anomic stress which is unevenly distributed throughout the social structure (Merton, 1938). When comparing crime rates across societies, the prediction must be that societies that emphasize personal goal attainment without providing adequate legitimate means for achieving these goals will have high rates of anomic stress and crime. It is assumed that social inequalities and competition over scarce resources will give rise to interpersonal conflicts and crime. To reformulate this theory to address the gender gap in crime, we need to take account of the social factors that may give rise to structured inequalities which would increase women’s relative contribution to crime. Control Perspective Most versions of control theory hold that the motivation to commit crime is constant across individuals and only attachment to others and commitment to conventional institutions produce conforming behavior (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Hirschi, 1969; Kornhauser, 1977; Sampson and Laub, 1993). From this perspective, variations in the gender gap in crime rates between nations would be a function of the degree to which gender relations attenuate or strengthen women’s bonds to conventional institutions in Finland and the United States.5 However, the General Theory of Crime, posited by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), also draws attention to opportunity as an important correlate of offending rates. In so doing, it allows us to address a major omission of the motivational perspective: the distribution of women among different offense categories. Although most scholars agree that, generally, women’s opportunities for engaging in illegal behavior have been more circumscribed than men’s, due to both socialization and “encapsulation” within the family (see, e.g., Matsueda and Heimer, 1997; Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996; 477), less attention has been paid to the ways in which the social context of gender relations condition women’s commit-ments to conventional institutions in both the private and public spheres of society and hence their perceived opportunities for offending within these different arenas. Cross-cultural research on female offending focuses almost exclusively on the additive contributions of women’s labor force participation (often including occupational segregation), women’s participation in secondary eduction, and women’s marriage and fertility rates on the female share of the national murder and theft rates (Kruttschnitt, 1995:96–99). However, attention to gender relations within the context of these conventional perspectives suggests a different approach, one which considers the specific content of women’s roles and the ways in which that content can serve to aggravate or mitigate women’s proportional involvement in crime. Because women’s social roles have changed both in terms of their private lives (i.e., family roles) and their public lives (i.e., participation in the labor market and political spheres), predictions are offered about the influence of such change on women’s contribution to offending rates in Finland and the United States. The Labor Market Strain Perspective. Generally, because employment relieves economic stress and because it can be personally rewarding, especially for married mothers (Hoffman, 1989; Hagan,

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1989), we would assume that in societies with a high degree of female labor force participation, there would be a larger gender gap in the crime rate. However, the relationship between labor force employment and crime may not be so straight forward. There are aspects of gender relations that may condition this outcome. If women’s employment opportunities and salaries are clearly restricted by gender, women’s employment may actually increase their levels of stress. Similarly, if women face employment with inadequate child care and an unequal distribution of household labor we would expect that their stress levels would be higher (Rogers, 1996; Voydanoff, 1988). Under both these latter conditions, then, it would be expected that high female employment rates may actually increase stress and, correspondingly, decrease the gender gap in crime. Control Perspective. Job stability has been particularly important in Sampson and Laub’s (1993) age-graded theory of informal social control. They argue that it is the strength of attachment to jobs, not just employment per se, that leads to a reduction in criminal behavior. Accordingly, where women hold a disproportionate share of the parttime and irregular jobs, the likelihood of involvement in traditional female crimes, such as shoplifting and passing bad checks, should be maximized. In addition, where women are paid less than men for the same work but have the same or greater economic responsibilities than men (e.g., as single heads of households), they may be more apt to take advantage of opportunities to commit crimes which would help them to compensate for their feelings of economic insecurity. Under either of these conditions, employment may actually contribute to a smaller gender gap in theft and consumer-related offenses. Political Representation Strain Perspective. Women’s proportional representation in politics can serve to alter both women’s goals and the avenues they have available to them for obtaining these goals. However, there are two ways in which we can envision women’s political activity affecting their proportional representation in crime rates. If a relatively large increase in women’s political representation occurs, their expectations about social change and gender equality may be raised so they are less tolerant of any remaining economic and social inequalities. Under these conditions, we might expect to see a smaller gender gap in the crime. However, where women’s integration into political life has resulted in substantial changes in issues that are of central concern to women and will specifically address their abilities to reach culturally valued goals through legitimate means (see, e.g., Skard and Haavio-Mannila, 1985), we would expect to see a larger gender gap in the crime rate. Control Perspective. Theoretically, at least, women’s participation in political life could have a substantial impact on women’s relative contribution to specific offenses simply because they will be part of the process that decides what types of behavior will be “criminalized.” Crime rates are, after all, “a function of behavior defined as criminal and of the control measures established to deal with it” (Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1992:82). Given that female politicians are more likely than male politicians to focus on women’s issues (Haavio-Mannila et al., 1985a), women’s political representation should affect the gender gap in those offenses where women’s behavior is clearly patterned differently than the behavior of men: interpersonal crimes of violence. Specifically, we

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expect that the politicization of domestic violence, which serves to increase awareness about women’s risks of, and reactions to, violence by intimate partners, may alter official responses to women’s involvement in spousal assaults and ultimately raise the gender gap in this offense category. The Family System Strain Perspective. Women’s family roles are increasingly becoming enmeshed with their roles in the paid labor market. Therefore, it is imperative to consider how the overlap between these two roles produces strain. Research on gender roles and psychological distress frequently points to two types of strain in women’s lives: the strain associated with occupying dual roles as a worker and family manager and the strain associated with child care (Ross and Van Willigen, 1996; Voydanoff, 1988). Specifically, inequities in the distribution of housework, where working mothers do a disproportionate amount, and difficulties in arranging for child care increase feelings of depression and anger (Glass and Fujimoto, 1994; Ross et al., 1983; Ross and Van Willigen 1996). Accordingly, in societies where women are more likely to incur either of these types of work-family role strains, the gender gap in crime should be smaller. Control Perspective. Traditional applications of control theory to female offending direct particular attention to female attachments to family members (see Kruttschnitt, 1996:139–140). Although an attenuation of these attachments is thought to be associated with criminality, irrespective of the specific offense, gender relations within the family should be especially important for understanding women’s share of interpersonal violence as the vast majority of these crimes target family members (Kruttschnitt 1994, 1995). For example, we would expect that women who live in societies that make it relatively easy for them to leave unsatisfactory marriages and remain financially independent should be involved in fewer domestic assaults. Similarly, we would expect that where women have greater access to abortion and adequate child care, their involvement in incidents of child abuse will be lower. Under either of these conditions, then, we would expect the gender gap in assaults to be higher. As these hypotheses make clear, we anticipate that the effects of various changes in gender relations, which are embedded in societal differences, should affect women’s contributions to the respective crime rates in Finland and the United States. Unfortunately, a number of limitations in the extant data preclude a formal testing of these hypotheses. Nevertheless, as a preliminary means of evaluating these explanatory frameworks, we examine their relevance explicitly for any notable differences observed in the gender gap in crime between these two countries. WOMEN’S CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES AND FINLAND It is important to note at the outset that there are structural differences in the criminal justice systems of the United States and Finland, in the ways in which data pertaining to offenders are comprised and classified, that preclude making as detailed a comparison as we would like of female contributions to crime in these two nations. In Finland, national crime data are recorded for three separate areas of the criminal justice system:

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“Criminality known to the police,” “Criminal cases tried by the courts,” and “Function of the courts.” In the following review, we examine only data extracted from the source known as “Criminality known to the police” and within this source, “Crimes against the criminal code” (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995a).6 In addition, systematic attention to the gender gap in crime and to the analysis of crime rates by selected offense categories is a relatively recent development in the annual reviews of crime and criminal justice in Finland. Police started to record official statistics on women’s criminality in Finland in 1980 and published data on women’s share of offending only appears in selected annual reviews (1982, 1993, 1994, and 1995) of the National Research Institute of Legal Policy. Accordingly, the decision about what to include on female offending from the extant U.S. publications was structured primarily by what was available in the official Finnish data and publications. Finnish women’s contribution to the total crime rate (or “offenses against the criminal code”) is small and, although there has been some relative increase over the past 15 years, the gender gap in crime remains large. In 1980 women represented about 10% of the total criminal law violators; by 1994, their respective representation had increased only slightly to 13.8% (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995b).7 Women’s contribution to the total arrest rates in the United States is not dissimilar but it remains consistently higher: in 1975 the female percentage of arrests was 15% but by 1990 it had risen to 19% (Steffensmeier and Allen, 1996). Most scholars who have conducted an analysis of shifts in the female percentage of arrests in the United States conclude that decreases in the gender gap in crime occurred largely between 1960 and 1975 and that since 1975, although women’s proportional involvement in crime has increased, the gains have not been as dramatic as they were in this earlier period (Kruttschnitt, 1994:312–315; Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1992; Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996). Although comparable data for Finland is not available, there is evidence from information compiled on criminal accusations of a different historical trend for Finnish women: specifically, women’s share of all the accused persons in initial court appearances increased very slowly and steadily (at a rate of about 1% per year) from 1974 to 1986 and gradually levelled off (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995b:96).8 In the United States, a number of scholars have tried to account for the narrowing of the gender gap in crime by drawing attention to such social factors as women’s increasing participation in the illegal drug market, the “feminization of poverty” and changes in the behavior of law enforcement (see, e.g., Anglin and Hser, 1987; Messerschmidt, 1986; Steffensmeier, 1993). While we would agree that these social changes probably contributed to some of the current disparity found between the gender gaps in crime in the United States and in Finland, the specific historical period in which American women’s proportional representations in crime increased the most lead us to a different conclusion. We draw attention to the predictions offered by the “gendered” strain perspective, explicating the ways in which women’s involvement in the labor market and the family system shifted over time in the United States relative to what was occurring in Finland. Women’s largest contributions to the U.S.crime rate appeared at a time when they were just beginning to substantially increase their participation in the paid labor force— during the decade of the 1970s. Structural supports which would facilitate their full-time employment, such as maternity leave and readily available day care, were not, however,

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simultaneously available. Perhaps this is why women’s employment in the United States was, and remains, relatively sporadic. Combinations of full-time and part-time work, as well as periods of absence from the work force, are more the rule than the exception for women in the United States, leading some scholars to conclude that women in the United States, follow no modal pattern of employment (Moen, 1985:150). Further, over the past two decades, job opportunities for women in the United States who have limited work skills have steadily declined as have the public services that once provided supports for economically marginal women (Goldberg, 1990). Thus, a combination of work-family role strains and employment insecurity may well have fueled the initial, and somewhat sustained, narrowing of the gender gap in the United States. By contrast, in Finland, public policies (in the form of childcare facilities) played a substantial role in increasing the number of full-time working women and they appear to have kept pace with the expanding female labor force (e.g., the adoption of more liberal parental leave policies). Further, the majority of Finnish women have continued to work full-time, despite the current period of economic recession (Haavio-Mannilla and Kauppinen, 1992) and it is here that we observe relative little change in the gender gap in crime over time. In sum, we find that the relationships among women’s labor market participation, family status and criminal involvements are complex. It is not just the overall proportion of women who are employed that appears to covary with crime rates but rather the conditions under which women’s employment occurs. Consistent with some of the predictions derived from the strain perspective, we see these conditions as producing the stressors which are conducive to female offending. WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SPECIFIC OFFENSES In the United States, the gender gap in crime is greatest for serious property offenses and violent crime and least for minor property offenses. In 1990, American women’s proportional involvement in minor property offenses (36%) was about three times as high as their involvement in violent offenses (11%); they accounted for 30% of all arrests for larceny-theft, 43% of all arrests for fraud, 34% of all arrests for forgery and 37% of all arrests for embezzlement (Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996). The same pattern appears for Finnish women, albeit with lower relative contributions and, accordingly, more comparability between their respective shares of property and violent crimes. Specifically, in 1994, Finnish women’s proportional involvement in property offending stood at 15% (with the highest representation in the categories of petty theft, fraud, forgery and embezzlement) and their involvement in crimes of violence at 10% (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995b: 94; 1996). These broad similarities in the contours of the female offending in Finland and the United States initially appear to provide no support for the control perspective predictions. However, there are some notable differences in women’s behavior in these two countries which would suggest otherwise. In the United States, the narrowing of the gender gap in crime has been attributed almost entirely to shifts over time in the female share of arrests for minor property crimes. American women’s involvement in such crimes as larceny theft, forgery and fraud rose from an average of 16% in 1960 to 36% in 1990; women’s share of violent offending, however, remained constant over this period

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at 11% (Steffensmeier and Allen, 1996). Additionally, as noted previously, their shares increased most dramatically over the period of 1960 to 1975, although the gains made from 1975 to 1990 are still substantial (averaging about 8%; Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996, Table 1). In Finland, a different picture emerges, one of relative stability but also one that may foreshadow change. Specifically, from the period of 1980 to 1994, women’s share of property offenses only increased about 3% (moving from 12% to 15%) whereas for violent crimes they increased from 5% to 10% (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995b: 94). Because the category of violent crimes in Finland contains a number of offenses that are not strictly comparable to those included in the United States, we examined the Finnish data with respect to the two violent offenses that are most comparable to those found in the U.S. data: homicides and aggravated assaults. These data reveal large fluctuations in women’s contribution to the homicide rate (e.g., rising from 5% in 1980 to 10% in 1987 and then dropping down to 4% in 1990), indicating random shifts over time among a very small number of offenders rather than any important sustained pattern of growth. Women’s contributions to assaults do, however, demonstrate a small and consistent pattern of increase (i.e., moving from about 5% in 1980 to 9% in 1993; see, e.g., Central Statistical Office of Finland, 1990). Because these aggregate data do not reveal the specific acts which underlie these offenses, we speculate as to the causes of these observed trends in light of the previously noted control theory predictions. The most notable among these is the large discrepancy in women’s contributions to property offenses in the United States as opposed to Finland. Although women in both countries encounter gender-based disparities in wages, U.S. working women encounter several other disadvantages which may contribute to their relatively greater proportional share of property offenses. The economic insecurity that is often associated with low-paying traditional female occupations is compounded for American women by their rising rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and female-headed households (Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1992:81). Relative to Finnish women, American women also have been more likely to work part-time, demonstrating overall weaker patterns of job stability. This suggests that it may be American women’s weaker attachments to work, coupled with their growing economic needs, that has fueled their greater contribution to offending in property crimes. To gain a better understanding of women’s involvement in assaults we examined data that is consistent with what is known about their acts of violence, data that would pertain to domestic violence. Victimization surveys carried out in Finland in 1980 and 1988 indicate that the proportion of family violence incidents increased (from 12% to 14%) and, more importantly, so did the number of men who reported being the victims of family violence (Heiskanen et al., 1991:115). What would cause Finnish women to engage in more domestic assaults during this period is open to speculation. We offer several explanations which are largely consistent with the control perspective.9 First, during this period, women’s segregation into the “helping and caring” professions (e.g., nursing, teaching and child care) of the labor market continued with no substantial decreases in their family commitments (see Acker, 1989). Such conditions may attenuate bonds to family life and increase the risks and opportunities for engaging in domestic assaults. Second, changes in women’s drinking patterns also could be contributing to their reported increases in assaults. There is evidence that over time, (i) Finnish women

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have been drinking more, (ii) they have been drinking more often to get drunk, and (iii) more drinking by both sexes is taking place in the home (Wiseman, 1991: xvii). Alcohol consumption, while not shown to be a cause, is a frequently cited correlate of domestic violence. Although, as previously noted, the politicization of domestic violence can serve to mitigate women’s involvement in this offense, Finland is just beginning to publicly address this issue with the initiation of a victimization survey devoted to the issue of domestic violence. CONCLUSION These findings offer tentative support for both the “gendered” strain and control perspectives but clearly no definitive understanding of the contributions of each perspective to the apparent differences in women’s share of offending in Finland and the United States. Nevertheless, we think this line of work holds promise, because it draws attention to the ways in which the intersection of women’s public and private lives might influence their patterns of offending. As noted, most cross-national research on female offending focuses on the additive effects of women’s proportion of the paid labor force or their marriage/fertility rates on the female crime rates and fails to consider whether, or how, these factors might interact to shape the social context of women’s lives and, hence, their relative likelihood of offending (see Kruttschnitt, 1995). Accordingly, we conclude by specifying several ways in which this type of work might be developed further. The perspectives sketched out here can only be developed and refined with an empirical analysis of cross-national data which explicitly tests these hypotheses. Aggregate level data should be gathered not only on women’s proportion of the paid labor force but also the gender structure of occupations and wages, the extent and nature of legislated support for families and the proportion of time women spend on childcare and/or other household labor. We can then determine more precisely how gender relations within and among various social institutions shape women’s proportional involvement in crime. For example, to confirm one of the suppositions developed from the strain perspective, we would need to find that women’s participation in the paid labor force is associated with a larger gender gap in crime only in those nations that have extensive legislated support for families. Similarly, from the control perspective, we would want to show that women’s economic equality moderates the effects of divorce on the gender gap in assaults. These aggregate level data, however, only tell half of the story. A more complete story could be derived by examining individual level data as well. We need to know the specific aspects of gender relations that are conducive to strain, that attenuate bonds to family and work life, and that create perceived opportunities for offending. For example, in both Finland and the United States, the majority of women are in the paid labor force. Yet, we do not know whether it is these women, or the marginally employed women, or, in fact, the unemployed women that are at greatest risk for offending. We also have relatively little understanding of how legislated poli-cies designed to improve the lives of women actually affect them. Although separate wage scales for men and women were abolished in the 1960s in Finland, sex differences in wages persist and vary by

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occupation (Manninen, 1993). The question remains, then, as to which women, if any, have benefitted from such changes. To obtain such detailed data may also require adding a sub-cultural component to the study of gender relations in these nations. Even in a very homogeneous society like Finland, differences in status exist on the basis of income, nationality and race. Focusing only on national data prevents us from understanding not only potentially important variations in crime and its correlates among different economic and racial groups, but also “the processes by which acts become part of an official or unofficial record” (Gartner, 1995:18). Do the conditions under which minority women commit crimes, or the nature of their crimes, or their probability of detection and official recognition differ depending on their relative status within a nation? Much could also be learned about the social conditions that give rise to female offending by examining these types of detailed data both within and between nations. For example, while there is little disagreement over what constitutes the institutions of formal social control in American life (family, school and work), ethnographic studies of low-income African-American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and white families illustrate the importance of cultural variation in the degree to which these institutions are able to effectively regulate the behavior of individuals (see Laub and Lauritsen, 1995:54). Clearly, then, our attempts to further existing theory, as well as forge new theoretical ground, will be limited in the absence of such data collection efforts. Not withstanding the limitations inherent in the current study, as well as those that more generally mark cross-national research, such endeavors provide unparalleled opportunities for “generating, testing, and further developing socio-logical theory” (Kohn, 1989:77). Given the fascinating similarities and differences we found between gender relations and women’s share of crime in Finland and the United States, we believe that this line of research warrants testing and may be important for future explications of female offending. Notes 1. I am aware that there are significant trade-offs between small-N and large-N cross-national research (Ragin, 1989; Gartner, 1995). However, consistent with Kohn (1989:95) my preferred strategy in this case is to provide more information about the country studied and to “provide maximum leverage for testing theoretical issues.” 2. According to Stein Kuhnle (1981:412) the central components of a welfare state—a term used to describe the social and political systems of Finland and other Nordic countries—are “governmental legislation which guarantees income maintenance and other kinds of support for individual citizens and families in case of occupational accidents or disease, old age, and unemployment.” 3. In fact, the decline in the agricultural population in Finland, compared to both other Western industrialized countries and other Nordic countries, took place relatively recently. Roughly one-third of the country’s economically active population was engaged in agriculture in 1960 but by 1980 it had declined to between 5 and 13% (Haavio-Mannila and Kauppinen, 1992:230). 4. Household work in these studies was defined as household chores (e.g., cooking, cleaning, laundry) and maintenance, gardening, child care and shopping (Niemi and Pääkkönen, 1990; Robinson, 1988).

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5. Because many of the factors we have described as causing strain and stress in women’s lives would presumably attenuate their bonds to work, family and political life, thereby providing similar predictions about the extent of the gender gap in crime, we also focus on the opportunity aspect of the more recent version of this theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990) to provide predictions about the nature of female offending. 6. The data source known as “Criminality Known to the Police” is comprised of two main categories: (1) crimes against the criminal code (which in 1994 represented 51% of all known crimes); and (2) traffic crimes (which represented 46% of all known crimes in 1994). 7. These percentages reflecting the female share of offending were calculated based on the data provided by the National Research Institute of Legal Policy (1995b:95, Table 24). However, it should be noted that the female percentage of arrests does not take account of the “population at risk for offending” (see, e.g., Steffensmeier and Streifel, 1992). Nevertheless, re-estimating these data and including information on the number of males and females in Finland ages 15 and over revealed no substantial change in the reported results. 8. Prior to 1990, prosecutors rarely dropped criminal charges against individuals in Finland, which would indicate that this accused population is quite representative of the arrested population. However, beginning in 1983, Finland instituted a system of mediation of criminal conflicts and evidence indicates that the use of mediation has increased over time. Mediation is used most often in cases of vandalism and assault and in some areas of the country mediation is used to clear up as many as 10% of the criminal cases (National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 1995a:235). Thus, the explication of how women’s share of offending increased over this period of time should be interpreted cautiously. 9. It is also possible that the nature of women’s involvement in domestic violence has remained constant and that men who are victimized by spouses are now more likely to contact the police than women who are victimized by spouses (see, e.g., Rouse et al., 1988). This interpretation would be consistent with the feminist argument that the perceived costs and benefits of invoking legal intervention are not gender neutral (Gartner and Macmillan, 1995).

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Gottfredson, M., and Hirschi, T. (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Hagan, J. (1989). Structural Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rut-gers University Press. Haavio-Mannila, E. (1990). “Men’s Work and Women’s Work.” In The Lady with the Bow: The Story of Finnish Women (eds. M.Manninen and P.Setälä). Helsinki: Otava Publishing, pp. 125– 139. Haavio-Mannila, E. (1992). Work, Family and Well-Being in Five North-and East-European Capitals. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Haavio-Mannila, E., and Kauppinen, K. (1992). “Women and the Welfare State in the Nordic Countries.” In Women’s Work and Women’s Lives: The Continuing Struggle Worldwide (eds. H.Kahne and J.Z.Giele) Boulder: Westview Press. Haavio-Mannila, E., Dahlerup, D., Eduards, M., Gudmundsdóttir, E., Halsaa, B., Hernes, H., Hänninen-Salmelin, E., Sigmundsdóttir, B., Sinkkonen, S., and Skard T., eds. (1985a). Unfinished Democracy: Women in Nordic Politics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Haavio-Mannila, E., Liljeström, R., and Sokolowska, M. (1985b). The State, the Family and the Position of Women in the Nordic Countries and Poland.” In Small States in Comparative Perspective: Essays for Erik Allardt (eds. R.Alapuro et al.). Oslo: Norwegian University Press, pp. 69–90. Heiskanen, M., Aromaa, K., Niemi, H., Ruusinen, A., and Sirén, R. (1991). Accidents and Violence 1988. Helsinki: Central Statistical Office of Finland. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hoffman, L.W. (1989) “Effects of Maternal Employment on the Two-Parent Family.” American Psychologist 44:283–292. Julkunen, R. (1990). “Women in the Welfare State.” In The Lady with the Bow: The Story of Finnish Women (eds. M.Manninen and P. Setälä), Helsinki: Otava Publishing, pp. 140–160. Kohn, M.L. (1989). “Cross-National Research as an Analytic Strategy.” In Cross-National Research in Sociology (ASA Presidential Series) (ed. M.L.Kohn). Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 77– 102. Kornhauser, R.R. (1977) Social Sources of Delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kruttschnitt, C. (1994). “Gender and Interpersonal Violence.” In Understanding and Preventing Violence, Vol. 3: Social Influences (eds. A.J.Reiss Jr. and J.Roth). Washington, DC: National Academy Press, pp. 293–376. Kruttschnitt, C. (1995). “Violence By and Against Women: A Comparative and Cross-National Analysis.” Interpersonal Violent Behaviors: Social and Cultural Aspects (eds. R.B.Ruback and N.A. Weiner). New York: Springer, pp. 89–108. Kruttschnitt, C. (1996). “Contributions of Quantitative Methods to the Study of Gender and Crime, or Bootstrapping Our Way into the Theoretical Thicket.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 12:135–161. Kuhnle, S. (1981). “Welfare and the Quality of Life.” In Nordic Democracy (eds. E.Allardt et al.). Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, pp. 399–415. Laub, J.H., and Lauritsen, J. (1995). “Violent Criminal Behavior over the Life Course: A Review of the Longitudinal and Comparative Research.” In Interpersonal Violent Behaviors: Social and Cultural Aspects (eds. R.B.Ruback and N.A.Weiner). New York: Springer, pp. 43–61. Manninen, M. (1993). Women in Finland. Helsinki: The National Council of Women of Finland. Matsueda, R.L., and Heimer, K. (1997). “A Symbolic Interactionist Theory of Role-Transitions, Role-Commitments, and Delinquency.” In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency (ed. T.Thornberry). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, pp. 163–213. Merton, R.K. (1938). “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review 3:677–682. Messerschmidt, J. (1986). Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Crime: Toward a Socialist Feminist Criminology. Totawa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Moen, P. (1985) “Continuities and Discontinuities in Women’s Labor Force Activity.” In Life Course Dynamics: Trajectories and Transitions, 1968–1980 (ed. G.H.Elder Jr.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 113–155. National Research Institute of Legal Policy (1995a). Crime in Finland, 1994. Helsinki: National Research Institute of Legal Policy. National Research Institute of Legal Policy (1995b) “Naisten Rikollisuss.” In Crime in Finland, 1994 (ed. National Research Institute of legal Policy). Helsinki: National Research Institute of Legal Policy, pp. 91–99). National Research Institute of Legal Policy (1996) Crime in Finland, 1995. Helsinki: National Research Institute of Legal Policy. Niemi, I. (1995) Time Use of Women in Europe and North America. United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. New York: United Nations. Niemi, I., and Pääkkönen, H. (1990) ‘Time Use Changes in Finland in the 1980s.” Central Statistical Office of Finland, Studies No. 174. Helsinki. Population Crisis Committee (1988). Country Rankings of the Status of Women: Poor, Powerless, and Pregnant Washington, DC: Population Briefing Paper no. 20. Ragin, C. (1989). “New Directions in Comparative Research.” In Cross-National Research in Sociology (ASA Presidential Series) (ed. M.L.Kohn). Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 57–76. Robinson, J. (1988). “Who Is Doing the Housework?” American Demographics 10:24–28. Rogers, S.J. (1996) “Mothers’ Work Hours and Marital Quality: Variations by Family Structure and Size.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 58:606–617. Ross, C.E., and Van Willigen, M. (1996). “Gender, Parenthood, and Anger.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 58:572–584. Ross, C.E., Mirowsky, J., and Huber, J. (1983). “Dividing Work, Sharing Work, and In-Between: Marriage Patterns and Depression.” American Sociological Review 48:809–823. Rouse, L.P., Breen, R., and Howell, M. (1988). “Abuse in Intimate Relationships: A Comparison of Married and Dating College Students.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 3:414–429. Ruback, R.B., and Weiner, N.A., eds. (1995). Interpersonal Violent Behaviors: Social and Cultural Aspects. New York: Springer. Sampson, R.J., and Laub, J.H. (1993). Crime in the Making. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Simon, R.J. (1975). Women and Crime. Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath. Skard, T., and Haavio-Mannila, E. (1985) “Women in Parliament.” In Unfinished Democracy: Women in Nordic Politics (eds. E.HaavioMannila, D.Dahlerup, M.Eduards, E.Gudmundsdóttir, B.Halsaa, H.M.Hernes, E.Hänninen-Salmelin, B.Sigmundsdóttir, S. Sinkkonen, and Torild Skard). Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 51–80. Steffensmeier, D. (1993). “National Trends in Female Arrests, 1960–1990: Assessments and Recommendations for Research.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9:413–441. Steffensmeier, D., and Allen, E. (1996) “Gender and Crime: Toward a Gendered Theory of Female Offending.” Annual Review of Sociology 22:459–487. Steffensmeier, D., and Streifel, C. (1992) “Time-Series Analysis of the Female Percentage of Arrests for Property Crimes, 1960–1985: A Test of Alternative Explanations.” Justice Quarterly, 9:77–103. U.S.Bureau of Census (1992). “Households, Families and Children. A Thirty Year Perspective.” Current Population Reports, Series P23 No. 181. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Voydanoff, P. (1988). “Work Role Characteristics, Family Structure Demands and Work/Family Conflicts.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 50:749–761. Waerness, K. (1989). “Caring.” In Changing Patterns of European Family Life: A Comparative Analysis of 14 European Countries (eds. K.Boh, M.Bak, C.Clason, N.Pankratova, J.Qvortrup, G. Sgritta, and K.Waerness). London: Routledge, pp. 217–247.

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Wilson, M., and Daly, M. (1992). “Who Kills Whom in Spousal Killings? On the Exceptional Sex Ratio of Spousal Homicides in the United States.” Criminology 30:189–215. Wilson, N.K. (1983). “An International Perspective on Women and Criminology.” In International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Criminology: General Issues and the Americas (ed. E.H.Johnson). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 99–118. Wiseman, J.P. (1991) The Other Half: Wives of Alcoholics and Their Social-Psychological Situation. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Chapter Five Discrimination Against Women Under the Nationality Laws:

Case Studies for Egypt and Lebanon Nawal H.Ammar INTRODUCTION Contemporary social scientists have argued that viewing women as having the same social roles and characteristics is an oversimplification of reality (Worrall, 1990:3–4). It is misleading to examine gender as the only feature of women’s identification and that other relevant categories such as class, ethnicity, race, religion, education and legal status should be included in all discussions about gender issues. This chapter argues that although all women do not have the same experience some of their experiences are often similar because of gender. Gender issues as they relate to justice, equity and human rights are significant for women and present a particular challenge for researchers and scholars of the Arab Middle East. Stereotypical gender discrimination in the region is sometimes validated, since stereotypes are often historic exaggerated reality. This chapter considers gender as the focus in discussing the nationality laws of Egypt and Lebanon in an attempt to provide suggestions that may contribute to solving problems related to human rights and justice for the women of these two countries. The chapter is divided into several parts: First, it presents a rationale for the choice of Lebanon and Egypt. Then it examines each country in relation to their nationality laws and their implications. Third, it provides a comparative examination of the implications of these laws and offers recommendations to improve the situation. This chapter is based largely on research conducted by Egyptian and Lebanese scholars in preparation for the nongovernmental forum of the Fourth U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing. Most of the works are written in Arabic and consist mainly of legal research on the topic.1 In-depth interviews conducted in 1993 and 1996 with Lebanese and Egyptian women who were living or visiting the United States and Egypt are also used.

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EGYPT AND LEBANON: A RATIONALE FOR CHOICE Egypt and Lebanon were chosen for three reasons relating to their nationality laws. The first reason is the availability of data from the author’s research and the research of renowned legal and social scholars in the area. This data has not yet been systematically analyzed or presented in English in any comprehensive way. Second, certain similarities and differences between the two countries make them interesting and useful for comparative analysis. Both countries utilize French codes as the basis of their criminal and to some degree civil legislation. They have a socioeconomic structure that is typical of the developing world (i.e., mainly agricultural and service-based structure) and have had similar experiences in the process of nation-building, including a women’s movement, and a small class of elites. However, Egypt and Lebanon differ from each other in terms of the influences the Islamic codes have had on their legal system. In Egypt, Islamic Sharia’ is the ultimate reference code for all legislation. Lebanon, on the other hand, uses Islamic codes only for its Muslim population’s personal status courts, while other groups are governed by their own sectarian rules.2 The greater influence of Islam in Egypt’s legal codes permits us to ascertain its effects on gender discrimination in the nationality laws. Also, Lebanon is the only Arab state whose nationality laws are not copied directly from Egyptian law (Moghaizel, 1985:74–83; Sherbini, 1996:4). The third reason for the choice is a personal one. The author is the child of a Lebanese mother who could not pass on her nationality to her children who lived in Lebanon. Likewise, the Egyptian laws that prevent women from passing on their nationality to their children have prevented the author from passing on her Egyptian nationality to her child born from an American father.3 The balance of this chapter explores how Egyptian and Lebanese nationality laws discriminate against women passing on their nationalities to their children and the implication of such policies on justice and human rights. Egypt: Society and the Status of Women The Arab Republic of Egypt is located in the northeast of Africa. It is a highly populated country with 65 million people living on a very narrow strip of fertile land. Egypt is primarily an agricultural society with more than sixty percent of its population working in this sector. Ninety-six percent of Egyptians are Arabs and most are also Sunni Muslim. Since the nineteenth century there has been a tendency towards the emancipation of women in Egypt. The national revolution in 1919 provided an impetus for writings such as those of Muhammad Abdu and Qasim Amin calling for the education of women and granting women equal rights to men and for a women’s movement led by elites calling for women’s rights to vote, work and obtain education. After gaining independence the Egyptian constitution stated in Section 40 that “citizens have equal rights and duties and there is no discrimination against them due to sex, origin, language or ideology.” During the first twenty years of independence Egyptian women gained some rights including voting, equal pay, and access to free education.

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These promises, however, have not been fulfilled and men remain dominant. The economic crisis that Egypt has experienced since the late 1970s has contributed to various “return-to-the-past” ideologies including Islamic revivalism. It is essential to understand this revivalism because according to the revised constitution of 1971, Section 2, “Islamic law is the ultimate reference to all legislation both civil and criminal.” Egyptian law is a combination of Islamic, French, Indian and other codes but today there is pressure to Islamize it. Egyptian Law and Nationality Laws Regardless of the origin of Egyptian law, in its final letter it allows men to pass on their nationality to their children (and wives) and limits women’s abilities to do the same. The following is a summary of the basic provisions of the nationality law in Egypt: Article 2 of law 26, 1975, considers: 1. Any child born to an Egyptian father automatically Egyptian, whether born inside or outside Egypt. 2.Any child born in Egypt to an Egyptian mother and a father without nationality or unknown nationality automatically Egyptian. 3.Any child born in Egypt to an Egyptian mother and no legitimate (through marriage) father Egyptian. 4.Any child found in Egypt with no parents Egyptian. All orphans are considered to have been born in Egypt, unless proven otherwise. Article 3 of law 26, 1975, considers: Any child born outside Egypt to an Egyptian mother and no legitimate father (through marriage) entitled to acquire the Egyptian nationality, but they need to apply to the Minister of the Interior in writing subject to the following procedures: a.The decision to apply should be taken within a year from the date they reach the age of majority (21). b.Egypt must be their regular place of residence for 5 years prior to the application. (The Communication Group for the Enhancement of the Status of Women in Egypt, 1992:33; Abu Tij, 1993:98–99; 1995:11; Sherbini, 1996:1; Tadros, 1995:45–46; Hammoud, 1997:173) Implications of the Egyptian Nationality Laws The effect of the Egyptian nationality laws on women and their children has been the subject of debate for the past twenty years. Nationality rights in Egypt are passed on through birth and not “birthplace,” yet, women do not have the right to pass on nationality in every case. An Egyptian woman whose offspring have a legitimate father with a foreign nationality cannot pass on her nationality to them at all, regardless of where they were born. Also, in cases where the father is unknown, the child of an Egyptian woman can only obtain Egyptian nationality if he or she was born in Egypt, and

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with an application if they were born outside Egypt. Egyptian men, on the other hand, can pass on their nationality to their children regardless of birthplace or the nationality of the children’s mother. This nationality law imposes daily hardships on the people directly affected by it. The difficulties of obtaining residency for the children; bureaucratic red-tape and the expense of obtaining permits to stay in the country are among the major complaints of women interviewed. One woman estimated that on a yearly basis, she spends between $150–200 to obtain permits for her children.4 The expense of schooling for children of foreign nationals is often beyond the means of an average working family and tuition must be paid in foreign currency (often in U.S. dollars).5 Foreign national children of Egyptian mothers also need work permits before taking jobs but the labor laws that protect Egyptians do not apply to them. During the last two decades, Egyptian women marrying men from other countries represented fifteen percent of all marriages (Sherbini, 1996:3). A large number of these marriages take place among the poor urban classes and young Egyptian women are married off to older men from the oil-rich Gulf states. These marriages have been dubbed ‘touristic marriages’ since the women are married off during the husband’s vacation in Egypt (Tadros et al., 1995:47). Resulting children are treated as foreign nationals because the father is known and foreign. But this in Egypt is not limited to poor mothers and their children. A number of highly educated, affluent and professional women have appealed to the constitutional courts to settle the issue by amending Article 2 of the law to give children of Egyptian women automatic Egyptian nationality. In 1993, a woman complained to the High Judges of Egypt in a forum on women and the law conducted by a nongovernmental organization, “The Alliance for Arab Women.” She said, “I am an Egyptian physician and my Bosnian husband was killed in the war, so I came back home, but here my children are foreigners. I have to pay their tuition fees in American dollars, I have to renew their residency which is not a problem now because they are below the age of majority. When we go on vacation to the south of Egypt or the Red Sea, I have to pay for their hotel rooms in American dollars. If I die tomorrow they cannot inherit my practice because they are not Egyptian. Where is justice here?”6 These educated women have argued that the nationality law of Egypt opposes the general spirit of the Egyptian Constitution as well as the Islamic Sharia’. They have noted that Article 40 of the Constitution guarantees equity of treatment of all citizens by stating that “citizens are equal in the eyes of the law regardless of gender, origin, language, religion and creed.” Article 8 reiterates this equity by stating “the State shall guarantee equality of opportunity to all citizens.” Furthermore, Article 11 notes that “the State shall guarantee proper coordination between the duties of a woman towards her family and her work in the society, considering her equal with men in the fields of political, social, cultural and economic life without violation of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence.” In addition, Islamic Sharia’ guarantees equity between men and women based on numerous textual verses from the Qur’an.7 The equity between men and women that one finds both in Egyptian secular law and Islamic Sharia’ has made no difference to Egyptian legislators. The silence towards appeals to the courts and numerous academic and community protests over the implications of the discriminatory nationality laws is puzzling. This silence is even more

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perplexing in view of the 1979 International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).8 The agreement calls for “nations to eliminate inequality and to abolish discriminatory laws and encourage participating nations to ensure political, legal, educational, economic, and marital equality” (Jewett, 1996:208). Egypt expressed reservations toward three articles of the agreement including, Article 9 which provided. that nations would grant women equal rights with men regarding the nationality of their children.9 Egypt was concerned about compromising Islamic Sharia’ (Thu al-Faqar, 1993:121), which may be understandable with regard to Articles 2 and 16 which respectively state that “nations should combat discrimination by taking legislative action” and “parties must eliminate discrimination against women in elements relating to marriage and family.”10 But in relation to women passing their nationality to their children there is no compromise of Islamic law, since the law does not address the issue directly, and the present law is based on human derivations. Abed alMoneim Riyadh, a law professor at Cairo University and a judge in the International War Crimes Tribunal notes that granting equal rights to women regarding the nationality of their children is “in complete agreement with Islamic Sharia’” (al-Ahram, 1997:5). He further argues that Islamic societies historically provided sanctity, protection, and equal treatment (i.e., citizenship in the modern sense) to anyone willing to live in peace in the community without any conditions of conversion to Islam. Lebanon: Society and the Status of Women Lebanon is the smallest Arab country with an area exceeding 10,000 square kilometers (4000 square miles) and the estimated total population in 1984 was 3.5 million. The country fell under French mandate after the First World War where it was divided from greater Syria and set up as part of the former’s colonial territories. In 1943, Lebanon gained independence from the French with a constitution that guaranteed the major government offices to the Maronite Christians.11 For 32 years (up to 1975), the National Pact—where political positions were secured through a sectarian formula of power distribution—provided Lebanon with a viable functioning order.12 Between 1950 and 1963, per capita income rose from $235 to $449 and the Gross National Product from $520 million to $735 million. Further between 1964 and 1969 the annual rate of growth was 7% and the per capita income rose by 5% (Gordon, 1980). Not only was Lebanon flourishing economically, but judging by the attitude towards women, literacy rates, and the urbanization level, it was at the vanguard of progressive trends in the Arab world (Amyouni, 1993:2). Then, in September 1975 the Lebanese civil war began. Amyouni describes how the city fell into a state of war by stating “in 1975 we slowly felt prisoners of a diseased city not unlike Camus’ Oran in The Plague” (Amyouni, 1993:2). During this time women maintained dual roles in the war-torn Lebanon. They played the traditional role of nurturers and family keepers, but they also carried on in the public arena of keeping alive in order for their country not to die. So they were the ones who lined up to buy bread and were the ones who created volunteer organizations for the orphans, and the victims of war (Shaaban, 1991). In this context, the dual role of women as nurturers inside the home and workers outside was instrumental. Yet, in spite of their efforts, since the early nineties women

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have been invisible in the reconstruction of Lebanon. They are completely absent from any official political arena and they have also been left out of most cultural debates. In a study of the images of Lebanese women in the mass media Kallab underscores women’s silent endurance during the war in securing daily activity and hence, protecting the country (quoted in Amyouni, 1993:5). She notes, however, that since the late 1980s women have been marginalized and put back in the home and today concludes that “the Lebanese women’s roles and values still have no place in man’s psyche nor in the life of the nation” (quoted in Amyouni, 1993:5). The Lebanese laws relating to nationality are complex and derive from a combination of Ottoman laws, colonial legislation, Lebanese constitutional amendments and international agreements. Some of the laws are still functional while others are on the books but have not been used for a period of time (Moghaizel, 1985:7–18). Lebanese Law and Nationality Law Regardless of their origin and application Lebanese laws, like the Egyptian ones, allow men to pass on their nationality to their children (and wives), while depriving women of this right. The following is a summary of the basic provisions of the nationality laws in Lebanon:

Article 1 of Declaration 15, Jun, 19, 1939 considers: 1. Any child born to a Lebanese father a Lebanese. 2. Any child born inside Lebanon and having no other nationality passed on to him/her from a known non-Lebanese father a Lebanese. 3. Any child born inside Lebanon of an unknown parent(s) or of a parent(s) from an unknown nationality a Lebanese. Articles 2 and 4 of Declaration 15, January 19, 1925 consider the following Lebanese: 1. An illegitimate child of a Lebanese woman if he/she a) resembles the mother more than the father and b) is below 18. 2. The child of a naturalized Lebanese woman, who took on the Lebanese nationality following the death of her spouse. The child has to be below the age of majority. (Moghaizel, 1985:75–83) Implications of the Lebanese Nationality Laws Lebanese nationality laws are not any less restrictive regarding women passing on their nationality to their children than the Egyptian laws. According to the Lebanese constitution, Article 15, January 19, 1925, citizenship is determined by birth and birthplace. Men are granted the right to pass on their nationalities to their children without any conditions. Women, on the other hand, are limited by the legitimacy of their marriages, age of their children, the resemblance of their children to them, and their naturalization status (Shams, 1995:125–146). The effects of this discrimination on Lebanese women and their children are at some level very similar to those of Egyptian women. Lebanese women who can not automatically pass on their nationality to their children and husbands have to endure

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prolonged applications for their residency in Lebanon. In a civil war situation these applications could be denied or rejected for purely political reasons, often disrupting familial needs for stability. One woman interviewed in the United States said, “they would not let us stay because they thought we were supporters of the P.L.O. We never engaged in politics and my husband is not even a Palestinian. My children have not seen my family for over 10 years now.” Also, the educational costs for foreign nationals in Lebanon are equivalent to private schooling in Europe or the United States, making educational opportunities unattainable for foreign national children of Lebanese mothers as they are not eligible to attend public schools in Lebanon. These children face the same employment problems as foreign national children of Egyptian mothers and need special permits to obtain jobs although their job security is not protected by government legislation or union membership. Lebanese nationality laws also present a different set of problems from those of Egypt owing to the civil war situation and socio-demographic situation of the south Lebanese. One of the most impoverished, direct war zones, southern Lebanon has witnessed a large number of marriages between Lebanese women and Palestinian men. The children of these marriages reside in Lebanon either illegally (since 1982) or as Palestinian refugees.13 Either status hinders the geographic mobility of the children and hence limits their educational and employment opportunities. These impositions have often contributed to their joining militias, since they are the only available economic opportunities in the region. Therefore, one of the results of preventing women from passing on their nationality in Lebanon has been the creation of a generation of children who have no other opportunity but to join the warring economy and as a result contribute to prolonging one of the most uncivil wars of the twentieth century. It is this cyclical oppression of Lebanese women, first as victims of war and then as victims of legal discrimination, that make a change in nationality laws imperative. The Lebanese discrimination against women passing on their nationality to their children is different from that of Egypt since the Lebanese constitution does not clearly provide a specific article regarding the equality of women in the eyes of the law. The two Articles, 7 and 12, which declare that all Lebanese citizens are considered equal in their civil, political and employment rights and duties are written in the masculine plural. In the parliamentary session drafting these articles the suggestion to include the plural masculine and feminine was defeated by a majority (Moghaizel, 1985:13–14). Hence, the equity between men and women is left to the individual judge and legislator’s discretion.14 The lack of a distinct constitutional commitment toward the equal treatment of men and women in the Lebanese system is particularly problematic since the government has signed the International Convention on the Elimination Against women (CEDAW). This treaty requires that countries be clear in their constitutions regarding equity between men and women, Article 3 paragraph A. The Lebanese government has attached reservations on the provision that grants women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children (Article 9), and the provision that gives equal rights vis-à-vis family, divorce and guardianship of children (Article 16) (Moghaizel, 1996:25). These reservations reflect the patriarchal and patrilineal characteristics of the Lebanese society that discriminate against women on account of their gender alone.

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NATIONALITY LAWS IN EGYPT AND LEBANON: THE CENTRALITY OF GENDER A comparative discussion of the nationality laws of Egypt and Lebanon shows the centrality of gender in the process of discrimination against women and their children. This gender-based discrimination is, however, a complicated process. At its most logical level one can conclude that the two countries, in spite of their historic, legal and contemporary differences, grant men the unconditional right to pass on their nationalities to their children, but regulate and restrict that right to women. Hence, regardless of any other variable including class, status, religion, education femaleness is the one that deprives Egyptian and Lebanese women of their unconditional rights as citizens. This gender-based deprivation of citizenry rights in both countries, however, is complicated by numerous issues including national and religious priorities and identities. It is essential to examine the concern with national identity because it is often used to postpone, hinder or eliminate the issue of gender equity between men and women for the larger cause of the nation. Both Egypt and Lebanon have debated concerns related to national security vis-à-vis women married to foreign men. Questions regarding the allegiances of these women and their children have often surfaced as barriers to granting them the right of citizenry. Such allegations have no empirical basis and only serve to reinforce discrimination against women. Other issues regarding nation-building have also been put forth that question the wisdom of granting women the right to pass on their nationality. These issues include population growth in countries that have the highest population increase in the world. Such arguments, however, do not take into consideration the fact that both Lebanon’s and Egypt’s population increases from foreign national children is very insignificant. The post-colonial periods of Lebanon and Egypt have been times of nation-building like most developing countries. Egypt, depending on the era, reflected nation building processes that were socialistic then open-market, and with ideologies that were Arab, African, and Islamic. Lebanon, on the other hand, was always an open-market, touristoriented country with ideologies that identified it with cosmopolitan, mediterranean, and sectarian characteristics. The identities of the two countries have always been diametrically opposite, yet, their nationality laws converge in their treatment of women and men: It is not national identity but gender that is central with regard to nationality laws. Hence, there is a need to refocus gender within the nation-building and national identity processes in Egypt and Lebanon. However, the Lebanese case is the better example of this need. In a country where issues of the nation’s future are a priority, unless women are empowered with citizenry rights for their children and other rights the war machine may never run out of human ammunition. It is also essential to understand the importance of equity in the context of the gap between legal text and social reality. Legal changes alone will not result in a dramatic transformation of women’s status regarding nationality laws in particular and discrimination against them in general. Gender equity requires a real commitment towards empowering and granting women equal rights. Nonetheless, changing the legal codes may help promote changes in the status of women.

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The centrality of gender and the commitment towards equity regarding nationality laws have been addressed by numerous countries since the 1970s. France (1973), Germany (1979), Italy (1983) and Spain (1983) amended their nationality laws to guarantee equal treatment of men and women. Mexico (1969), Zaire (1981) and Turkey (1981) amended their constitutions to eliminate any difference in treatment between men and women in the right to pass on their nationalities to their children. In the Arab world only Tunisia (in 1993) amended its law allowing the child of a Tunisian mother and a foreign father to write to the Minister of the Interior declaring his or her desire to remain a Tunisian citizen. In all these countries changes in the law were the first steps towards a commitment and guaranteeing to make it a central issue in nation-building. Eventually Egypt and Lebanon may well join the rest of the world in changing their nationality laws to treat women and men equitably. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Unlike many other nation-states of the developing and developed world, Egyptian and Lebanese laws still discriminate against women passing their nationality to their children. Such discrimination has lead to financial and social hardships on women, their children and their families. Although the effects vary according to each country, both well-to-do and poor women suffer. In Egypt and Lebanon the unequal treatment of women by the nationality laws have limited and in some cases denied their children basic opportunities of education and employment. In Lebanon, these laws have contributed to the production of an “illegal” generation of children that only the warring economy would employ and absorb. This has perpetuated one of the longest civil wars in the twentieth century. It appears that despite the variation in the Lebanese and Egyptian political and legal situation their nationality laws similarly discriminate against women. Such discrimination is often covered up by issues of national priority, or identity, or certain realities of war in the case of Lebanon. Yet, a comparative look at both countries shows that gender discrimination is the central issue that permits the continuation of such laws. The Lebanese and Egyptian governments can follow the precedence of other governments that have taken action to eliminate the unequal treatment of men and women by nationality laws. Also, each of the countries under discussion have their own suggestions on how to eliminate this discrimination. In Egypt, for example, within the past five years many organizations and individuals have suggested that the nationality law be changed to read simply: Any child born to an Egyptian father or mother is automatically Egyptian, whether born inside or outside Egypt.15 Also, a group of women have appealed to the constitutional court in Egypt to resolve the issue of the constitutionality of Egyptian nationality laws. The court declared that lower courts did not consider the matter serious enough to seek its resolution in the higher court and it refused to look into the matter. However, in May 1997, a law was being considered that would allow the children of women married to foreign men to become Egyptians if the mother does not change her maiden name after marriage.16

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In the Lebanese case, nationality laws require a more comprehensive change and that change must include a clear clause relating to the equity between men and women in the eyes of the law. The Lebanese Ministry of the Interior has had a comprehensive nationality law submitted to it since 1962. Although rumors in the media surface every few years regarding the “Comprehensive Law” of 1962, nothing has materialized as of the writing of this chapter.17 The women of Egypt and Lebanon have defied every stereotype of subservient and passive characteristics in their courageous efforts against colonialism, war, religious extremism, and other forms of violence. Discrimination under nationality laws is one more struggle towards achieving equity and human rights. Notes 1. See bibliographic reference for exact citations. 2. There are two Islamic and four Christian codes applied in Lebanon. The Islamic codes include: the Sunni sect who follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, the Shiite sect who follow the Ja’fari school of jurisprudence, and the Druze who follow (most of the time) the Hanafi school of Jurisprudence. The Christian codes include: The Maronites, Roman Catholics, Armenian and the Chaldeans who follow the Catholic rules, the Orthodox who follow the Roman Orthodox rules, the Protestants who follow the rules of their particular church in Europe and the U.S., and the Assyrians who follow the Assyrian Church codes. 3. My brother’s children are American-born children from a non-Egyptian mother and are eligible for Egyptian nationality any time they choose, while my child, who is Americanborn from an Egyptian mother and a non-Egyptian father, is not eligible for Egyptian citizenship. 4. $150–200 is equivalent to two to three months salary of a better-paid Egyptian. 5. In 1995 an executive order was passed to eliminate university fees for foreign nationals whose mothers are Egyptian. This, however, does not cover elementary and high school-age children. 6. The word equity here is used to denote the United Nations Beijing Platform that emphasizes women’s need for parity and equal access to resources than their need for a simplistic equality and sameness with men. 7. The verses of the Qur’an on which Sharia’ should be based are often ignored in present day Muslim jurisprudence. Among the verses that show gender parity and equity is Sura 4, alNissa [the Women]; Verse 1: “Oh human kind your guardian-Lord who created you from a single soul, created of like nature, a mate, and from twain scattered (like seeds), countless men and women.” Other textual sources of equity between men and women on which Islamic Sharia’ must be based on include Sura 7, verse 189; Sura 30, verses 20–21; Sura 39, verse 6; Sura 3, verse 195; and Sura 4, verse 124. 8. Egypt signed the CEDAW agreement in 1981, which was enforced by Presidential Declaration #434 on December 17, 1981. 9.. Libya, Iraq and Tunisia were among the other Arab countries that expressed equal reservations. 10. CEDAW note 176, at 193. 11. Lebanon is a sectarian society that has seventeen different sects of Christians and Muslims. 12. The one exception to this viable order was the 1958 armed clashes challenging the legitimacy of the Maronite government. In the early 1950s the Nasserite ideology threatened the Leba-nese sectarian balance. Most of the Lebanese Sunni Muslims displayed allegiances to Nasser’s Arab Socialism, while the Leba-nese government allied itself with the emerging American dominance. This alliance with the West was regarded by the Muslims as

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repudiation of the National Pact that lead to the 1958 civil strife that claimed 4000 causalities and the landing of 10,000 U.S. Marines. 13. Due to political reasons, children of Palestinian fathers are considered as having a parent with a known nationality and hence not eligible for Lebanese nationality. 14. Article 7 states “all Lebanese are equal in front of the law and should be treated equally with regard to their civil, and political rights and carry the same obligation and duties without any discrimination.” Article 21 states “to every Lebanese the right to obtain employment without discrimination except with regard to ability and according to legal conditions.” 15. These organizations include The Union of Arab Lawyers, The Alliance for Arab Women, The Communication Group for the Enhancement of the Status of Women In Egypt, The Organization for the Development and Empowerment of Women, and the new Woman’s Organization. 16. Keeping one’s maiden name after marriage is an Egyptian tradition. 17. It is actually a personal ambition to be able to tell my daughter some day that I can pass on to her the right to an Egyptian or Lebanese nationality. This would certainly provide a concrete example to her of gender power, especially that her cousins will be able to obtain the Egyptian citizenship through their father regardless of any changes. In my case such empowerment is an ambition and not an absolute necessity but for other women passing-on their nationality to their children is of vital importance for survival.

References Abedl Kader, S. (1992). The Situation of Women in Egypt The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (Women and Child Research Unit). Cairo: Shorouk Press. Abu Tij, M. (1995). Dirasah lil-Quanin al-Misriah [A Study of Egyptian Laws]. Paper Presented at the U.N. 4th Conference on Women, Beijing, China, 31 August-8 September 1995 ,pp. 1–15. Abu Tij, M. (1993). “Namothag Wad’a al-Mar’ah Fi Qanun al-Jinsiah al-Misri [An Example of the Conditions of Women in the Egyptian Nationality Law]. In al-Wai’ al-Qanuni lil-Mar’ah alMisriah: The Legal Consciousness of the Egyptian Woman (ed. A.Abdullah). Cairo: AMIDEAST, pp. 98–101. Alliance For Arab Women (1995). Al-Mar’ah Wa al-Qanun [Women and the Law]. Cairo: Alliance for Arab Women. Amyuni Takieddine, M. (1993). “And Life Went On In War Torn Lebanon.” The Impact of War and Revolution on Women in the Arab World, The Arab World Studies Quarterly 5(2): 1–13. The Communication Groups For the Enhancement of the Status of Women in Egypt (1992). Legal Rights of Egyptian Women in Theory and Practice. Cairo: Dar el-Kutub. Gordon, D. (1980). Lebanon, The Fragmented Nation. Sacramento, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Hammoud, R.S. (1997). Al-Mar’ah al-Misriah: Mushkilat al-Hadir Wa Tahdiat al-Mustakbal [The Egyptian Woman: Contemporary Problems and Future Challenges]. Cairo: Dar al-Amin lilNashr Wa al-Tiba’h. The Holy Qur’an: English Translation of the Meaning and Commentary. Al-Madinah AlMunawarah: King Fahd Holy Qur’an Printing Complex. Jabal, T. (1995). “Al-Mar’ah al-Misriah Wa al-Mutaghirat al-Mu’asirah” [The Egyptian Woman and Contemporary Change]. In al-Haq (ed. F.Abu Issa). Cairo: Union of Arab Lawyers Press, pp. 53–60. Jewett J. (1996). ‘The Recommendations of the International Conference on Population and Development: The Possibility of the Empowerment of Women.” Cornell International Law Journal 29:191–223. Moghaizel, L. (1996). “Laure Moughaizel Evaluates Lebanese Laws.” Al-Raida XIII(74–75): 23– 26.

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Alliance For Arab Women Moghaizel, L. (1995). “Al-Mar’ah Bin al-Waqi’ Wa al-Qanun” [The Woman Between Reality and the Law]. In Al-Mar’ah al-Arabiah: al-Waqi’ Wa al-Taswur [The Arab Woman: Reality and Vision] (eds. D.Bizri and F.A.Azrwil). Cairo: Nur, Dar Al-Mar’ah al-Arabiah Lil-Nashr ;pp. 60–73. Moghaizel, L. (1985). Al-Mar’ah Fi al-Tashri’ al-Lubnani [The Woman in Lebanese Law]. Beirut: Naufal Publications. Riyadh, F. (1997). “Haq Ibn al-Masriah Min Zawj Ajnabi al-Jinsiah” [The Rights of The Egyptian Woman’s Offspring from a Foreign Man to the Nationality]. al-Ahram, February 1997, p. 5. Shaaban, B. (1991). Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk About Their Lives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Shams, N. (1995). “Al-Mujhif Min al-Quanin Bihaq al-Mar’ah al-Lub-naniah Min Nwahi al-Ahwal al-Shaksiah Wa al-Madaniah” [Civil and Public Laws that Discriminate Against Lebanese Women]. In al-Haq (ed. F.Abu Issa). Cairo: Union of Arab Lawyers Press, pp. 125–146. Sherbini, N. (1996). Al-Mar’ah Wa Qanun al-Jinsiah [The Woman and the Nationality Law]. Legal brief prepared as a review of the post-Beijing evaluations, pp. 1–6. Tadros, M., Shibini, A.Z., and Abed al-Hakim, A. (1995). Al-Mu-watina al-Manqosa: Tahmish al Mar’ah Fi Misr [The Marginalization of the Egyptian Woman]. Cairo: the Center for Legal Studies and Information on Human Rights. Thu al-Faqar, M. (1993). “Wad’ al-Mar’ah al-Misriah Fi Daw’ al-Iti-faqiah al-Dawliah lil-Qad’ ‘Ala Kafat Ashkal al-Tamiz Did al-Mar’ah” [The Situation of the Egyptian Woman in Light of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women]. In al-Wai’ al-Qanuni lil-Mara’ah al-Misriah [The Legal Consciousness of the Egyptian Woman] (ed. A.Abdullah). Cairo: AMIDEAST, pp. 118–148. Worral, A. (1990). Offending Women: Female Law Breakers and The Criminal Justice System. London: Routledge.

Chapter Six Wife Rape in Great Britain*

Kate Painter and David P.Farrington INTRODUCTION In Great Britain there has been very little research into rape in marriage. This paper presents the findings of the first national survey designed to investigate the phenomenon of “wife rape” in Great Britain.1 The survey was initiated in response to the legal anomalies in the rape laws as they applied to married women in England and Scotland in 1989. It is the first to focus exclusively upon this particular type of wife abuse and it is especially valuable because the women interviewed do not represent the most extreme cases of rape that are so often the subject of lurid media coverage and feminist accounts of rape trauma. The design and methodol*We are very grateful to the “World in Action” television series for funding the survey, to Denis Lancer of Staffordshire University for assistance with legal cases, and to Professor Jean Gregory of Middlesex University for helpful comments on questionnaire design.

ogy of the survey make it more likely that the women are representative of the full range of experiences of unwilling and coerced intercourse, as it occurs within marriage, than victims who have contacted a rape crisis center or women’s aid group. The term “wife rape” is used in the research to emphasize, in a manner that phrases such as “marital rape” or “spousal rape” do not, that what is being referred to is a type of violence which is practiced solely by a husband against his wife within marriage. It is not something that a wife is likely to do to her husband. THE LAWS ON WIFE RAPE IN GREAT BRITAIN In Great Britain, the right of married men to have forced sexual intercourse with their wives has a long history. This male prerogative was enshrined in English common law, which evolved around the assumption that a wife became her husband’s physical and sexual property as part and parcel of the marriage contract. The specific legal presumption that a man cannot be prosecuted for the rape of his wife was stated in 1736 by an English Judge, Sir Matthew Hale, who outlined the legal position thus:

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A husband cannot be guilty of rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract. (Hale, 1971:69) Hale’s view was also accepted in Scotland by Baron Hume’s 1797 treatise on Scottish Criminal Law, which in effect maintained that a husband could not be charged with raping his wife, because a wife had given her implied consent to sexual intercourse with her husband as a natural and normal occurrence within marriage. It is remarkable that this antediluvian view, of a wife as the sexual and physical property of her husband, remained unchallenged in England until 1949 (Clarke, 1949), when it was accepted as a correct statement of the law with regard to a cohabiting husband and wife. In this case, the wife had obtained an order from the justices specifying that she was not compelled to live with her husband, and the husband was found guilty of rape. Until very recently the courts in England and Scotland have proceeded on the basis that, just as general consent to sexual intercourse was implicit in the marriage contract, so it could be deemed to have been retracted by some further process of law, such as judicial separation, or by virtue of a clear agreement between the parties, such as a separation agreement with a non-cohabitation clause. Further exceptions over the years have included a decree nisi of divorce (O’Brien, 1974) or a non-molestation order (Steele, 1976). In short, where a woman had explicitly established a legal status other than as a cohabiting wife, a husband could be found guilty of rape. However, simply filing a petition for divorce (Miller, 1954) or issuing proceedings leading to a magistrates’ separation order (Steele, 1976) were insufficient grounds for bringing a charge of rape against a husband. The crime of rape began as a common law offense in England, and is still a common law offense in Scotland. However, penalties for the crime and recognition of rape as a felony were alluded to in a succession of English statutes which were consolidated in the Offenses against the Persons Act 1861 and the Sexual Offenses Act 1956. Section 1 of the Sexual Offenses Act 1956 repeated the common law definition that rape applied only to those sexual acts in which a man penetrated a woman’s vagina with his penis without her consent. By adhering to a narrow definition of rape, other sexual acts, such as anal intercourse, oral sex, or penetration of the vagina by other objects were excluded from rape laws. It was not until 1976 that a statutory definition of rape was given. Section l(l)(a) of the Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Act 1976 stated that “a man commits rape if he has unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman who at the time of the intercourse does not consent to it.” The word “unlawful” was held to mean intercourse outside marriage, and therefore the marital rape immunity was, in effect, upheld by the English Parliament. In Scotland, the first case where a husband was convicted of the rape of his wife was Duffy (1982); the spouses were living apart but there was no court order regarding the separation. The first case where a husband was convicted of the rape of his wife, while the spouses were living together, was Stallard (1989). This case went to the Scottish Court of Appeal, which upheld the conviction on March 15, 1989.

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Rejecting the suggestion that the Scottish courts were creating a new crime, the Lord Justice-General (Lord Emslie) argued that, while the court accepted Baron Hume’s assumption that the implied consent of a wife to sexual intercourse with her husband was a normal part of marriage, the court could not accept that this consent could be broadened to include sexual intercourse enacted explicitly against a wife’s consent and obtained, as in this case, by force. This would be classified as an assault. Since the Scottish courts already provided legal protection for a wife from assault by her husband, the courts could not justify removal of that protection simply because the assault concluded with forced sexual intercourse (Brownlea, 1989). A year later, English Crown Court judges also made judgments in two cases which undermined the marital rape immunity (Rawlinson, Leicester Crown Court, July 30, 1990; Crapper, Sheffield Crown Court, October 5, 1990; both reported in The Independent, October 19, 1990). In the Rawlinson case (R.vs.R.), a husband was accused of raping his wife after she had moved out of the matrimonial home and while she was living with her parents. The defendant broke into the parents’ house and violently raped his wife as well as threatening to kill her. There was no court order which legally separated the couple or forbade the husband from molesting his wife. Nevertheless, the judge decided that the wife’s consent to intercourse had been revoked by her withdrawal from cohabitation and that the husband was guilty of rape. In the same month (October 1990), the English Law Commission undertook a review of the marital rape immunity rule and recommended in a working paper that it should be abandoned. In March 1991, the Court of Appeal effectively removed the marital rape exclusion in England by upholding the R.vs.R. judgement, a ruling which was subsequently upheld by the House of Lords (1991). Following the same reasoning as the Scottish courts, Lord Lane stated that Hale’s opinion no longer represented the law and that in the twentieth century a wife could not be regarded as a “subservient chattel” of a husband. Lord Lane went on to argue that no new offense was being created. Rather, the judgement amounted to “the removal of a common law fiction which has become anachronistic and offensive.” Their Lordships took the view that the time had come for the criminal law to assert that a rapist was a rapist regardless of his relationship with the victim. In 1992, the Law Commission recommended that a husband’s legal immunity from prosecution for rape of his wife should be abolished, and that this should be placed on a statutory footing. Accordingly, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 widened the definition of rape by deleting the word “unlawful” before “sexual intercourse” and including anal penetration and male victims. Thus, the definition of rape in the Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Act 1976 was replaced by the following definition: a man commits rape if he has sexual intercourse (whether vaginal or anal) with a person who at the time does not consent to it (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Part XI, Section 142(2)). This law criminalizes sexual intercourse without consent in any situation, including wife rape. However, the law is still gender specific, since the offender must be male. It took more than 250 years for the English law to recognize a married woman’s right to sexual autonomy and to freedom from rape in marriage. This change in the law is a great step forward because it specifies that sexual abuse of wives is not a personal or private matter but an unacceptable crime which deserves punishment. But judicial and

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social attitudes are harder to change than the law. There was by no means widespread consensus that the marital rape exemption should be abolished. Those who opposed making wife rape a criminal offense raised two fundamental concerns: first, that the offense would be impossible to prove, rendering the law impracticable; second, that the law would undermine the institution of marriage and destabilize family life. Other fears were that the courts would be faced with a deluge of cases coming before them, because the law would encourage wives to report to the police as “rape” incidents which were not as serious as other (stranger/acquaintance) rapes. In turn it was argued that this would undermine the seriousness of the offense of rape. It was also argued that the change in the law would encourage a vindictive wife to fabricate a charge of rape in order to gain advantage in a matrimonial dispute. The belief that wife rape is somehow less serious than rape by a stranger is an enduring problem (Kennedy, 1992; Lees, 1997). As recently as 1991, the late Professor Glanville Williams stated that a charge of rape was too powerful a weapon to be put into a wife’s hands and that the stigma of rape was too great a punishment for husbands who used their strength to have sexual intercourse when the wife had refused consent. There has been no systematic study of the effect of legislative change on the incidence of wife rape or the treatment of victims by the courts. However, in an excellent review of the subject, Lees (1997:129) analyzed 10 wife rape cases which reached the Court of Appeal between 1991 and 1994. She concluded that, although marital rape is now recognized as a criminal offense in England, it is treated less seriously by the courts than rape by a stranger or acquaintance. Five of the sentences (averaging 5.4 years) were upheld; all involved aggravating factors such as weapons. The other five were reduced from 5 years to an average of only 3.5 years. In contrast, in 1995 the average sentence length given to males aged 21 or over for all types of rape was 6.3 years (Home Office, 1996: Table S2.5). Clearly, passing legislation is one thing; implementing it is quite another. Nevertheless, the legal anomalies pertaining to wife rape in Great Britain have been eliminated and the law relating to non-consensual sexual intercourse holds inside as well as outside marriage. The law now focusses on the act itself and not upon the intimacy of the relationship between the parties. In short, husbands no longer have the right to rape their wives in Great Britain. PREVIOUS SURVEYS OF RAPE IN GREAT BRITAIN Other than the present survey, there has been no large scale national survey of rape in Great Britain. The major survey measure of crime in England and Wales is provided by the British Crime (Victimization) Survey, which has been carried out six times (for the years 1981, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1993 and 1995; see, e.g., Mirrlees-Black et al., 1996). This survey includes questions about rape, attempted rape, and indecent assault. However, in most cases the number of sexual offenses revealed by the survey has been meager. In 1981, for example, interviews with over 5,000 women aged 16 or over revealed a rate of only 16 sexual offenses per 10,000 women, with a 95% confidence interval of ±10 (Hough and Mayhew, 1983:8). No rapes and only one attempted rape were reported to interviewers. In 1983, the questions were changed in an effort to produce more reporting,

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and the rate of sexual offenses doubled to 35 (±18) per 10,000 women (Hough and Mayhew, 1985:62). However, only 19 sexual offenses were reported by nearly 6,000 women, again including no rapes and only one attempted rape. Similarly, in 1987, only 15 sexual offenses were reported by nearly 5,500 women (Mayhew et al., 1989:8). By 1991, sexual offenses were excluded from the British Crime Survey report, because they were likely to be underestimated and because the estimates were sensitive to question wording (Mayhew et al., 1993:5). The most interesting information about rape from the British Crime Survey was obtained in 1993 in an innovative computerized self-completion component in which 4,700 women aged 16–59 used laptop computers to read and answer questions. About one in 16 (6.3%) said that someone had forced them to have sex against their will, and one third of these (2.2%) said that they had been raped (Percy and Mayhew, 1997). About one-third of rapes were by partners or ex-partners. Smaller-scale studies have found higher rates of sexual assault among women. However, these studies are typically based on small (e.g., Hanmer and Sanders, 1984) or self-selected unrepresentative (e.g., Hall, 1985) samples. Even when localized studies have been conducted more satisfactorily (Jones et al., 1986; Crawford et al., 1990; Mooney, 1993), they do not necessarily yield results that are representative of the female population as a whole. Victimization surveys usually collect data using face-to-face interviews in households. While this method has many advantages, it has severe drawbacks in investigating the sexual victimization of women, especially by their husbands. Most obviously, the wife may be inhibited from reporting because her husband can hear what she says. Another severe problem is that sexual victimization is typically an embarrassing, painful or traumatic event which a woman finds difficult to report to a stranger. Specially designed questioning techniques may be needed to elicit responses. It may be easier to find out about wife rape in a survey specially designed to address this topic than in an omnibus victimization survey. THE NATIONAL SURVEY OF WIVES IN GREAT BRITAIN The main aims of the National Survey of Wives in Great Britain were: a. To estimate the prevalence and frequency of rape of wives within marriage. b. To assess wives’ reactions to rape and the consequences of wife rape. c. To investigate the characteristics of raped wives compared with other wives. d. To discover women’s reasons for having sexual intercourse against their will. e. To estimate the prevalence of rape outside marriage and its relationship to wife rape. The survey was carried out in August—September 1989. At that time, it was lawful for a husband to rape his wife in England and Wales, providing that they were living together, but not in Scotland (according to the recent court decision). The survey questions carefully distinguished incidents where a wife had sexual intercourse when she did not really feel like it from incidents where she clearly refused her consent or had nonconsensual intercourse where violence was threatened and/or used. Because of

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concern about the interpretation of the word “rape,” the women were not asked if they had been raped. The key questions were as follows: 1. Have you ever had sex with your present husband (or previous husband) when you did not really want to (e.g., because you were tired, uninterested or unwell)? 2. Have you ever had sex with your present husband (or previous husband) against your will, when you had clearly insisted you did not want to and refused your consent? 3. Has your present husband (or previous husband) ever threatened to hurt you in any way in order to make you have sex with him against your will? 4. Has your present husband (or previous husband) ever used physical violence to make you have sex against your will? The questionnaire was vetted by a leading firm of London solicitors in order to ensure that the categories used were unambiguous and would fall within the scope of (then current) legal definitions of what constituted rape outside marriage. This confirmed that the incidents described in questions 2, 3 and 4 would have met the legal definition of rape at the time if they had occurred outside marriage. Only these incidents are counted as “wife rape” in the survey. The incidents described in questions 3 and 4 are classified as “violent wife rape.” It is unclear how far the incidents described in question 1 would have met the legal criteria for rape. To the extent that some of them might, the survey is likely to underestimate the true prevalence of wife rape. Procedure The aim was to interview a quota sample of about 1,000 women in specified categories of age (18–24, 25–34, 35–54), marital status (married, separated, divorced, widowed) and social class. In Great Britain, social class is measured using the Registrar General’s classification of occupations: A (professionals, company directors, proprietors), B (semiprofessional occupations, including managers), C (skilled non-manual and manual), D (partly skilled manual), and E (unskilled manual). Social class was defined according to the occupation of the head of the household. The fieldwork was carried out by Ark Market Research Company in late August to early September 1989. The aim was to interview about 100 married women in a representative town or city in each of the 10 standard regions of Great Britain: North, Yorkshire/Humberside, North West, West Midlands, East Midlands, East Anglia, South East, South West, Wales, and Scotland. The market research company was very experienced in drawing nationally representative quota samples of this kind, especially of adult women for consumer surveys. Women were approached in the street and were selected to take part in the survey according to whether they fell into the desired age-marital status-social class quotas. They were given the following information: We are carrying out a survey about women’s experiences in marriage. We are trying to find out what these experiences are and how many women are affected by them. It is part of a national survey and any answers you give will be treated in the strictest confidence. We do not need to know

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your name or address, so there is no way at all that your answers could be traced back to you. It was hoped that the generality of the introduction would minimize refusals due to fear of embarrassment while also conveying the serious nature of the investigation. Women who agreed to complete the questionnaire were asked to accompany the researcher into a nearby hall. Once inside the hall, they were handed over to the area fieldwork supervisor and offered a cup of tea or coffee while demographic data was checked again. Husbands and children were taken to a separate part of the hall. Children were encouraged to play in a supervised area, while husbands were offered tea or coffee. The women were thus able to complete the questionnaire in relative privacy. The confidentiality of the survey was stressed once again and the women were then given some basic instructions on how to fill in the questionnaire. The supervisor withdrew but remained available to assist with any problems or queries which the women may have had. Trained counsellors were also located in another part of the hall in case they were required. On completion of the questionnaire, the women were asked to put it in a sealed envelope and post it in the box provided. It was hoped that this procedure would enable the women to have total confidence in the anonymity and confidentiality of their answers. Of 1,030 women who went into the hall, 7 walked out after discovering the exact nature of the survey, 8 refused to answer questions about marital rape, and 8 others were deleted from the sample because they completed the questionnaire carelessly, sporadically, or contradictorily. This left a total sample of 1,007. Although the numbers of nonrespondents were small, they were more likely to be divorced or separated, not working, without children and drawn from higher social classes than those who satisfactorily completed the questionnaire. There is no way of knowing whether those who refused to be interviewed when approached in the street differed significantly from those women who agreed to be interviewed. Generally, the women seemed to have few difficulties in understanding the questions. While the procedure was designed to minimize inhibitions against admitting being raped, it is impossible to know how truthful the women really were. Given that concealment is more likely than exaggeration, the results of this survey may underestimate the true prevalence of wife rape. The street method of sampling may have biased the sample of women. Those interviewed were probably more likely to be town rather than country dwellers; mobile and not tied to the home by very young children, disability or infirmity; and less likely to be in full-time employment. However, the halls selected were located in major shopping centers, and the majority of interviews took place on school days and continued throughout lunchtimes in order to maximize the opportunity to interview women who had children of school age and those in full-time employment.

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TABLE 6.1 Prevalence of Wife Rape and Unwanted Sexual Intercourse NO.

QUESTION

n % (1007) YES

1

Have you ever had sex with your present (or previous) husband when you did not really want to (e.g., because you were tired, uninterested or unwell)?

585

58.1

2

Have you ever had sex with your present (or previous) husband against your will, when you had clearly insisted you did not want to and refused your consent?

131

13.0

3

Has your present (or previous) husband ever threatened to hurt you in any way in order to make you have sex with him against your will?

51

5.1

4

Has your present (or previous) husband) ever used physical violence to make you have sex against your will?

43

4.3

234

Refused consent/threatened/ used violence

140

13.9

34

Threatened/used violence

61

6.1

The Prevalence and Frequency of Wife Rape Table 6.1 shows the proportion of women answering each question positively. Having sexual intercourse when reluctant or disinclined was very common; the majority of women (58.1%) said that this had occurred. The survey indicated that 13.0% of wives had had sexual intercourse clearly against their will, while 5.1% had been threatened with violence, and 4.3% had been the victims of sexual violence. Altogether, 13.9% of women had had sexual intercourse against their will, of whom 6.1% had given in as a result of threatened or actual violence. It was shocking to discover that one in 7 British wives had been raped, while one in 17 had been violently raped. Because equal numbers of married women were drawn from each region, it is necessary to weight results in order to obtain national estimates. In 1991 (the last census year), the population of Great Britain was distributed as follows: 43.5% South (East Anglia, South East, South West), 21.7% Midlands/Wales, 25.7% North (North, Yorkshire/Humberside, North West), and 9.1% Scotland (Office for National Statistics, 1997). In contrast, the sample was distributed as follows: 28.6% South, 32.2% Midlands/Wales, 29.3% North, and 9.9% Scotland. Thus, the weightings are as follows: 1.52 South, 0.67 Midlands/Wales, 0.88 North, and 0.92 Scotland. The age distribution of the sample of ever-married women was similar to the age distribution of the population (sample, 9% age 18–24, 32% age 25–34, 59% age 35–54; population 6% age 18–24, 30% age 25–34, 64% age 35–54). The weighted national estimates were slightly higher than the survey figures: 14.2% raped and 6.3% violently raped. The 95% confidence intervals for these estimates are ± 2.6% and ±1.8%.2 In other words, there is a probability of .95 that the true percentage of ever-married women who have suffered wife rape is between 11.6% and 16.8%, and that the true percentage who have suffered violent wife rape is between 4.5% and 8.1%.

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Based on the 10,301,000 ever-married women in Great Britain aged 18–54 in 1991 (Office for National Statistics, 1997), it can be estimated that between 1,195,000 and 1,731,000 of these women have been raped by their husbands; and that between 464,000 and 834,000 of these women have been violently raped by their husbands. Most of the raped wives had been raped more than once within marriage. Excluding 9 who did not estimate the frequency, only 19 (14.5%) had been raped once, while 52 (39.7%) had been raped 2 to 5 times, and 60 (45.8%) had been raped 6 times or more. Assuming that the average number of rapes of those raped 2 to 5 times was 3, and the average number of rapes of those raped 6 or more times was 10, the total number of times these 131 women had been raped was 775, or 5.9 times each on average. If anything, this is likely to be an underestimate, because there would have been some women who had been raped many times. The women were also asked to assess how common were the incidents described in the four questions. As many as 83.9% said that they thought it was very or fairly common for wives to have sex with their husbands when they did not really want to, while 44.5% thought that sex after a refusal was very or fairly common. Surprisingly, even more women (51.4%) thought that it was very or fairly common for wives to have sex because their husbands had threatened them with violence, and almost as many (49.0%) thought that it was very or fairly common for wives to have sex because their husbands had used violence against them. Responses to Wife Rape The women who said that they had had sexual intercourse against their will, were threatened with violence, or were victims of sexual violence by their husbands, were asked if they thought at the time that they had been raped. They were also asked if, looking back at the experience now, they considered that they had been raped. Only a minority (42.0%) of wives who had sexual intercourse against their will thought that they had been raped at the time, while 56.5% now considered that they had been raped. The proportion was higher for those who were threatened or had experienced sexual violence. Of those who had been threatened, 51.0% considered it rape at the time and 72.5% now; of those who had experienced sexual violence, 60.5% considered it rape at the time and 74.4% now. Five out of six Scottish wives who had experienced sexual violence considered it rape at the time and now. The majority of married women who had been raped suffered in silence. To some extent this was inevitable, since wife rape was not a crime in England and Wales and could not be reported as such to any official agency at the time the survey took place. However, any notion that women talk to each other and gain mutual support for the problems they face is not borne out by the research. The wives were asked whether, on any occasion when they were made to have sex against their will, they had discussed the matter with anyone. Table 6.2 shows that the majority (56.8%) of women who had been raped by their husbands had never discussed the matter with anyone at all prior to the survey, although one-third (32.0%) had reported it to a friend and 10.4% to a relative. Only 5.6% told a doctor, 3.2% told a social worker or health visitor, 2.4% told a police officer, and 1.6% reported the rape to someone in a Rape Crisis Center or Women’s Aid

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organization. However, more of the wives who had been violently raped (60.0%) told someone. For many reasons, it seems likely that legislative change will not, in itself, lead to an increase in reporting rape. The economic dependency of the wife on the husband, feelings of guilt and shame, self blame, social pressures to keep family matters “private,” and general social taboos against talking publicly about sexual relationships mean that it is likely that wife rape (and other forms of wife abuse) will remain hidden from public view. As one respondent, who had been repeatedly raped, commented: No one knows what goes on behind closed doors within a marriage, and I don’t think women will ever tell. It’s so disgusting and humiliating to tell strangers such as police or social workers. Nine out of 10 wives who had been raped stated that they had experienced unpleasant emotional or physical effects (Table 6.2). The most common responses were to feel angry

TABLE 6.2 Responses to Wife Rape % WHO

RAPED

VIOLENTLY RAPED

(140)

(61)

Reported it to anyone

43.2

60.0

Reported it to friend

32.0

43.6

Reported it to relative

10.4

16.4

Reported it to doctor

5.6

9.1

Reported it to social worker

3.2

5.5

Reported it to police officer

2.4

5.5

Reported it to Women’s Aid

1.6

3.6

Felt angry

63.3

64.3

Felt humiliated/degraded

44.5

55.4

Felt depressed

40.6

50.0

Felt frightened

23.4

37.5

Felt shocked

16.4

23.2

Had sickness/nausea

21.6

30.4

Had headaches

10.9

16.1

Had physical injury

21.1

44.6

No effects

10.2

3.6

Needed medical attention

52.2

67.9

For anxiety/nerves

34.5

45.3

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For depression

33.6

47.2

For sleep difficulties

22.1

34.0

For physical injury

12.4

24.5

Were living with husband

94.4

92.7

Were pregnant

23.4

32.7

Think wife rape as serious as

75.9

79.0

other rape

(63.3%), humiliated or degraded (44.5%), or depressed (40.6%). Furthermore, 21.1% received physical injuries (e.g., bruising, black eyes, cuts) and 21.6% felt sickness or nausea. Not surprisingly, more of those who were violently raped (44.6%) suffered physical injuries. The majority of raped wives (52.2%), and two-thirds of violently raped wives, said that they had needed attention from a doctor as a result of the rape. This was most commonly for anxiety or nerves, depression, or difficulties with sleeping. Nearly all (94.4%) of the raped wives were raped when they were living with their husbands. Overall, three-quarters of them (75.9%) thought that wife rape was at least as serious as other types of rape. Nearly a quarter (23.4%) of the raped wives had been raped when they were pregnant. Other rapes took place soon after the women had given birth. As one woman put it: My husband raped me when our first child was six weeks old, before I’d been for my postnatal and was therefore unprotected. He made me pregnant the first time on purpose…. For a long time this experience affected the very loving relationship I have with my present husband. The vast majority of women in the sample had no idea about their legal position in regard to a husband’s right to have sexual intercourse as part of the marriage contract. Nearly two-thirds of wives in England and Wales (64.2%) thought (erroneously) that rape within marriage was a crime. About three-quarters of Scottish wives (75.8%) thought (correctly) that rape within marriage was a crime. Once they were informed about their current legal position, nearly all of the women (97.0%) thought that rape in marriage should be classified as a criminal offense. About the same percentages of raped wives thought that wife rape was a crime (64.2%) or that it should be a crime (94.1%). Characteristics of Raped Wives The prevalence of wife rape was somewhat lower among younger women (Table 6.3). For example, none of the wives aged 18–24 had been violently raped, compared with 7.5% of those aged 25–34 and 6.2% of those aged 35–54 (χ2=6.90, 2

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TABLE 6.3 Characteristics of Raped Wives CHARACTERISTIC (n)

% RAPED

% VIOLENTLY RAPED

(140)

(61)

Age 18–24 (89)

6.7

0.0

Age 25–34 (321)

15.6

7.5

Age 35–54 (597)

14.1

6.2

p value

.10

.032

Class AB (177)

9.0

1.7

Class C (590)

11.9

4.9

Class DE (240)

22.5

12.1

.00001

.00001

Married/widowed (884)

10.7

3.4

Separated/divorced (123)

36.6

25.2

.00001

.00001

South (288)

14.6

6.9

Midlands/Wales (324)

12.0

4.3

North (295)

11.2

6.1

Scotland (100)

26.0

9.0

.002

n.s.

p value

p value

p value 2

p values based on χ tests.

d.f., p=.032). This may be because the time at risk was less for younger women. There was a highly significant tendency for lower class wives to be raped more than upper class wives; nearly a quarter (22.5%) of those in class D or E had been raped, compared with only 9.0% of those in class A or B. Similarly, separated or divorced women were more than three times as likely to have been raped as married or widowed women (36.6% as opposed to 10.7%). It may be that forced sex was a precipitating factor in separation or divorce. Despite the legal difference, the prevalence of wife rape was twice as high in Scotland as in England and Wales (Table 6.3). However, the results may be a function of the one Scottish city (Glasgow) surveyed, rather than reflecting the situation in Scotland as a whole. Wife rape was not related to working full-time, part-time, or not at all, or to having or not having children under 16.

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Women’s Reasons for Having Sexual Intercourse Against Their Will Threatened and actual violence were only two of the strategies used by husbands to coerce their wives to have unwanted sexual intercourse. Table 6.4 shows how far the raped women endorsed a number of possible reasons. The most common reasons for wives acquiescing were that (if they did not) husbands took it out on them in other ways (e.g., moody, bad tempered, not speaking) and husbands made them feel there was something wrong with them for not wanting sex, as the following quotation shows: For me the worst pressure to have sex to try and convince me that I was “frigid,” “abnormal.” (He) never considered that sex was part of the whole relationship. If we had argued or he had verbally abused me; if we didn’t communicate and he then expected sex and I refused it, I was considered frigid, cold, weird, unfeminine, neutered. I became increasingly desexed, so it was a vicious circle. I cannot make love unless I feel happy and safe. Since 6.3% of the women said that all the reasons applied to them, more than half said that their husbands took it out on them (55.5%) or made them feel there was something wrong with them (53.1%). Fewer said that their husbands threatened or used violence: Where I said I was “made to have sex,” it was not a physical “made to.” It was more a “felt awful because I wouldn’t.” And I only didn’t want to because I was tired.

TABLE 6.4 Women’s Reasons for Having Sexual Intercourse Against Their Will* REASON He takes it out on me in other ways if I don’t agree to have sex with him (for example, not speaking to me, being moody or bad tempered)

% 49.2

He made me feel there was something wrong with me if I did not want sex when he wanted it 46.9 He used physical force against me when I didn’t agree to have sex with him

25.0

I’m frightened of him when he comes home drunk so I agree to have sex with him

21.9

I’m frightened he would physically hurt or harm me if I didn’t agree to have sex with him

15.6

I have been threatened with violence when I didn’t agree to have sex with him

11.7

I’m worried that he will give me less money if I don’t agree to have sex with him

7.0

All of the reasons apply to me

6.3

None of the reasons apply to me *Percentages do not add up to 100% because women could endorse more than one reason.

18.0

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Many of the women in the sample interpreted unwanted or even forced sexual intercourse as normal male behavior, as the following quotations show: I think men have a very strong sex need, whereas the majority of women don’t…. Most women I feel have sex to please their husbands and look forward to the day that it will come to an end. I was married for 27 years. Some of the questions are too “black and white.” In real life there are various shades of grey…. I had sex when I didn’t want to because I knew my husband did. I think a lot of women do this…. I feel most men have a greater sexual appetite than women. However, in response to the opinion item “Men need sex more than women,” only 38.5% of the whole sample agreed, 33.2% disagreed, and 28.2% were not sure. More of the raped wives (49.6%) thought that “Men need more sex than women.” As many as 14.4% of the whole sample agreed that “It is a woman’s duty to have sex with her husband,” while 62.1% disagreed and 23.5% were not sure. Raped wives were no more likely to agree with this (15.2%). The following quotation exemplifies the “duty” approach: I think it is being considerate to your partner’s feelings if you consent to have sex, even if you are feeling tired or whatever. And I don’t regard this as “force” or “against consent.” I would expect him to consent to me if he was tired too. Interestingly, the majority of the whole sample (52.9%) agreed that “Some women agree to have sex to avoid their marriage breaking up” and (55.2%) that “Women are made to feel guilty if they don’t want sex.” Hence, the reasons given by raped wives for agreeing to unwanted sex were also commonly voiced by the whole sample. Rape Outside Marriage About 1 in 8 of the wives (12.8%) said that they had been forced to have sex outside marriage by someone other than their husband. The women were more commonly raped by a boyfriend (6.2%) or an acquaintance (5.9%) than by a stranger (2.2%). The weighted national estimate was that 13.4% of ever-married women aged 18–54 (±2.5%) had been raped outside marriage by someone other than their husband. Using

TABLE 6.5 Prevalence of Rape Outside Marriage BOYFRIEND (62)

ACQUAINTANCE (59)

STRANGER (22)

ANY (129)

Age 18–24 (89)

7.9

3.4

3.4

14.6

Age 25–34 (321)

8.7

16.2

3.4

17.1

Age 35–54 (597)

4.5

6.0

1.3

10.2

.032

n.s.

0.86

0.10

p value

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Class AB (177)

4.5

3.4

0.6

7.3

Class C (590)

6.6

4.6

1.4

12.0

Class DE (240)

6.3

10.8

5.4

18.8

p value

n.s.

.0007

.0004

.002

Married/widowed (884)

5.9

5.0

1.7

11.5

Separated/divorced (123)

8.1

12.2

5.7

22.0

p value

n.s.

.003

.012

.002

South (288)

7.6

6.9

2.4

15.6

Midlands/Wales (324)

5.2

5.2

1.5

10.5

North (295)

7.1

5.4

2.7

13.6

Scotland (100)

2.0

6.0

2.0

10.0

p value

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

13.6

17.1

5.7

30.7

5.0

4.0

1.6

9.9

.0002

.00001

.006

.00001

Violently raped (61)

18.0

19.7

11.5

41.0

Not violently raped (946)

5.4

5.0

1.6

11.0

.0002

.00001

.00001

.00001

Raped by husband (140) Not raped (867) p value

p value 2

p values based on χ tests.

1991 population figures, this translates to between 1,123,000 and 1,638,000 ever-married women aged 18–24 in Great Britain. Table 6.5 shows that there was a greater tendency for younger women to suffer nonmarital rape, especially by boyfriends. Lower class women were significantly more likely to suffer nonmarital rape than upper class women, especially by acquaintances and strangers. Separated or divorced women were more likely to suffer nonmarital rape than married or widowed women, especially by acquaintances and strangers. However, unlike the prevalences of marital rape and marital violence, the prevalence of nonmarital rape was lowest in Scotland. There was a significant overlap between marital and non-marital rape. Nearly one third (30.7%) of women who had been raped by their husband had also been raped by someone other than their husband, compared with only one in 10 (9.9%) of the remainder. As many as 41.0% of women who had been violently raped by their husband had also been raped by someone else. In total, nearly a quarter of the women (22.4%) had been raped either by their husband or by someone else. Interestingly, this figure is almost

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identical to that reported by Mooney (1993) in Islington (23%), but much higher than the British Crime Survey figure of 6% (Percy and Mayhew, 1997). The weighted national estimate was that 23.2% of ever-married woman aged 18–54 (±3.1%) had been raped inside or outside marriage. Using 1991 population figures, this translates to between 2,070,000 and 2,709,000 ever-married women aged 18–54 in Great Britain. Some of the most harrowing accounts were given by women who had been raped or sexually assaulted as children. Because the survey did not specifically investigate the problem of child sexual abuse, it is not possible to give any accurate estimate of the number of rapes or sexual assaults which occurred within the family. Some of the women did give this information voluntarily. For example, one of the women who had been raped by her husband also stated that: I was sexually assaulted as a child by two different socalled uncles. It has affected by whole life and has made me a very possessive person. More help should be given into finding out what goes on with children and their uncles or parent’s friends. I alone know of 7 women and 2 men who were sexually assaulted by uncles, as kids. This must stop now for the sake of the children.

SUMMARY AND DlSCUSSION This chapter concentrates on the negative aspects of marriage. However, it is important to point out that the majority of wives were not raped by their husband, and that most of the surveyed women found marriage satisfactory and rewarding. The following two comments are representative of many others: A happy marriage is one where both partners love and respect one another from the start. We have been married years and have become the best of friends as well as lovers. My experience of marriage has been wonderful. My husband is loving and caring. The thought of what some people go through appalls me. I’m very thankful I cannot answer more of your questions. I hope you can help women in need by this survey. In Great Britain, the right of a husband to rape his wife was simply an extension of the historical tradition of domination and mastery of husbands over wives. For over two centuries the law legitimized male supremacy in marriage, and this was why the marital rape immunity took so long to abolish. This survey was unusual in focussing on the taboo subject of wife rape. Whatever the difficulties in defining and estimating the extent of the problem, the most striking finding is that wife rape is a much more serious and extensive problem in Great Britain than has hitherto been recognized. Contrary to popular belief, husbands are the commonest category of rapists of married women, and once a husband rapes his wife, the rapes occur repeatedly. The survey showed that one in 7 British wives had been raped, while one in 17 had been violently raped. Most of the raped wives had been raped several times, but less than half of them considered that they had been raped

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at the time. Nearly three-quarters of those who had been violently raped now considered that they had been raped. The survey also revealed that wives are not prone to cry rape, but generally suffer in silence. Nevertheless, wife rape has a detrimental impact emotionally, physically and psychologically, thus reinforcing the women’s view that wife rape is just as serious as any other type of rape. Less than half of the raped wives had reported the rape to anyone, although 60% of the violently raped wives had reported the rape to someone (usually a friend or relative). Hardly any raped wives reported the rape to a doctor, social worker, or police officer. Most commonly, raped wives felt angry, humiliated, degraded, or depressed. One in five received physical injuries. More than half needed attention from a doctor, most commonly for anxiety, depression, or difficulties with sleeping. Nearly all were raped when they were living with their husbands. Two-thirds of English wives thought (erroneously) that wife rape was a crime, and nearly all wanted the law changed to make it a crime. About one in 8 of the wives had been raped outside marriage by someone other than their husband, most commonly by a boyfriend or acquaintance. Younger women, lower class women, and separated or divorced women were more likely to suffer nonmarital rape than the remainder. Raped wives were far more likely to have been raped outside marriage than non-raped wives. In total, nearly a quarter of the women had been raped either by their husband or by someone else. The survey found that women lower down the social scale reported a higher incidence of rape. Thus, lower class wives were far more likely to be raped by their husbands than upper class wives. This may mean that working class husbands are more likely to rape; but it may also indicate that working class wives are less able to escape. Divorced or separated women were far more likely to be raped than married or widowed women, suggesting that wife rape is a factor leading to marital breakdown. Legal recognition of the offense is unlikely to undermine marriage as a social institution. If anything undermines family life, it is a violent husband. Wife rape was especially prevalent in Scotland. Wives most commonly acquiesced to sexual intercourse against their will because of psychological pressure from husbands (being moody, bad tempered, or not speaking to them). These findings highlight the fact that wife rape does not occur in a vacuum but within a structural arrangement of unequal power. Trapped in unhappy marriages because of children or financial dependency, many women have no option but to stay. Tangible support services for wives and children are essential if the law is to be effective in preventing wife rape. Now that wife rape has been criminalized by statute law in England and Wales, it would be interesting to repeat the survey to investigate whether the prevalence of wife rape has changed. There has been no attempt to assess the effect of the change in the law. Any new national survey should enquire carefully about whether the rapes occurred before or after the change in the law. However, given the ignorance of wives about the law revealed by the present survey, it seems doubtful that the legal change has had much effect on the prevalence of wife rape. To conclude, there was evidence of considerable overlap between rape inside and outside marriage, particularly for those women who had been violently raped. Wife rape emerged a more common form of rape than rape by boyfriends, acquaintances or strangers. Wife rape, by definition, is a problem which exclusively troubles wives, but it

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must be interpreted in relation to wider issues of economic and sexual inequality which remain at the heart of British society. Criminalizing wife rape will not eradicate it; effective social policies to prevent wife rape have to deal with the cultural norms, attitudes and structural conditions which cause rape. The legal abolition of the marital rape exemption is a significant mark of progress, but societal and judicial attitudes will also need to change if wives are to be protected from sexually violent husbands. Notes 1. The only other comparable survey is one conducted in California (Russell, 1982). 2. Strictly speaking, quota sampling does not permit the estimation of standard errors and confidence intervals. However, assuming that the quota sampling in this survey approximated stratified two-stage random sampling, the standard errors in this case are almost always between 1 and 1.4 times those calculated on the assumption of simple random sampling (Kish, 1957, 1965). Hence, the standard error here is estimated as 1.2 times that based on simple random sampling, or in other words the square root of the design effect is 1.2.

References Brownlea, I. (1989). “Marital Rape: Lessons from Scotland.” New Law Journal 22:1275. Crawford, A., Jones, T., Woodhouse, T., and Young, J. (1990). The Second Islington Crime Survey. Enfield: Middlesex University, Center for Criminology. Hale, Sir M. (1971). The History of the Pleas of the Crown, Vol. 1. London: Professional Books. Hall, R. (1985). Ask Any Woman. Bristol: Falling Wall Press. Hanmer, J., and Saunders, S. (1984). Well-Founded Fear. London: Hutchinson. Home Office (1996). Criminal Statistics, England and Wales, 1995: Supplementary Tables, Vol. 2. London: Government Statistical Service. Hough, M., and Mayhew, P. (1983). The British Crime Survey: First Report. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Hough, M., and Mayhew, P. (1985). Taking Account of Crime: Key Findings from the Second British Crime Survey. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Jones, T., Maclean, B., and Young, J. (1986). The Islington Crime Survey. Aldershot: Gower. Kennedy, H. (1992). Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice. London: Chatto and Windus. Kish, L. (1957). “Confidence Intervals for Clustered Samples.” American Sociological Review 22:154–165. Kish, L. (1965). Survey Sampling. New York: Wiley. Law Commission (1990). Rape Within Marriage, Working Paper No. 116. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Law Commission (1992). Criminal Law on Rape Within Marriage, Working Paper No. 205. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Lees, S. (1997). Ruling Passions: Sexual Violence, Reputation and the Law. Buckingham: Open University Press. Mayhew, P., Elliott, D., and Dowds, L. (1989). The 1988 British Crime Survey. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Mayhew, P., Maung, N.A., and Mirrlees-Black, C. (1993). The 1992 British Crime Survey. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Mirrlees-Black, C., Mayhew, P., and Percy A. (1996). ‘The 1996 British Crime Survey.” Home Office Statistical Bulletin 19/96.

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Mooney, J. (1993). Researching Domestic Violence. Enfield: Middlesex University, Center for Criminology. Office for National Statistics (1997). Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1997. London: The Stationery Office. Percy, A., and Mayhew, P. (1997). “Estimating Sexual Victimization in a National Crime Survey: A New Approach.” Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 6, in press. Russell, D. (1982). Rape in Marriage. New York: Macmillan. Williams, G.L. (1991). The Times, February 21.

Legal Cases Clarke (1949). All England Law Reports 2, 448. Court of Appeal (1991). R. vs. R. All England Law Reports 2, 257. Duffy (1982). Scottish Criminal Court Reports 182. House of Lords (1991). R. vs. R. Weekly Law Reports 3, 767. Miller (1954). Queen’s Bench 2, 282. O’Brien (1974). All England Law Reports 3, 663. Stallard (1989). Scottish Criminal Court Reports 248. Steele (1976). Criminal Appeal Reports, 65, 22.

Chapter Seven From Arrest Avoidance to Mandatory Arrest:

Some Historic, Social and Legal Forces that Have Shaped Police Spouse Abuse Policies in the United States Martin L.O’Connor INTRODUCTION Spouse abuse is a crime in every state in our nation; yet, historically, spouse abusers have enjoyed almost complete immunity from arrest by the police. Why would the police avoid arresting spouse abusers? Why would society permit the police to exempt women involved in domestic relationships from the equal protection of the law? Finally, why have police agencies changed their spouse abuse arrest policies and moved from a position of arrest avoidance to mandatory arrest? HISTORIC FORCES Spouse abuse and the abuse of women in general has been reported for more than two thousand years in every culture. Statements sanctioning abuse and mistreatment of women are contained in the Talmud, the Old and New Testaments and the Koran (Langley and Levy, 1977). The British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was an advocate for battered women, stated that: “From the earliest twilight of human society every woman was found in a state of human bondage to some man” (Davidson, 1978:106). Even before written law, custom dictated that a husband was permitted to ensure his wife’s obedience to his commands, by force if necessary (Reynolds, 1987). During the Middle Ages, the subservient role of women was well established and some men were exhorted from church pulpits to “beat their wives” (Davis, 1972). The beating of women in domestic relationships was widely permitted and accepted in society. In the late 1400s the Church prescribed the Rules of Marriage which specifically provided religious authorization for wife beating as part of the marriage relationship. The rules provided that:

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When you see your wife commit an offense, don’t rush at her with insults and violent blows…. Scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And if this still doesn’t work…take up a stick and beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul than damage the soul and spare the body…. Then readily beat her, not in rage but out of charity and concern for her soul, so that the beating will redound to your merit and her good. (Davidson, 1978) In England, after the eleventh century, it was well established at common law that a man had a right to beat his wife (Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765). The beating had to be of moderate chastisement to enforce obedience to the husband’s lawful command. English jurists developed a rule to define moderate chastisement which they called the “rule of thumb.” The “rule of thumb” permitted a man to beat his wife with a stick or a rod no thicker than his thumb as long as he did not inflict permanent injury. If a wife who was being moderately chastised by her husband decided to resist and kill her husband, she would be guilty of petit treason which was considered more serious than murder because it involved a serious breach of allegiance toward her husband. Conviction for this offense would result in a wife being bound to a stake in the village square and burned to death. During the 1600s in the American colonies there were times when the Puritans prohibited wife beating (Pleck, 1987). However by the 1800s it is clear that British common law sanctioning wife beating was an accepted American practice and authorized by several courts. In 1824 the highest court in Mississippi held that a husband could chastise his wife pursuant to the common law rule of thumb (Bradley v.State [1824]). A North Carolina court in 1864 upheld the use of force in a case in which a husband choked his wife and the court commented that “law permits him to use towards his wife such degree of force as is necessary to control an unruly temper, and make her behave herself; and unless some permanent injury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence …the law will not invade the domestic forum” (State v.Black [1864]). American police departments were not created until the 1830s and 1840s and they followed the custom of not making arrests for wife beating unless serious or permanent injury was inflicted upon a wife. This policy of arrest avoidance simply reflected the general societal treatment of women who were considered chattels of their husbands and were not permitted to vote or hold elective office. A husband could not be arrested for beating his wife or forcibly raping his wife as both the crime of assault and rape contained marital exceptions. Blackstone referred to the ability of a man to beat his wife as the “power of correction” and the ability of a husband to forcibly rape his wife has been described not an issue of lust, but an issue of power (Muraskin, 1996). It has been contended that gender violence threatens and shapes every woman’s life, yet this violence has been tolerated and accepted in family law and cultural practices for centuries: “if any other group were so systematically tortured, battered and killed, society would declare a state of emergency” (Bunch, 1992). A movement began in the late 1800s to outlaw wife beating. Alabama courts rescinded the legal right of a man to beat his wife (Fulgham v. State [1871]). A statute prohibiting wife beating was passed in Maryland in 1882, but a similar attempt to outlaw spouse abuse was defeated in Pennsylvania in 1886. Eventually, wife beating was no longer

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legally sanctioned (Pleck, 1979). Notwithstanding these judicial and legislative attempts to outlaw spousal abuse, many still believed that family violence should be resolved within the family (Langan and Innes, 1986), and laws prohibiting wife beating were usually not enforced by the police. In fact, when victims of spouse abuse called the police, police dispatchers assigned these calls a low priority (Steinman, 1988). Police engaged in a practice of arrest avoidance in spouse abuse cases unless serious or permanent injury was inflicted during the abuse. Arrest avoidance was justified for a variety of reasons: • Spousal assault was considered a family matter. • An arrest of a spouse was viewed as an act that would break up the family. • Spouse abuse cases were avoided because they were difficult to prosecute. • It was considered axiomatic that if the police made an arrest in a spouse abuse case, a wife would subsequently change her mind and refuse to prosecute. • It was thought that an arrest would be an embarrassment to the family. • It was thought that an arrest of the husband would have a negative economic impact upon the family because the husband was the principal “breadwinner.” • It was thought that the courts could not handle all of these cases which should best be addressed within the institution of the family. There is also evidence to suggest that the police did not view domestic violence calls as an important part of their jobs and “police response has been…perfunctory in nature, dominated by the officer’s overriding goal to extricate themselves from dangerous and unpleasant duties with as little cost as possible and reinvolve themselves with ‘real police work’ as soon as possible” (Buzawa and Buzawa, 1996a). In addition, Buzawa and Buzawa assert that there have been organizational disincentives regarding promotion and performance evaluations that actually militate against the police taking action with respect to spouse abuse calls and structural impediments to arrest, such as the misdemeanor “in presence” requirement. There is no question that the police have frequently raised the issue of the misdemeanor “in presence” requirement as a justification for not making an arrest in spouse abuse cases. However, it should be noted that after the “in presence” requirement for misdemeanors was eliminated in New York on September 1, 1971 (N.Y.Criminal Procedure Law, Article 140), there was no noticeable change in police arrest avoidance policies in spouse abuse cases. It seems more likely that, at least in some cases, the police merely used the “in presence” legal issue as a specious justification for their arrest avoidance practices. In fact, police officers were trained to avoid arrests in spouse abuse cases. In police academies, domestic calls were usually explained to recruits “as largely unproductive use of time…a ‘family problem’ and potentially dangerous for the responding officer…. Arrests were actively discouraged as a waste of time” (Buzawa and Buzawa, 1990). When responding to spouse abuse calls, officers were usually told to separate the combatants and tell the offending husband to “take a walk for the night” and not to make an arrest unless there was serious or permanent injury to the spouse. In effect, police arrest avoidance practices were consistent with the infamous “rule of thumb.” In 1966, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, an influential international organization advising police executives, published suggested training policies that supported the concept of arrest avoidance and these policies continued well into the 1980s (IACP, 1967).

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THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE OF THE 1960s AND 1970s There were several social forces during the 1960s and 1970s that were to have a profound impact upon police arrest policies. The first of these involved academic research that had the effect of supporting arrest avoidance practices. In the late 1960s, Dr. Morton Bard, a clinical psychologist at the City University of New York, entered the spousal abuse area in a significant way. Bard applied for and received federal funds to train police officers in crisis intervention techniques so officers would be better able to handle spouse abuse calls. Bard believed erroneously (Garner and Clemmer, 1986), as did many police officers, that domestic violence calls to the police were among the most frequent and dangerous calls that police officers encounter and he sought to address the degree of danger believed to be associated with these calls by creating a family crisis unit within the New York City Police Department. Eighteen officers were selected for a 160-hour training program in crisis intervention and conflict management during which they were given briefings about how to use mediation techniques to manage spouse abuse cases. Officers were trained to rely heavily upon their verbal skills to mediate disputes and refer the parties to social service agencies which were considered better equipped to handle spouse abuse cases than the criminal justice system. In sum, officers were trained to do anything except arrest violent husbands (Fagan, 1996). Bard evaluated his own program and found that arrests declined and no officers were injured; hence the project was successful. Because Bard’s crisis intervention programs were deemed successful, they quickly spread to other police departments in the nation (Lieberman and Schwartz, 1973). Some were critical of Bard’s policies (Lieberman and Schwartz, 1973), but police departments seemed to embrace the Bard crisis intervention approach because it was supported by academic research and, in effect, reinforced long standing police arrest avoidance policies (Guido, personal communication, May 1976). Bard’s mediation policies spread so quickly that by 1977 more than seventy percent of American police departments employing one hundred or more officers had a family crisis intervention training program in place (Sherman and Berk, 1984). Bard’s crisis intervention approach was praised by the National Commission on Civil Disorders (Parnas, 1971:550) and the Director of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration wrote a glowing foreword to a later Bard publication (Bard, 1977) suggesting the relevance of crisis intervention training for a variety of interpersonal conflicts. The American Bar Association approved the project’s nonlegal mode of intervention, while mental health professionals were very supportive (Field and Field, 1973). Prior to the 1970s there was very little scientific research being conducted regarding police policies and practices. Police policies usually do not evolve from systematic research, but rather from experience, common sense, precedent and the lore of the police craft. The police clearly recognize their primary role of crime prevention and they utilize various patrols and patrol tactics to deter and prevent crime. However, the police believed that they were virtually powerless to prevent crimes committed behind closed doors in a domestic setting because they could not patrol in those private areas. Nevertheless, in 1977 another important research study appeared on the scene raising some serious questions about the police role in preventing homicide in spouse abuse cases. The Police Foundation released a study of domestic homicides and aggravated assault cases in Detroit and Kansas City. In regard to homicides the study found that in 85% of the deaths

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the police had previously responded to domestic violence calls at the same address. In addition, the study found that in of the homicides, the police had previously responded to calls at the same address at least five times. The issue raised was: if someone is repeatedly calling out for help and telling the police that crimes are being committed behind closed doors, why won’t the police do something to prevent repeat violence? If certain banks were being repeatedly robbed, or burglaries or rapes were repeatedly occurring at a particular location, or drunk drivers were repeatedly injuring or killing people on a particular highway, there is no question that the police would engage in various patrol and enforcement strategies in an attempt to prevent injuries or death and arrest the persons engaging in these criminal acts. Why then were the police not taking some action to protect battered women whose criminal abuse and terror repeatedly came to their attention? The police as an institution were constantly being criticized for neglecting opportunities to deter future acts of violence and for generally failing to respond to urgent requests for assistance by battered women (Buzawa and Buzawa, 1996b: 4). Two other important social forces in the 1970s that seriously questioned police arrest avoidance policies in spouse abuse cases were the women’s movement and the abused women’s movement. These groups brought to the attention of the public volumes of information about spouse abuse. Some of this information, which was widely publicized, is as follows: • Acts of domestic violence in the United States occur every 18 seconds. • About 50% of all married couples experience at least one violent incident and in approximately 25% of these cases violence is a regular occurrence. • 20% of all murders are committed within the family and 18% are committed by spouses. • Approximately 95% of all spousal assaults are committed by husbands. • Approximately 25% of all women who use hospital emergency services have been battered in a domestic relationship. • Over a million women seek medical help each year for injuries caused by battering. • Victims of domestic violence are three times more likely to be victimized again than are victims of other types of crimes • When spouses are abused it is not uncommon for children to be emotionally traumatized by witnessing family violence; many of these children grow up to repeat the pattern as victim or abuser. Because of these facts, various feminist groups harshly criticized the police efforts to mediate spouse abuse cases. They believed that mediation trivialized the physical injuries that women were sustaining at the hands of violent spouses. Furthermore, mediation conveyed a message that spouse abuse was a family matter and not a crime. Mediation permitted the abuser to focus upon the failure of the victim to please the batterer and it viewed the parties as equally responsible for the violent incident. The parties were not seen as offender and victim, but just as family members having a dispute. Women’s groups clearly saw police arrest avoidance policies as part of a long train of abuses inflicted upon women in a patriarchal society and unconstitutional sex discrimination. In the late 1970s and early 1980s plaintiffs began suing police departments across the country for gender discrimination based upon police arrest avoidance policies in spouse

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abuse cases. At the same time the police were being encouraged by Bard’s crisis intervention approach to use mediation techniques which were fairly consistent with police arrest avoidance policies. In response to these conflicting forces, the Police Foundation agreed to undertake a study in the Minneapolis Police Department to determine which was the most effective response in spouse abuse cases, mediation or arrest. The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment was designed so that police officers responding to spouse abuse calls would engage in one of three interventions: arrest, order the abuser from the premises for eight hours, or some form of advice that might be termed mediation. Police officers involved in the experiment were given extensive training and advised that all three interventions were to be assigned randomly. The officers carried a special pad of report forms color-coded for the three treatments and determined the effectiveness of the treatment by interviewing the victim soon after the incident and again every two weeks for six months. In a Police Foundation report, researchers Sherman and Berk summarized the study and its flaws and very cautiously warned against legislatures changing laws based upon this report However, the findings of the study were as follows: • Arrest is the most effective way to prevent further violence in spouse abuse cases. • Violence is twice as likely to recur if the police try to mediate rather than make an arrest in spouse abuse cases. The report specifically stated: It may be premature to conclude that arrest is always the best way for the police to handle domestic violence… but police officials cannot wait for further research to decide how to handle the domestic violence that they face each day…. This experiment provides the only scientifically controlled comparison of different methods of reducing repeat violence and on the basis of this study alone police should probably employ arrest in most minor cases of domestic violence. (Sherman and Berk, 1984) With respect to police spouse abuse policies the report was a bombshell. It raised the consciousness level of police administrators with respect to their policies of arrest avoidance (Guido, personal communication, 1988) and overall had enormous influence. In one survey of police departments in 117 cities, more than one-third of the respondents said that their policies had been influenced by the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (Sherman and Cohn, 1989). The manner in which the report was released also created some controversy. Sherman and Cohn (1989) described in detail how the report was released in Washington, DC, a city with 535 members of Congress and various federal agencies. Sherman and Cohn believed that the report received extensive coverage by the media because it involved issues of sex and violence, a suggested major change in domestic power relationships, and the idea of using the police to address the imbalance of physical power between men and women in love relationships. In addition, Sherman believed that social researchers should view publicity-seeking as a duty rather than a vice and therefore attempted to orchestrate the release of the experimental results for maximum press coverage. Hundreds of newspapers reported the results of the experiment and editorials of support appeared in The New York Times and Washington

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Post After the report was released it caught the attention of key audiences that could affect police policies. Feminist groups seized upon the information to further attack the policies of arrest avoidance in spouse abuse cases. About the time that the results of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment were being publicized, the United States Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence released its report (1984). This report gave additional impetus to those forces seeking to change the arrest avoidance policies when it urged police departments to adopt “arrest as the preferred response” to spouse abuse. It further stated that “the legal response to family violence must be guided by the nature of the criminal act and not the relationship between victim and abuser.” LEGAL FORCES Although lawsuits were being brought against police departments during the 1970s and 1980s in an attempt to change arrest avoidance policies, the legal case that had the greatest impact upon the issue of arrest avoidance in spouse abuse cases was one involving a young woman from Connecticut named Tracey Thurman (Thurman v.Torrington, 1995). Tracey was a battered wife, estranged from her husband and living in Torrington, Connecticut at the home of her friends, Judy Bentley and Rich St. Hillaire. Tracey’s husband Charles (Buck) Thurman frequently stalked, threatened and assaulted her. Tracey called the Torrington police on numerous occasions seeking Buck’s arrest but in almost every case they failed to intervene. The police usually said that they could not do anything because they did not see the assault. Tracey testified at trial that a police officer told her “It would be easier if you weren’t married.” In November 1982, Buck Thurman forcibly entered the Bentley-St.Hilaire home and removed three year old Charles Thurman from the residence. The police refused to accept a complaint of criminal trespass from Mr. St. Hilaire. The child was subsequently returned. Four days later Buck Thurman stood in front of and stopped his wife’s car on a public street and screamed threats at a terrified Tracey while she was locked in the car. A nearby police officer who witnessed the threats did not intervene until Buck broke the windshield of the car with his fist. The officer arrested Buck for breach of the peace; he was convicted and ordered to stay away from Tracey, not to harass her, and to leave Torrington. Buck did leave Torrington, but a few weeks later returned to the Bentley-St.Hilaire residence again threatening Tracey in clear violation of the court order. After being notified of the violation, the police made no efforts to arrest Buck Thurman. Between January and May of 1983 Buck made numerous telephone threats to Tracey who reported the threats to the police and advised them in writing that she wanted Buck arrested. The police took no action. On at least five days in May 1983, Tracey Thurman appeared at the Torrington Police Department requesting the arrest of husband. Various verbal responses were made to Tracey by the police, such as, “the officer who has your case is on vacation.” Buck Thurman was not arrested. On June 10, 1983 Buck Thurman appeared at the BentleySt.Hilaire residence demanding to speak to Tracey. Tracey remained indoors and immediately called the police requesting Buck’s arrest for violating his probation and a court order. Fifteen minutes later Tracey exited the residence in an effort to prevent her husband from taking Charles again. Soon thereafter, Buck Thurman began to repeatedly stab Tracey in the chest, neck and throat. Approximately twenty-five minutes after

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Tracey’s call to the police, a single police officer from the Torrington Police Department arrived upon the scene. The officer took the bloody knife from Buck Thurman, but he was not taken into custody and again began assaulting Tracey while she was lying on the ground bleeding. In the presence of the police officer, Buck kicked Tracey in the head several times and broke her neck. He then ran into the house, grabbed their child and returned to the backyard area where Tracey was lying seriously wounded. Buck dropped the child on Tracey and once again kicked her in the head. Some forty minutes after the police arrived, as Tracey was being placed in an ambulance, Buck again threatened Tracey. At this time the police finally arrested Buck and he was convicted of criminally assaulting Tracey and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Tracey Thurman spent eight months in the hospital recovering from thirteen stab wounds, a broken neck and remains partially paralyzed today. Tracey Thurman sued twenty-nine police officers, almost one half of the Torrington police force, for negligence and a denial of equal protection. The equal protection issue was based upon the long standing police practice of arrest avoidance in spouse abuse cases. Tracey’s argument was that if she were assaulted on Main Street by a stranger, the police would make every effort to arrest the stranger. However, because she was involved in a domestic relationship, the police engaged in a different and irrational policy of arrest avoidance which constituted a denial of equal protection. Responding to a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the court in its opinion traced the historic disparate treatment of women in spouse abuse cases from English Common Law through the marital exceptions to spousal assault in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The court denied the motion to dismiss the lawsuit and became the first American court to rule that A man is not allowed to physically abuse or endanger a woman merely because he is her husband. Concomitantly, a police officer may not knowingly refrain from interference in such violence, and may not automatically decline to make an arrest simply because the assaulter and his victim are married to each other…. Such inaction on the part of the officer is a denial of equal protection of the laws. On June 25, 1985 a federal jury in Hartford, Connecticut found against twenty-four of the twenty-nine police officers and ordered them to pay $2.3 million in damages to Tracey Thurman. The jury found that the police officers had violated her constitutional right of equal protection. The attorney for the police department, Jesse Frankl, was quoted as saying the police did not believe that they had done anything wrong (New York Times, June 26, 1985: B6). Tracey Thurman’s attorney, Burton Weinstein, agreed that the officers believed that they did nothing wrong. Weinstein stated that “the police did not take this case seriously because it was only a case of domestic violence” (Weinstein, 1988). It was not until Weinstein began taking action to place liens upon the homes of the individual officers to satisfy the judgment that they began to express concern (Weinstein, 1988). The police probably did not believe they had done anything wrong because they did what they were trained to do, avoid arrests in spouse abuse cases. For the sake of the police officers, the insurance company for the Torrington Police Department agreed to settle the case and pay negotiated damages of $1.9 million.

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The Thurman decision was the coup de grace for arrest avoidance policies in America. Now, in addition to the usual groups urging the police to change their arrest avoidance policies, were the insurance companies who provide liability insurance for many police agencies in America. The immediate impact of Thurman on police departments was a realistic fear of municipal liability which was grounded in the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Police departments from New York to California began unilaterally changing their arrest policies or settling lawsuits via consent decrees and agreeing to jettison arrest avoidance policies. The legislatures in all fifty states began enacting proarrest and mandatory arrest policies in spouse abuse cases (Hart, 1992). It could be argued that “money talks” and the $1.9 million settlement in the Thurman case was the primary force behind the move from arrest avoidance to mandatory arrest. However, the change was really a combination of several historic, social and legal forces that rendered the death knell to arrest avoidance. The eradication of arrest avoidance policies and the movement toward mandatory arrests in spouse abuse cases is not without its critics. Astonishingly, the person raising the most serious opposition to mandatory arrests is the principal author of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, Professor Lawrence Sherman. Sherman argues that “the movement to arrest batterers may be doing more harm than good …(and)…states and cities should repeal…mandatory arrest laws, especially if they have substantial ghetto poverty populations with high unemployment rates…because these are the settings in which mandatory arrest policies are most likely to backfire” (Buzawa and Buzawa, 1996b). Sherman’s views emanate from attempts to replicate the Minneapolis study in Omaha, Nebraska; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Charlotte, North Carolina; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and, Miami, Florida. These replication studies have yielded inconclusive or contradictory results and have also led to much criticism (Bowman, 1992; Zorza, 1994). Even if other research or researchers support Sherman’s position regarding mandatory arrests, it would appear that the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause would militate against this change in public policy. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated (DeShaney v. Winnebago, 1989) that the police may be liable for failure to protect people it knows to be at risk. Can battered women be better protected by arrest or arrest avoidance? The long history of arrest avoidance amply demonstrates the danger of this approach. Sherman supports “structured police discretion” in spouse abuse cases. To some, this may sound like a euphemism for arrest avoidance; nevertheless, there are those who support in some way Sherman’s structured police response (Mitchell, 1992). The new mandatory arrest policies that have been created in American police departments are similar to the one adopted in Nassau County, New York. The Nassau County Police Department’s spouse abuse policy (Commissioner’s Order No. 12–95, 1995) now provides that: “arrest is the preferred response to spouse abuse whenever…. There is reasonable cause to believe that an offense has been committed, or that an order of protection has been violated. Members will not attempt to mediate domestic violence cases in lieu of court proceedings…. In all domestic incidents in which the law is violated, the police objective is to protect the victim by making an arrest. When a police officer can make a lawful arrest, the offender will be arrested, as specified in this policy…. The victim shall not be requested or required to make a civilian arrest when a police arrest can be made.”

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This policy specifically rejects the mediation approach introduced by Bard in the early 1970s. Today’s mandatory arrest policies in spouse abuse cases represent a radical departure from the arrest avoidance policies of just a few years ago. Whatever the view of these new policies, mandatory arrests accomplish several goals. First, an arrest immediately incapacitates the violent offender and provides protection for the victim. Second, mandatory arrests convey to the violent batterer and society in general that battering is a criminal act and not a family matter. Although in any individual case specific deterrence may not work and the victim may again be assaulted by her spouse, society should not lose sight of the general deterrence theory which has always been the cornerstone of our criminal justice system. Third, mandatory arrests represent a policy designed to protect the victim from violence and also should have the effect reducing municipal liability which may follow police inaction. It seems that some researchers are looking for guarantees that batterers will not offend again, but there are no guarantees in any arrest situation, only probabilities which are frequently based upon common sense and the lore of the police craft. Police arrest people for drug crimes and some of these individuals become recidivists. Police arrest rapists, burglars, robbers and some of these arrestees become recidivists. Recidivism is not an argument for arrest avoidance. Rather it is an argument for greater state control of potentially violent defendants, greater protection by the police of persons at risk and greater caution before releasing the violent defendant from custody. If it is ever to ingrained in society that spouse abuse is a criminal act and not a family matter, that message must be repeatedly conveyed in a most forceful manner. Handcuffing every violent spouse abuser and taking such person into police custody is without question the best way to focus the mind of the violent spouse upon his criminal act and make it known to all that spouse abuse is a crime and not just a family matter. CONCLUSION Police agencies pursued arrest avoidance policies in spouse abuse cases because society permitted this practice as part of the historic discrimination against women. These practices were also supported by prosecutors and members of the judiciary who did not want these spouse abuse cases in their court rooms. It is clear that historic, social and legal forces have shaped police spouse abuse policies. The change from arrest avoidance to mandatory arrest may be viewed as part of society’s evolution from a patriarchy to one of equal rights for women. Or, it may be seen simply as women competing for and obtaining a share of scarce police resources. However the change is viewed, it is clear that arrest avoidance in spouse abuse cases is now part of the scrap heap of yesteryear. In light of the constitutional equal protection issues, it is unlikely that arrest avoidance will ever be resurrected, nor should it be. The authors of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, Sherman and Berk, and the Minneapolis Chief of Police, Anthony Bouza, deserve credit for their courage and pioneering work in conducting the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment in the early 1980s. At the time the Minneapolis report was released, it was a significant factor on the road toward mandatory arrest. Society is also deeply indebted to the many Tracey Thurmans of this world and the numerous feminist groups and abused women’s organizations who have raised the consciousness

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level of the nation with respect to the plight of battered women and the deleterious impact of police arrest avoidance policies. Without their combined efforts, arrest avoidance policies in spouse abuse cases would still rule the day in the United States.

References Bard, M. (1970). Training in Crisis Intervention: From Concept to Implementation. Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Justice. Bard, M. (1973). Family Crisis Intervention. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Blackstone (1765). Commentaries on the Laws of England, as quoted in R.Langley and R.Levy (1997). Wife Beating: The Silent Crisis. New York: E.P.Dutton, p. 18. Bowman, C. (1992). “The Arrest Experiments: A Feminist’s Critique.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83(1):201–208. Bunch, C. (1992). “Overview of Violence Against Women.” In Violence Against Women: Addressing a Global Problem. Ford Foundation, New York. Buzawa, E., and Buzawa, C. (1990). Domestic Violence: The Criminal Justice Response. Westwood, CT: Greenwood Press. Buzawa, E.S., and Buzawa, C.G. (1996a). Domestic Violence: The Criminal Justice Response. Newbury Park: Sage. Buzawa, E.S., and Buzawa, C.G. (1996b). Do Arrests and Restraining Orders Work? Newbury Park: Sage, p. 4. Davidson, T. (1978). Conjugal Crime: Understanding and Changing the Wife Beating Pattern. New York: Hawthorne Books. Davis, E. (1972). The First Sex. Baltimore: Penguin. Fagan, Jeffrey (1996). “The Criminalization of Domestic Violence: Promises and Limits.” In National Institute of Justice Research Report. Washington, DC: Department of Justice, p. 8. Field, M., and Field, H. (1973). “Marital Violence and the Criminal Process: Neither Justice nor Peace.” Social Service Review 47(2):221–240. Garner, J., and Clemmer, E. (1986). “Danger to Police in Domestic Disturbances: A New Look” In National Institute of Justice: Research in Brief Washington, DC: Department of Justice. Guido, Daniel P. (1976, 1988). Personal communications (May 6, 1976 and September 22, 1988). [Guido is the CEO of five major police departments—the Nassau County, New York Police Department, the Suffolk County, New York Police Department, the Westchester County, New York Police Department, the City of Yonkers, New York Police Department, and the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department] Hart, B. (1992). “State Criminal and Civil Codes on Domestic Violence.” Juvenile and Family Court Journal. International Association of Chiefs of Police (1967). Training Key 16: Handling Domestic Disturbance Calls. Gaithersburg, MD: IACP. Langan, P.A., and Innes, C.A. (1988). Preventing Domestic Violence Against Women. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Langley, R., and Levy, R. (1997). Wife Beating: The Silent Crisis. New York: E.P.Dutton. Liebman, D., Jeffrey, N., Schwartz, J. (1973). “Police Programs in Domestic Crisis Intervention: A Review.” In The Urban Policeman in Transition (eds. J.R.Snibbe and H.M.Snibbe). Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas, pp. 421–472. Mitchel, D.B. (1992). “Contemporary Police Practices In Domestic Violence Cases: Arresting The Abuser: Is It Enough?” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83(1). Muraskin, R. (1996). “Women and the Law—What the Future Holds.” In Visions for Change: Crime and Justice In The Twenty-First Century (eds. R.Muraskin and A.R.Roberts). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, p. 322.

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New York Criminal Procedure Article 140, section 140.10 l(b), “Misdemeanor need not be committed in officer’s presence.” Effective September 1, 1971. New York Times, Wednesday, June 26, 1985, p. B6. Pleck, E. (1979). “Wife Beating in Nineteenth Century America.” Victimology 4(1):60–74. Pleck, E. (1987). Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present New York: Oxford University Press. Reynolds, G. (1987). “Men Who Abuse Women—When the Law Allowed Abuse.” Northeast Woman, April, p. 7. Sherman, L.W., and Berk, R.E. (1984). The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment Washington, DC Police Foundation Reports, April 1985, pp. 6–7. Sherman, L.W., and Hamilton, E. (1984). The Impact of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment Washington, DC: Police Foundation. Sherman, L.W., and Cohn, E.G. (1989). “The Impact of Research on Legal Policy: The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment.” Law and Society Review 23(1). Steinman, M. (1988). “Anticipating Police Reactions to Arrest Policies Regarding Spouse.” Criminal Justice Research Bulletin 4(3):1. Trent, D.J. (1979). “Wife Beating: A Psycho-Legal Analysis.” Case and Comment, NovemberDecember.

Weinstein, Burton, M. (1988). Domestic Violence Seminar conducted by the Department of Criminal Justice, Long Island University, C.W.Post Campus, November 15. [350 Fairfield Avenue Bridgeport, Connecticut 06601; Attorney for Tracey Thurman. Domestic Violence Seminar conducted by the Suffolk County (New York) Police Department, September 22.] Cases Bradley v. State (1824) 1 Miss 156. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). Fulgham v. State, 46 Ala. 146–47 (1871). Thurman v. City of Torrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521 (1984).

Chapter Eight Violence Against Women in the Caribbean

Zelma Henriques and Janice Joseph Every year, thousands of women are beaten, battered, raped, sexually harassed, and murdered. Violence against women is an international problem which occurs in wealthy as well as poor countries. The emotional, physical, and social consequences are profound for all women and for all of society as well. This chapter examines the extent and nature of violence against English-speaking Caribbean women, focusing primarily on physical and sexual violence: battering and rape. It also offers suggestions on how to deal with violence against women. STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE CARIBBEAN To understand male violence against women in the Caribbean, it is necessary to discuss woman’s present social status within the society in relation to men. The English-speaking Caribbean constitutes several countries in the Caribbean Sea, ranging from the tip of Florida in the north to Venezuela in the south, facing Central America to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The Caribbean possesses a distinct geography and unique history. The physical geography of the region consists of a number of islands each characteristically marked by a strong sense of insularity, although there is regular movement among the islands. The plunder and exploitation of the islands by European explorers eliminated much of the indigenous population and created a society based on the institution of slavery, a plantation economy, and an indentured labor force. Although many of the islands are now independent, they still rely on industrialized countries for their economic support. Caribbean women form a heterogeneous group based on race, color, class, social and economic status and place of residence. The majority of women are black, either of African descent or of mixed race. In Guyana and Trinidad approximately 40% of the population is of Indian descent. On all the islands there are small numbers of local white descendants of various European countries, Chinese, Syrians and Portuguese, as well as small pockets of native Amerindians in Guyana, Dominica, and St Vincent (Ellis, 1986). As slaves and descendants of slaves, the majority of Caribbean women worked outside the home. They were a vital source of cheap, unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Presently, unemployment is high in many of the Caribbean countries and the opportunity for women

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to work outside the home is limited. Moreover, over 40% of all households are female headed and as a result, many women are solely responsible for their children. Although a small number of women have reached the top of their professions and are in powerful positions, the majority of working women continue to work in low status and low paying jobs. Men, on the other hand, are employed in skilled jobs and white-collar jobs which offer high wages (Ellis, 1986; Clarke et al., 1990). In sum, women are economically deprived in relation to men, and, therefore, hold a much lower social status than the men. In the Caribbean, most political positions are held by males; very few women are politicians. Although there have been a few permanent secretaries, senators, several cabinet ministers, and a female Prime Minister, there is an absence of large numbers of women in government administration, in the House of Parliament, or in senior positions within the government. Moreover, women in politics have often been ridiculed, discriminated against, and exploited not only by men but by other women; their marginal involvement in politics is due to the notion that politics, often perceived as corrupt and demanding, is no place for women. Instead emphasis is placed on women’s roles as mothers and wives; roles that they may not be able to effectively maintain if they became politicians. Basically, more importance is placed on their reproductive and domestic roles than their economic and civil roles (Ellis, 1986). What this means is that the few women who are politicians are not in positions that would allow them to change policy, especially those relating to women’s issues. EXTENT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Violence against women is quite prevalent throughout the Caribbean. For example, in one month alone in 1994 in Jamaica, there were 409 acts of violence against women, most of which were committed by men with whom they were intimately involved. In addition, in that same year, one out of every six Jamaican women between the ages of 15 and 55 experienced physical violence perpetrated by a male. Violence against women is also increasing in the Bahamas, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Kitts and Nevis (Haniff, 1995). Women Battering Battering of women can be defined as physical attacks against a woman by a husband or a boyfriend. These attacks include aggravated assaults resulting in serious injuries as well as simple assaults. No woman is immune from battering, and women from every racial, ethnic, social, and economic background have suffered. The following five types of batterers have been identified: 1. The man who reacts angrily at the slightest provocation and who finds it difficult to walk away and cool off. He thinks that violence is an acceptable way to gain power and control, and he gets angry very quickly. 2. The man who brags about having hurt someone in the past and threatens that he will hurt someone in the future. This batterer usually has a pattern of battering with all his women. If a batterer has battered once, he will do it again even if he is remorseful afterwards.

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3. The man who is possessive and attempts to keep his woman and her life under control. The man tries to control the way the woman dresses, whom she sees, where she goes, and how she spends her money. He treats the woman as a child, and the control eventually becomes aggressive. 4. The man who is pathologically jealous and tries to isolate the woman from her relatives and friends. This man holds traditional views of gender roles and feels inferior to his female companion. He batters her because of his low self-esteem. 5. The man who is addicted to alcohol or drugs and batters his partner when intoxicated. This type of person usually has a violent personality and the alcohol or drug triggers the violent reaction. (Jordon, 1986) All countries in the English-speaking Caribbean report an increase in the number of domestic violence incidents. For example, domestic violence in Anguilla increased from 37 incidents in 1987 to 317 incidents in 1993; in Bahamas from 150 in 1987 to 436 in 1993; in Jamaica from 50 in 1987 to 392 in 1993; and in St. Kitts and Nevis from 26 in 1987 to 32 in 1993. Between 1991 and 1993, there were 1,670 domestic violence cases in Trinidad and Tobago; 156 for the Virgin Islands; 50 for Montserrat; and 18 for the Turks and Caicos Islands. In Barbados, between 1994 and 1996, there were 1,056 applications for protection orders, 90% of which were requested by women against men (Black Diaspora, 1997). LaFont (1995) argued that battering is so commonplace in Jamaican society that it barely raises an eyebrow. Men in Jamaica use such terms as “beat up”; “mash up”; “cuff up”; or “lick up” (p. 113) to refer to woman battering. However, some commentators have argued that the increase in domestic violence may be due to an increase in the reporting of cases of domestic violence (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.). Not only are wives and women in common law relationships subjected to battering, but women in dating relationships are as well. Battering may occur daily, weekly, or monthly and result in bruises, lacerations, swelling, fractures, concussion, miscarriage, and death (Howell, 1983). In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a research project found that 75% of the perpetrators of domestic violence were males in common-law marriages, 15% were husbands, and 10% were male relatives (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.). Mondesire and Dunn (n.d.) reported that in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, the majority of women reporting abuse are from the lower class where abuse is often more overt and direct. The authors, however, suggest that middle and upperclass women are also victimized, but that they often use private services where the reasons for them seeking help may not be recorded. Furthermore, women of the middle and upper classes are less likely than poorer women to report their abuse because they want to protect their reputation and that of their men (Haniff, 1995). In addition, many abused Caribbean women do not report their victimization because of their economic dependency on men and the negative response of the community. More men than women are employed thus making many women dependent on men. Furthermore, many women become pregnant at an early age without developing marketable skills, and many enter into unions where their basic needs are met. The lack of economic independence, therefore, forces some Caribbean women to accept dehumanizing and violent conditions. Having few alternatives, they often cannot extricate themselves from violent family situations. In addition, if children are involved, women

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may be hesitant to disrupt the relationship between the children and their fathers by reporting their partners to the authorities (Robinson, 1986; Howell, 1983). Many Caribbean women therefore suffer physical abuse as a price for financial support and love for their children. Professionals tend to view battering as an individual family conflict and not a major social problem (Kamugisha, 1986). Likewise, the community and even the relatives of the abused find ways to blame her or make her feel guilty for reporting the abuse. The following is an attempt to make the victim feel guilty for deciding to report her abusive partner: But is you baby father, how you can lock up you baby father, you can’t do it, is you baby father, how can you lock him up? Is your baby father. (Haniff, 1995:5) Rape/Sexual Assault Rape is a crime of aggression against women. It is a physical and emotionally brutalizing attack and, although sex is the vehicle, it is more about power and violence. A rapist can be a stranger, a casual acquaintance, or a family friend. Attacks usually take place after dark and indoors where the victim is alone. Kamugisha (1986) categorizes rapists into three groups: 1. The man who stages a robbery and encounters helpless woman. In an attempt to create fear so that she would not report the robbery or identify him, he rapes her. In this case, rape is used as a vehicle for power and control. 2. The man who feels sexually inadequate, unattractive or sexually inferior, and who must validate his manhood by raping sexually inexperienced victims. He is likely to have psychoneurotic problems and is often raised with-out a father. He develops a sexual attachment to his mother and is socialized into repressing his sexual feelings. He often selects maternal victims. 3. The boy who grows up with a sense of having been unfairly disciplined or chastised at home. He is always accused of wrong doing but represses his hostility toward this treatment. He becomes a divided self; wanting attention and approval but fearing that he will be chastised. He grows up hating women and views women as objects to be molested. He is also a woman batterer. A number of rapes occur in the Caribbean between people who know each other similar to the United States (Tomlinson, 1991) and reports indicate that rape is high in the Caribbean. For example, in St. Vincent and Grenadines over 148 cases of sexual abuse were reported to Social Welfare in 1994. During a five-year period (1989–1993), crimes against women, particularly rape and indecent assault, showed a steady increase in Barbados. During the first six months in 1993, there were 100 cases of rape, indecent assault, and sodomy in St. Lucia (Haniff, 1995). Police in Jamaica reported that rape was

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more vicious than in earlier years. According to police reports, rapes had become more violent because assailants were using firearms and other weapons during the rapes (Sistren, 1987). Many rapes go unreported because rape victims are often afraid of the repercussions from the rapist; they fear that the rapist will take revenge and further hurt them. They also feel humiliated and think that it is their fault; and friends may not believe them, especially if the rapist was an acquaintance. Rape victims do not report the rape because they do not want to undergo further victimization from a criminal justice system that may degrade and humiliate them. An additional difficulty for victims is having to report the physical details of the abuse to doctors and counselors (Sistren, 1987). Unfortunately, women perpetuate their oppression at the hands of these men when they protect their abusers by not reporting them to the police. When women do not report their male victimizers, it contributes to the conspiracy of silence which validates the violence (Hewitt, 1991). CAUSES OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Male violence against women takes place within a sociocultural context. Sociocultural norms and expectations about behaviors of women and men may sometimes lead to violence in the home. There are gender-related roles and expectations regarding malefemale relationships that are transmitted to boys and girls at a very early age. This anticipatory socialization into the roles of husband and wife may also reflect an acceptance of the devaluation of women (Koss and Gaines, 1993). Gender-Related Roles and Expectations Within Caribbean society, people have ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward male-female relationships and toward marriage. At the same time, girls are taught from an early age strategies to ensure their survival and that of their families whether or not a male lover is present in their lives. This creates a sense of independence—hence the image of the strong Caribbean woman who can cope with anything. At the same time, they are also taught that it is not only desirable, but important, to have a male partner whom they should admire, respect, and hold in high esteem (Ellis, 1986). Young men also receive similar contradictory messages. By and large boys are encouraged to be domineering and strong. At the same time, they are taught to depend on their mothers, other female relatives and later on their wives and female partners. However, because they too have internalized the ideology of male dominance, deep down they resent their dependency on their strong female counterparts. These feelings of resentment are often carried over into their adult relationships and can lead to tension and hostility as men and women play out their conflicting roles and expectations of each other. These double standards and ambivalent attitudes inevitably affect the self-image and sense of worth of Caribbean women (Ellis, 1986).

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Cultural Norms and Expectations Caribbean society, like most western societies, encourages males to be aggressive and women to be submissive. Aggressiveness is associated with masculinity. Violence is not only directly encouraged by boys, it is perpetuated through the violence to which they are subjected and which they learn from male role models (Rodriquez, 1990). In the masculine gender role, they are encouraged to fight back and defend themselves and their rights. Power and violence are, therefore, often intertwined. While males are taught aggression and violence, females are taught to be caring and nurturing, to assume responsibility for the welfare of others, and to resolve conflicts by nonviolent means. They are taught to be submissive to males, especially husbands, whom they believe that they must make happy (Howell, 1983; Rodriquez, 1990). Structural Factors There appears to be a relationship between woman battering and rape and a patriarchal society. Violence against women is part of a power system based on male supremacy. Under this system, males and females are assigned specific gender social roles. Men assume the breadwinner role, and women are responsible for raising the children and taking care of the household chores. Violence against women is, therefore, based on power in which violence is a form of social control. It is power and gender domination; a situation that some women are socialized to accept. In effect, Caribbean society still supports the ideology that women are seen as the property of men, and continues to view woman battering and rape from this perspective (Brush, 1990; Walker, 1989; Kelly, 1988; Bowker, 1986). While the woman abuser and the rapist are tolerated—boys will be boys—the female victims are blamed for the violence. This perception continues to be the case in a number of Caribbean countries. Cultural Beliefs Supporting Violence Against Women There are cultural beliefs that either minimize the harm of violence or blame the woman for her victimization. These beliefs, which often distort reality, are referred to as cultural myths and they help to perpetuate and legitimize violence against women in the Caribbean and elsewhere. LaFont (1995) reported that many Jamaican men believe that women would not respect them if they did not beat them. LaFont also noted that some women believed that the men did not love them unless the man physically abused them. Although LaFont focused on Jamaica, her findings are applicable to the other countries as well. The following excerpt indicates one woman’s internalization of the belief that violence relates to love; “My love life is a mess,” smiles Doreen Jones while she shakes her knees and stares at me in the eyes. “My husband accused me of making love to another man and he beat me with a piece of electric wire. Then he threw me on the bed and made love to me. It was one of the most wonderful

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feelings I ever had. Our act of love making was beautiful.” (LaFont, 1995:113) One of the most common belief regarding rape is that women “asked” to be raped by the way they dressed or their behavior. In the Caribbean, females are encouraged to be virgins, while men are allowed to be sexually active. Those women who do not remain virgins before marriage are regarded as “bad” while men who are promiscuous are respected by their peers. It is assumed, therefore, that women who do not maintain their virginity deserve what they get. In other words, that women who have had sexual intercourse before marriage cannot be raped (Kamugisha, 1986). Doctors, psychiatrists, law enforcement officers, judges, and the general public are sometimes unsympathetic to female victims of rape. Instead they blame the victim for being out late at night or make such statements as: “Look like yuh did like it” or “Yuh sure yuh never tempt the man?” (Sistern, 1987). Media The negative portrayal of women in the media contributes to violence against women in the Caribbean. Clear images of masculinity and femininity are presented on television. The media portray women as weak, passive, submissive, dependent, and as sex-objects. Men, on the other hand, are portrayed as forceful, capable, strong, successful, and dominant. In some films and in advertising, women are beaten and humiliated. In other films, books, and magazines they are portrayed as sex objects. These sexist images objectify women and play a role in making men less sensitive and respectful of women throughout the world. Feminists suggest that frequent repetition by the media of themes of domination and violence against women reinforces attitudes which encourage battering and rape against women everywhere (Robertson, 1983). The Caribbean media have been blamed for portraying violence against women as acceptable and normal behavior (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d). Songs, poetry, posters and advertisements in the Caribbean illustrate the degradation of women and the acceptance of male violence against women. The following examples quite aptly describe this acceptance: She wears my wedding ring to show the world that she belongs to me. (Engleton, 1988:2) The famous calypsonian, The Mighty Sparrow of Trinidad states, “If a man doesn’t beat you he doesn’t love you. So black up she eye, bruise up she knee, then she will love you eternally.” (Engleton, 1988:2) Posters and postcards tell male tourists that they can get “a piece of ass with their sun, sea, and sand in Jamaica.” (Sistren, 1987; 16) Reggae singers and DJs help perpetuate the notion that women’s bodies are to be used and abused with statements such as “Siddung pon it, me seh me nah run lef it; Me nah refuse it”; “I want to wreck a pumpum”; and “Gi me punani.” (Sistren, 1987:16)

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Although the media’s portrayal of women in the Caribbean has improved in recent years, stereotypical and negative images are still present. EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE The effects of violence on women are tremendous. Fear, anxiety, fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleeping and eating disturbances are common long-term reactions to and effects of male violence against women (Haniff, 1995). Victims also exhibit destructive behavior, attempted suicides and addiction to prescription drugs or alcohol (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.). There are also many hidden costs of violence against women for the Caribbean countries. The World Bank estimates that domestic violence robs women in developing countries of five percent of their healthy years of child bearing. The cost to the health care system and all the other costs to society are unquantifiable (Haniff, 1995). LEGAL RESPONSE TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN A few Caribbean countries have begun to take male violence seriously by passing legislation prohibiting violent behaviors. The two types of laws that attempt to deal with this type of violence are the domestic violence and the sexual abuse laws. Domestic Violence Legislation Of all the English-speaking countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), only five have passed Domestic Violence Acts; these are Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, and the Bahamas (Haniff, 1995). In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Law Reform Act and the Criminal Law Amendment can be invoked in cases of domestic violence. In Grenada, there are no legal provisions against domestic violence, although incest is now an offense there. Montserrat, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis have very few legal measures to deal with domestic violence. St. Lucia and Guyana have drafted a legislation to address domestic violence (Mondesire and Dunn, 1995; BOWAND Public Awareness Committee, 1993). The Domestic Violence Acts are intended to make it easier to apply for protection orders for women and to prosecute offenders. Their enactment would also communicate the message that violence against women is unacceptable and that society will punish those who commit such crimes. Under the Domestic Violence Act of Trinidad and Tobago, for example, a protection order may be granted by a magistrate to a spouse, a child, a parent, grandparent, or a dependent. The order restrains a spouse or another member of the family from inflicting or attempting to inflict violence on other members of the family. In granting the protection order, the magistrate has the power to attach certain conditions to it. These conditions include prohibiting the offender from being on the prem-ises in which a victim resides or works, or prohibiting the offender from speaking or sending messages to the victim.

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Since the passage of the Domestic Violence Act in Trinidad and Tobago, there has been an increase in killings by husbands, and 1,007 domestic violent cases went before the courts between 1991 and 1992. Critics have, therefore, blamed the Act for the increase in domestic violence, but this claim appears to be unsubstantiated (Pargass, 1993). One major contentious issue in the Domestic Violence Act is the section dealing with the removal of the offender from his home. The Domestic Violence Acts of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Belize stipulate that the offender can be temporarily removed from his residence in order to protect his wife and children from further violence. Critics argue that excluding a man temporarily from his house is a form of injustice to the man. They argue that it is unfair to deprive a man of his property because of a woman who has made no contribution to its cost. Women’s groups, on the other hand, counter that women do contribute to the home through domestic work, regardless of any cash contributions. More importantly, women and children need some place to live in order to receive protection. Women’s groups also argue that if men want to ensure their right to occupy their homes, they should end their violent and abusive behavior against women (BOWAND Public Awareness Committee, 1993). Other critics argue that removing the man from his home is likely to provoke a vicious reaction from him (Pargass, 1993). Despite the existence of legislation prohibiting battering, the criminal justice system in many Caribbean countries often responds negatively towards the woman who reports her victimization. Police make few arrests because they regard domestic violence as a personal problem between family members. The legal system is hostile, indifferent, time consuming, expensive, and humiliating. The failure of the criminal justice system to deal effectively with woman battering is the result of the co-existence of two systems of social control—one private and one public—pursuing the same objective. The man is responsible for maintaining social control in the private domain (home), and the criminal justice system maintains social order in the public sphere. Hence, if a man batters his wife or companion, it is difficult for the criminal justice system to punish him because it may view violence as neces-sary to maintain social order in the home (Rodriquez, 1990). Rape/Sexual Assault Legislation The CARICOM Secretariat has been developing a model legislation on sexual offenses and domestic violence for consideration by the CARICOM governments (Clarke, 1991). However, only a few Caribbean countries have passed rape legislation. These include Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaica and Barbados passed a Sexual Offenses Act in 1992 which makes it easier to prosecute rape cases by excluding the victim’s sexual experience (Report to the Conference on Women, 1995). Politicians in Trinidad and Tobago deleted Clause 4, which related to a wife’s right to charge the husband with rape, from the country’s Sexual Offenses Bill on the grounds that this would interfere with the marital relationship (which is a very sacred thing) and that it would lead to vindictive, malicious and unfounded prosecutions by bitter wives. The Leader of Government Business in the House was quoted as saying that what happens between a man and his wife in the privacy of their bedroom is their business. The law has nothing to do with it. Another politician, a Cabinet Minister, also stated that

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he would decline to sit in a Parliament that passed a law which created any opportunities for a wife to send her husband to jail on sexual grounds (Shepherd, 1991). The deletion of Clause 4 prompted a strong reaction from women’s groups, private citizens, and even some men. The Port of Spain Rape Crisis Center responded strongly to the deletion and argued that the Clause was included in the first place to protect those women who had real need of it; they recommended that it be placed back into the legislation. The Center also reported that at the time of their statement on Clause 4, only three of the twenty-two women being dealt with at their facility reported the crime to police. In each of the three cases, the victims spoke of the distasteful courtroom experience. The Center further recommended that rape cases should be held ‘in camera’ as this would encourage more women to report rape (Woman Speak, 1986). Jamaica has suggested changes to its rape law. These reforms include expanding the definition of rape and changing the rape evidence procedures. The government proposed to expand the definition of rape to include penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth by the penis or by other parts of the body (for example, fingers) and objects in the absence of consent of the person who has been penetrated. Lack of consent also included cases in which the victim submitted because of force or threat of force. Another proposed reform was that the law would make it an offense for a husband to have sex with his wife without consent if they agreed to separate, if divorced, if the wife had taken an injunction or restraining order against the husband, where threat of violence or injury was used, and where there was a risk of infection by sexually transmittable diseases. The government also proposed that rape evidence would relate only to the previous relationship (s) with the accused and that any other sexual history could enter into evidence only with the judge’s approval. Further in cases of rape and other sexual offense charges against adults, no corroboration would be required for conviction but corroboration would be required in the case of the unsworn evidence of a child. Since there was no law in Jamaica that protects the identity of the complainant in rape cases, the government proposed that a law should be passed to prohibit identification of the complainant in the press and the electronic media. Such a restriction could be lifted in certain circumstances, for example, in the public interest or to encourage witnesses to come forward. The proposal recommended that there be no such restriction on the accused’s identification unless such identification could result in identification of the victim as in the case of marital rape (Narcesse, 1993). The Association of Women’s Organizations in Jamaica (AWOJA) responded to these governmental proposed reforms to the rape law. For the most part, the organization agreed with the proposals except that it recommended that lack of consent should include cases where the victim has been given “controlled substances” (drugs). AWOJA also recommended that an accused person’s name should not be published before conviction because of the social implications associated with a charge of rape and the assumption of innocence until guilt is proven (Narcesse, 1993). In many courts in the Caribbean, a man’s previous rape convictions are not considered admissible evidence, but the sexual reputation of the rape victim is considered a crucial part of the evidence upon which the court must decide innocence or guilt (Kamugisha, 1986). A female victim of rape, therefore, is often made to feel that she is on trial because her past sexual behavior is brought into the proceedings. She has to provide corroborative evidence and she has to prove that she was raped; that is, she did not give consent. The

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latter is often difficult to prove; consequently, many perpetrators are acquitted or given light sentences. A researcher in the Bahamas analyzed rape data over a five-year period and found that 80% of the accused were acquitted or the case never went to trial (DeanPatterson, 1990). When rapists are found guilty, they are often given a light sentence, as in the case of a retired top level civil servant who was given a three-year suspended sentence for raping his helper because the judge felt that he was “man enough” to admit that he had committed the crime (Sistren, 1988). The criminal justice response to woman battering and rape is not surprising given the fact that the majority of criminal justice professionals are males. Between 7% to 29% of police officers are women in all the countries, and only recently was a Women Police Unit established in the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis. In the judiciary, women constitute between 11% to 50% of all judges and magistrates in all the countries except St. Lucia, where they reportedly occupy 83% of these positions (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.). COMMUNITY ACTIVISM In response to violence against women in the Caribbean, a number of women have taken action to eliminate the problem. Consequently, several women’s organizations have been formed, including the Association of Women’s Organizations in Jamaica (AWOJA), Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) in Trinidad and Tobago, Belize Rural Women’s Association, Belize Organization for Women Development (BOWAND), Dominica National Council of Women (DNCW), Women and Development Unit (WAND) in Barbados, and Sistren Theater Collective in Jamaica. The members of these organizations are young and their orientation is predominantly socialist and feminist. These groups are organized around issues that affect women and their relationship to the existing social and political structures. A large part of their work focuses on raising the consciousness of women and mobilizing them to take action to change their subordinate position in the society. They have conducted workshops in schools and have lobbied for the establishment of counseling and rehabilitation centers. Although small and few in number, they are playing a vital role in helping women and the public understand the social and political implications of women’s subordinate position in society (Burton, 1991; Ellis, 1986; Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.; Nicholson, 1989). Jamaica has established a Women’s Resource Center which provides free legal services to women to help them deal with domestic violence and rape (Woman Speak, 1983). In 1985, a group of concerned women (they later called themselves WOMAN INCORPORATED) in Jamaica started the first crisis center for women in Kingston. The Women’s Crisis Center concentrated exclusively on the needs of women as part of the family unit, and was staffed with two professional counselors, several volunteers and a network of doctors. Since its inception, the Center has served battered, rape, and incest victims over the age of seventeen (Tomlinson, 1991). In 1988, the Jamaican government provided land and with the aid of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the German Embassy, WOMAN INCORPORATED opened a shelter to house eight battered women and their children. The success of the center has been enhanced by the formation of Special Child Abuse/Rape Centers within the police

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department. The staff of the crisis center share in the training of police officers, both men and women, who form the staff of Special Child Abuse/Rape Centers (Morrison, 1990). The Bahamas has also established a women’s crisis center to help women who have been physically or emotionally abused. Services include marital and family therapy, an emergency hot line, dance therapy, and support groups (Woman Speak, 1983). There are also rape crisis centers in Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, and Belize and plans exist to establish such centers in Grenada and Dominica. Crisis hotlines currently exist in Barbados and Grenada (Clarke, 1991). The National Commission on the Status of Women in Trinidad conducted a seminar on Domestic Violence which resulted in an agreement by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to donate five acres of land for the establishment of a home for battered women (Woman Speak, 1983). The Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), the Trinidad and Tobago Rape Crisis Society, and the United Nations Economic Council for Latin America and the Caribbean held a joint regional conference in January, 1991 on the issue of violence against women (Clarke, 1991). Jamaica uses the media to discourage violence with such messages as “Real men don’t abuse women” or “No to sexual violence.” Newspaper articles inform individuals about their rights, crimes, and the legal remedies. Television and radio stations in Jamaica often interview women who have survived violence and their counselors, and encourage men to call in and express their views on violence against women (Mondesire and Dunn, n.d.; Nicholson, 1989). The Concerned Women for Progress (CWP) in Trinidad has mounted campaigns against violence against women by using the media and public forums. In Jamaica, the Sistren Theater Collective has consistently used drama to stimulate discussion and raise awareness on the issue of violence against women (Woman Speak, 1983). RECOMMENDATIONS Violence against women in the Caribbean is a complex issue which needs to be addressed more systematically and effectively by their governments. Since violence against women is the consequence of gender inequality and male dominance, governments need to attack these causes. Changing the social fabric of Caribbean society and the perceptions of men and women is no easy task, but until these underlying causes are addressed woman battering and rape will continue to plague Caribbean society. The following are some recommendations: All Caribbean governments should: 1. Make violence against women a high priority and should undertake a massive educational campaign on the issue. They should conduct seminars and workshops on a regular basis on the issue of violence against women. 2. Establish a Bureau of Women’s Affairs or a similar agency which will conduct research and disseminate information on the extent and nature of violence against women. This agency should also address other concerns of women. 3. Conduct more regional conferences on violence against women. During these conferences, the countries can share ideas, experiences, and resources.

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4. Revise or enact legislation that addresses domestic violence and rape. Once enacted, the governments should assess the effectiveness of such legislation. 5. Severely punish males who use violence against women. To ensure that this is accomplished, the punishment must be swift and certain. Governments should also employ more female law enforcement officers, judges, magistrates, and prosecutors. 6. Institute more protective measures to assist female victims of violence, such as establishing more battered women’s shelters, rape crisis center counseling services, hotlines, and advocacy and legal services. 7. Empower Caribbean women by improving their social status through more economic opportunities, political participation, and the elimination of gender inequality. Governments should endeavor to create societies in which men and women are equal.

SUMMARY When a man violently attacks another man, society says that it is a crime. When a woman violently hurts a man, society says that she should be punished. When the same act is committed by a man against a woman (in certain circumstances), society either blames the woman or regards it as a misunderstanding. Violence against women is a serious problem and should not be trivialized, minimized or ignored. While it is true that most men do not batter or rape women, it is, however, true that battering and rape are two of the most serious crimes against women. It is also true that women have rnore to fear from intimates than strangers. There is no single solution to male violence against women, but the underlying causes of this problem are the power and control that society has given to men. Society can attempt to prevent violence by changing the norms of masculinity and femininity so that men will respect women. Violence against women is a problem for every one woman. Women must join together to seek redress; they need to speak with one voice. Solidarity among women creates strength to counter battering and rape. Ending violence is crucial. Women cannot be free unless they feel safe in their homes and on the streets. But they can only be free if they organize, unite, and take action against men’s aggression.

References Black Diaspora (1997). “Barbadian Men Seek Help.” Black Diaspora, March, p. 13. BOWAND Public Awareness Committee (1993). “The Domestic Violence Bill.” A Woman’s Turn 4:8–9. Bowker, L. (1986). Ending the Violence. Holmes Beach, FL: Learning Publications. Brush, L. (1990). “Violent Acts and Injurious Outcomes in Married Couples: Methodological Issues in the National Survey of Families and Households.” Gender and Society 4:56–67. Clarke, R. (1991). “Caribbean Meeting: Violence and the Law.” Women’s Health Journal 3:23–24. Dean-Patterson, S. (1990). “Women and Violence.” In Conference Proceedings on Inter-American Consultation on Women and Violence, July, Washington, DC. Ellis, P. (1986). “An Overview of Women in Caribbean Society.” In Women of the Caribbean (ed. Pat Ellis). Atlantic Highlands, NY: Zed Books, pp. 1–24.

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Engleton, L. (1988). “Violence Against Women: Our Laws Are Antiquated.” The Belize Woman 2:8. Haniff, N.Z. (1995). “Male Violence Against Women and Men in the Caribbean: The Case of Jamaica.” WAND Occasional Paper, pp. 1–8. Hewitt, E. (1991). “From the Conference on Violence Against Women: Elaine Hewitt Speaks.” Sistren 13:27–28. Howell, A. (1983). “Violence Against Women.” Woman Speak 10:5–6. Jordon, M. (1986). Physical Violence Against Women in Barbados. Bridgetown, Barbados: Bureau of Women’s Affairs. Kamugisha, S. (1986). “Violence Against Women.” In Women of the Caribbean (ed. Pat Ellis). Atlantic Highlands, NY: Zed Books, pp. 74–79. Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving Sexual Violence, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Koss, M.P., and Gaines, J.A. (1993). ‘The Prediction of Sexual Aggression by Alcohol Use, Athletic Participation, and Fraternity Affiliation.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 8:94–106. LaFont, S. (1995). The Emergence of an Afro Caribbean Legal Tradition: Gender Relations and Family Court use in Kingston, Jamaica. Bethseda, MD: Austin and Winfield Publishing. Mondesire, A., and Dunn, L. (n.d.). Toward Equity in Development: A Report on the Status of Women. Georgetown, Guyana: Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat. Morrison, I. (1990). “The Jamaica Crisis Center and Shelter: An Overview.” In Conference Proceedings on Inter-American Consultation on Women and Violence, July, Washington, DC. Narcesse, C. (1993). “Proposals to Reform the Rape and Incest Laws.” Sistren 15:32–33, 39. Nicholson, H. (1989). “Working Together to End Violence.” Sistren 11:27. Pargass, G. (1993). “Violence Against Women Increases in Trinidad and Tobago.” Caribbean Contact 19:10. Robertson, J. (1983). “The New Trend in Violence.” Woman Speak 10:12–13. Robinson, N. (1986). “Unemployment: Its Relationship to Violence.” Woman Speak 19–2O:8. Rodriquez, T. (1990). “Violence and Women.” In Conference Proceedings on Inter-American Consultation on Women and Violence, July, Washington, DC. Shepherd, C. (1991). “Thoughts on Domestic Violence.” Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) News 5:17–18. Sistren (1987). “A Call to Women’s Organizations: Unite Against Sexual Violence.” Sistren 9:1, 16. Sistren (1988). “Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: ‘It Draw Yuh Down to Nothing.’” Sistren 10:12–13. Tomlinson, R. (1991). “Woman’s Crisis Center: A Light in the Darkness.” Sistren 13:14–15. Walker, L.E. (1989). Terrifying Love. New York: Harper Collins. Woman Speak (1983). “Fighting Back.” Woman Speak, pp. 20–22. Woman Speak (1986). “Letters in the Press: Contention over Clause 4.”Woman Speak 19–20:9–11.

Chapter Nine Research Note:

Gender Differences in Crime Jolanta Juszkiewicz The National Pretrial Reporting Program (NPRP), also known as the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) project beginning with the 1996 series, is a biennial data collection program sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, since 1988. Information about felony defendants is tracked from arrest through disposition, or up to one year, in 40 of the 75 most populous jurisdictions in the United States. The data compiles demographic, criminal history, and case processing information for a sample of felony defendants. A two-stage sampling methodology is used to select the jurisdictions and subsequently the sample of felony cases. Over the course of the four data collection periods, 1988–1994 (the most recent data), the percentage by women has changed very little, fluctuating between 13 and 15 percent of the total sample. In the largest urban courts in the United States, the profile of female felony defendants compared with male felony defendants in the following ways: • Women were older (median age at time of arrest of 30.16) than men (median age of 27.66); a lower percentage of women (12.4%) than men (21.8) were under 21 years of age at time of arrest. • The percentage of Hispanic women who were felony defendants (14.4%) was lower than the percentage of Hispanic men (22.0%); in contrast, a higher percentage of women felony defendants were white (35.5%) than men felony defendants (29.3%); the proportion of both sexes who were black was comparable, 47.6% and 46.3%, respectively. • Women were more likely to be arrested for a property crime (39.1% compared to 29.5% for men) and less likely to be arrested for a violent offense (19.8%) than their male counterparts (26.4%); the percentage difference between women and men in the drug offense category was slight (34.9% women and 33.9% men). • Women trailed men in terms of having a prior record of arrests or convictions, 56.9% compared to 69%, respectively. The disparity was particularly evident with respect to having a prior violent felony conviction, with women being more than two and a half times less likely to have had a prior violent felony conviction (5.8%) than men (15.2%).

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As far as case processing decisions and outcomes: • Women were more likely to be released pretrial on nonfinancial conditions (43.5% compared to 30.2% of men) and less likely to be held because they could not post bail (20.3% compared to 31.7% of men), held without bail (2.8% compared to 5.0% of men), or held on another charge (1.6%) than men (2.2%). • While the percentage of women released the same day as their arrest was higher than that of men (32.6% compared to 25.0%), the differences between the sexes for other time interval categories was much less pronounced. • The misconduct rate—failure to appear and/or re-arrest—for women differed only somewhat from that of men; 15.7% of women compared to 13.7% of men failed to appear at least once during the span of the sample cases and 6.2% of women compared to 8.7% of men were arrested on new charges during the pendency of the sample cases. • The dispositions of women differed only somewhat from that of men, and women were more likely than men to have their cases dismissed (22.4% compared to 21.2%). Not surprisingly, the time to process felony cases for women (average of 2.98 days and a median of 2.06 days) was shorter than for men (average of 3.22 days and a median of 2.37 days). • Nearly half (49%) of the women who were convicted of a crime received a nonincarceration sentence, compared to only one-third of the men. Twice as many men who were convicted (7.0%) than women who were convicted were sentenced to five or more years in prison (3.1%). The time interval between adjudication and sentencing differed only slightly for men and women convicted of crimes.

TABLE 9.1 Demographic, Criminal History, and Case Processing Characteristics of Female and Male Defendants Using 1994 National Pretrial Reporting Program (NPRP) Data VARIABLE Age (X, SD, median)

FEMALE (n=2,192)

MALE (n=12,407)

31.00 (8.82), 30.26

29.41 (9.58), 27.66

Age (N, % yes) < 21 years

270 (12.4)

2,694 (21.8)

21–23 years

260 (11.9)

1,692 (13.7)

1,652 (75.7)

7,991 (64.6)

Hispanic

306 (14.4)

2,652 (22.0)

White

755 (35.5)

3,537 (29.3)

Black

1,012 (47.6)

5,593 (46.3)

Other

52 (2.4)

287 (2.4)

≥ 24 years Race/ethnicity (N, % yes)

Charge type (N, % yes)

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133

Violent

433 (19.8)

3,281 (26.4)

Drug

764 (34.9)

4,207 (33.9)

Property

856 (39.1)

3,659 (29.5)

136 (6.2)

1,258 (10.1)

1,204 (56.9)

8,367 (69.7)

116 (5.8)

1,714 (15.2)

Financial release

604 (28.4)

3,294 (27.4)

Nonfinancial release

925 (43.5)

3,624 (30.2)

6 (0.3)

84 (0.7)

20 (0.9)

126 (1.0)

Couldn’t post bail

432 (20.3)

3,814 (31.7)

Held without bail

59 (2.8)

600 (5.0)

Held on another charge

35 (1.6)

259 (2.2)

Case closed at or before bail hearing

43 (2.0)

215 (1.8)

7.81 (22.13)

9.95 (26.74)

1

1

Other Criminal history (N, % yes) Prior record Prior violent felony conviction Release/detention outcome (N, yes)

Unknown release Emergency release

Days between arrest and release (X, SD) Median

VARIABLE

FEMALE (n= 2,192)

MALE (n=12,407)

Days between arrest and release (N, yes) 0 days

503 (32.6)

1,740 (25.0)

1 day

388 (25.1)

1,759 (25.2)

2–7 days

367 (23.8)

1,920 (27.5)

2 weeks to 4 weeks

180 (11.7)

939 (13.5)

2nd month

49 (3.2)

334 (4.8)

3rd month

31 (2.0)

110(1.6)

4th month

10 (0.6)

62 (0.9)

5+

17 (1.1)

108 (1.5)

340 (15.7)

1,684 (13.7)

131 (6.2)

1,047 (8.7)

Failure to appear (N, yes) Re-arrest (N, % yes) Adjudication outcome (N, % yes)

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Dismissal

469 (22.4)

2,549 (21.2)

Not guilty

17 (0.8)

125 (1.0)

1,285 (61.3)

7,665 (63.8)

276 (13.2)

1,550 (12.9)

49 (2.3)

123 (1.0)

2.98 (2.72), 2.06

3.22 (2.85), 2.37

Community sanction only

593 (49.0)

2,402 (33.5)

Community sanction+≤6 months

258 (21.3)

1,353 (18.9)

65 (5.4)

479 (6.7)

7–12 months

109 (9.0)

810 (11.3)

13–24 months

75 (6.2)

697 (9.7)

25–60 months

73 (6.0)

917 (12.8)

≥61 months

37 (3.1)

503 (7.0)

Other

1 (0. 1)

7 (0.1)

0 days

747 (59.5)

4,532 (60.8)

1 month

218 (17.4)

1,329 (17.8)

2 months

183 (14.6)

1,054 (14.1)

3+ months

108 (8.6)

540 (7.2)

Guilty (plea or trial) Pending Other Months between arrest & adjudication (X, SD, median) Sentence imposed (N, % yes)

≤6 months only

Days between sentence and Adjudication

NPRP is an ongoing data series from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice.

Chapter 10 Conclusion

Roslyn Muraskin In 1985 the then United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick was heard to respond to a remark by her White House opponents that she was “too temperamental to hold higher office.” In her address to the Women’s Forum, a group of New York business and political women, Kirkpatrick stated that “sexism is alive in the United Nations [as well as] in the United States government, in American politics, where it is bipartisan, but it is not unconquerable.” All women are affected by violence, and women’s behavior is controlled and limited by it. Continued efforts to develop effective criminal justice policies clearly depend upon studying and understanding the problems using a variety of perspectives and methodologies. Battles already won are still being fought world wide. The treatment of women by world wide criminal justice systems is in many ways an extension of the way women are generally treated in society. “Men and women are not the same. Both deserve equal protection of the law as well as an enjoyment and protection” of rights. There is no way to automatically allow both sexes to enjoy equal protection under the law unless there is a commitment to the elimination of all sexual discrimination (Muraskin and Alleman, 1993). As pointed out by Justice Brennan in Frontiero v Richardson (411 U.S. 677 [1973]): Traditionally, [sex] discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of romantic paternalism which in practical effect put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage. All criminal justice systems are a microcosm of the turbulence in society as a whole. Thus, a study of women’s issues as they operate in all criminal justice systems can provide a solid basis from which to explore ourselves and the society of which we are a part (Muraskin and Alleman, 1993). A review of issues that impact women provides a solid basis in order for us to explore ourselves as well as society as a whole. As indicated by the late Ted Alleman in our work, It’s a Crime: Women and Justice, “[T]hose who see the world entirely from a man’s perspective and are simply blind to the existence and influence of women are said to be androcentric in their thinking.” In this modern world social equality between men and women have to be viewed as an absolute necessity. There is no turning away from this point. Women are moving into positions of power and

Conclusion

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great influence. They can no longer be shunted aside as the property of men. They need to be defined as “people” capable of doing whatever it is that they choose. Women may be different in their physical make-up but viewed from a social, political, economic and legal perspective, women are to be treated equally and given similar opportunities to succeed. The whole realm of social existence has to be effected with men and women being judged the same or similarly. That the study of history and its treatment of women has revealed a long chain of events that binds generation after generation of women to the control of men tells us that without the force of law behind them, women become civilly dead. Changes are fundamental to the advancement of women in all societies. This work questions our basic human rights. Discrimination, oppression, estrangement and alienation need to be words of the past as they impact women. We need that commitment for the elimination of all discrimination.

Reference Muraskin, Roslyn, and Alleman, Ted (1993). It’s a Crime: Women and Justice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice Hall.

Case Frontiero v Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973).

INDEX

Abuse, see Wife abuse or Spousal abuse Abuse scales, 71–72 Abused women’s movement and arrest avoidance, 172–174 Abusive relationships, 67–79 Acute battering incident stage of violence, 8 Adams, Abigail, 2 Adjudication outcome, 215 African-Americans and rape, 14 Against Our Will, 12 Age of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 of rape victims, 152–153 Aggressiveness, 195 Anger, expression of, 69, 71, 72, 81 Arranged marriages, 48 Arrest avoidance in spousal abuse, 165, 167–179, 182, 200–201 and spousal violence, 174–176 type of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 Assaults and women involvement, 103–104 Association of Women’s Organization in Jamaica, 203 Attacking behaviors, 72 Austria and employment of women in cerrections systems, 39 and women judges, 34 Bahamas and women’s crisis center, 205 Bard, Morton, 170 Battered women syndrome, 9–11 Batterers, types of, 190 Battering cycle, 8 Behavior influencing culture, 48–49 Belief systems, 65 Birthplace and nationality, 118–124 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 2 Bradwell, Myra, 5 Bradwell v Illinois, 5 British Crime (Victimization) Survey, 141–142

Index

140

Brownmiller, Susan, 12 Bulgaria and women judges, 34 Caribbean countries and sexual assault, 192–194 Caribbean women and social status, 187–189 and violence, 189–208 Case disposition, 213 Case processing of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 Chastisement in spousal abuse, 166–167 Children care of in Finland, 92–93 custody of, 75, 80 and quality of life, 74–75 sexual abuse of, 158–159 Chile and women judges, 35 Christianity and wife abuse, 81 Citizenship lack of, 116–122 women, 1 Cohabitation and wife rape, 137 Community policing, 29–30 Complainant, identification of, 202–203 Concerned Women for Progress (CWP), 206 Conflict Tactics Scale, 53, 69 Confucian beliefs and wife abuse, 56–57, 65 Control theory and crime rate, 94–95 Corporal punishment, 57–58 Corrections systems and employment of women, 37–42 physical requirements of personnel, 37 Countries and correctional employment practices, 38 and judges, 34–35 Courts and employment of women, 22, 32–35 Criminal history of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 Crime gender, 87–108, 211–216 prevention of, 29 trends, 19 violent, 101–104 Criminal justice system and employment of women, 17–44, 203–204 Criminalization of behavior, 97 Crisis intervention techniques in spousal abuse, 170–171, 173–174 Cuba and women judges, 34 Cultural beliefs and gender, 49 and violence, 48, 196–197 Custodial staff in corrections systems, 40–41 Daddy days, 92

Index

141

Day care in Finland, 92–93 Defendants in violence cases, 214–215 Deterrence theory, 181 Developing countries and employment opportunities of women, 23–24 Discrimination, see Sexual discrimination Divorce to escape wife abuse, 65 and resulting difficulties, 73–75 property division, 76 in South Korea, 54–55, 59 Domestic violence, see Violence Domestic Violence Act of Trinidad and Tobago, 199–200 Domestic Violence Protection Act, 58–59 Drinking and crime rate, 104 Education, 129–121, 125 against violence, 206–207 and gender disparity, 53–54 and wife abuse, 65 Egypt and nationality laws, 116–122, 127–130 and status of women, 117–118, 122–124 Emancipation of women in Egypt, 118 Emotional abuse, 71–72, 77 Employment of women, 17–19 and crime rate, 95–96 in criminal justice system, 20–44 in Finland, 89–91 policing, 25, 27–28 procedures, 23 England and women in policing profession, 26 Equal Pay Act, 6 Equal protection, 217 denial of, 178 Equal Protection Clause, 179, 180 Equality and women, 1, 69, 78–79, 89, 218 Ethnicity and age of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 and stereotypes, 48 Fairy tales as parables of rape, 12–13 Family Law, 50 Family planning in Finland, 92 Family sphere and gender equality, 91–93 Family system and crime rate, 97–98 Felony defendants, 211–216 Feminist movement in South Korea, 59–60 Financial dependence and abused women, 73–74, 191–192, 194 Finland and gender relations, 88–93 and women’s criminality, 98–104

Index

142

Focus groups and wife abuse, 60–63 Foreign nationals and nationality, 120, 125 Gender and arrest avoidance, 174 and crime, 98–108, 211–216 and discrimination, 50, 127, 129–130 and education, 53–54 and the Middle East, 115–116 and nationality laws, 126–128 and roles, 194, 195 and wife abuse, 65 and workforce participation, 54–55 Government and employment of women, 22–23, 33 Great Britain and wife rape, 135–162 Hispanics as felony defendants, 212 Homicide and women, 7, 87, 172 Hostile work environment, 21 Household spending, contribution towards, 73 Housework, contribution to, 78–79, 90–91 Husband-to-wife violence, 51–52 In-laws, conflict with, 57, 62, 66–68, 78, 82 Integration of sexes in policing, 30 International Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (EDAW), 121–122, 126 Islamic codes, 117, 118 Israel and women in policing profession, 25 Jail release, 212–215 Jail sentence, 215 Jamaica and beliefs about violence, 196 and rape law 202–203 and women’s crisis center, 204–205 Japan and women as police officers, 25 Jefferson, Thomas, 1 Job security of women and crime rate, 96 Judges and employment of women, 24, 25–27, 33–35 Kindness and contrite loving behavior stage of violence, 8 Korean culture, 47–48 Labor force participation, 43, 89–91, 95–96, 100–101 Labor mobility, 23 Law and wife abuse, 75, 80 in South Korea, 58–59, 62 and women, 32–35

Index

143

Law enforcement and employment of women, 24, 25–27 organizational structure of, 30 Law enforcement function of policing, 29 Law representation of women, 13–14 Lawsuits and arrest avoidance, 176–179 Lebanon and nationality laws, 116–117, 124–130 and status of women, 122–124 Legal professions autonomy, 37 and sexual typing, 35–36 and structured characteristics of, 36–37 Legal system and wife abuse, 66, 68 Legislation against rape, 201–204 against sexual assault, 201–204 against violence, 199–201, 207 Losing face, 59, 75 Mandatory arrest in spousal abuse, 165, 179–182 Marital rape, see Wife rape Marital rape immunity, 136–139 Marital status and nonmarital rape, 158, 160 of rape victims, 153, 160–161 Maternity leave in Finland, 92 Media discouraging violence against women, 205–206 encouraging violence against women, 197–198 Mediation in spousal abuse, 170–171, 173–174, 181 Men in criminal justice system, 20 dominance of, 55–56, 62, 63, 66, 68, 81, 197 and rape, 11, 159 and violence, 194–196 and duties of women, 2 inequalities with women, 18 occupations of, 21 position in society, 8 social status, 55–56, 62, 66, 68 and women as property, 2 Mill, John Stuart, 166 Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, 174, 175, 182 Minor property offenses, 101–104 Minor v Happersett, 5 Misconduct rate, 213, 215 Misdemeanor “in presence” requirement, 169 Muller v Oregon, 5–6 Municipal liability, 179, 181 Mutual combat, 70

Index

144

Nation-building, 127–129 National Pretrial Reporting Program (NPRP), 211, 214–215 National Survey of Wives in Great Britain, 143–159 Nationality laws and discrimination, 115–130 of Egypt, 118–124, 130 of Lebanon, 124–130 Netherlands and custodial staff employed in corrections systems, 40–41 and women judges, 35 Non-incarceration sentence, 213 Norms conflict in and wife abuse, 79 and violence, 195 Nonmarital rape, 156–160 Order maintenance function of policing, 29 Paternal leave, 92 Patriarchal bargain, 66 Patriarchy and violence, 195–196 and wife abuse, 63–66 Poland and custodial staff in corrections systems, 40 and women in corrections systems, 39 and women judges, 34 Police and prevention of spousal violence, 172 response to marital abuse, 76 Policewomen, effectiveness of, 31–32 Policing profession and employment of women, 22, 25, 27–28 organizational structure of, 30 physical requirements of, 30, 32 and sexual discrimination, 28–29 sociocultural perception of, 29–30 Politics and women’s participating, 91, 96–97, 189 Power imbalance and wife abuse 68 Power of correction, 167 Powerlessness in the workforce, 55–56 Prior felony convictions, 212 Prisons and employment of women, 22–25, 37–42 management, 38–39 Property offenses, 101–104 Prosecution and employment of women, 22, 25–27 Protection Order, 199–200 Punishment, 207 Pusey, Nathan, 6

Index

Quality of life and divorce, 74–75 Race of defendants in violence cases, 214–215 Racism and rape, 14 Rape, 11–14, see also Wife rape definition of, 202 evidence, 202 in the Caribbean, 192–194 legislation against, 201–204 not reporting, 193–194 outside of marriage, 156–159, 160 provoking, 196–197 statutory definition of, 137–141 violent, 151–152 Rape in marriage, see Wife rape Rapists, types of, 192–193 Re-arrest, 215 Recidivism, 181 Red Riding Hood as parable of rape, 13 Right to vote, 5 Right to work in profession, 6 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 2 “Rule of thumb” law, 167 Rules of Marriage, 166 Sampling, street method, 144–146 Scotland and wife rape, 136–138 Self defense and battered women, 9–11 Seneca Falls Convention, 3, 4 Serious property offense. 101–104 Service sector economy, 90 Sexism, 217 Sexual discrimination, 6, 50, 218 in policing profession, 28–29 Sexual intercourse consensual, 202, 203 forced, 136, 147–149, 154–156 Sexual Offenses Act 1956, 137, 201 Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Act 1956, 138, 139 Sexual stereotyping, 21, 23 and ethnicity, 48 in legal profession, 33, 35–36 in policing, 28, 31–32 Sherman, Lawrence, 179–180 Sistren Theater Collective, 206 Situational management in policing, 29 Sleeping Beauty as parable of rape, 13 Social class of Caribbean women, 187–189

145

Index

146

and nonmarital rape, 157–158 and patriarchy, 64–65 of rape victims, 153, 160 and women battering, 191 and women’s employment, 43 Social control and arrest avoidance, 200–201 Social support and wife abuse, 78 South Korea and divorce, 54–55 and wife abuse, 47–81 Spain and custodial staff in corrections systems, 40 and women judges, 34 Spousal abuse, 76–79, 165, see also Wife abuse Spousal homicide, 87 Spouse abusers, 165 arrest avoidance of, 165, 167–179, 812 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) 211 State policies and employment of women 91–92 State v Stewart, 10 Stereotypes and ethnicity, 48 Stress and crime, 93–94 and employment of women, 95–96 Submissiveness, 195 Support and wife abuse, 68 Tension building stage of violence, 8 Thurman v Torrington, 176–179 Touristic marriages, 120 Truth, Sojourner, 3 Turkey and women judges, 34 Uganda and custodial staff in corrections systems, 40 United Nations and inequities between men and women, 18–19 and surveys of employment of women, 21–44 United States and criminality of women, 98–104 and gender relations, 88–108 Value system and wife abuse, 57, 68 Victim mentality of women, 12–13 Victimization of women, 7–8 surveys, 103–104, 141–142 Violence against men, 51–52 against women, 7–14, 51–52, 194–198 in the Caribbean, 187–208

Index community activism against, 204–206 and cultural beliefs, 196–197 educational campaign against, 206–207 effects on women, 198 and forced sexual intercourse, 154–155 interpersonal, 98 legislation against, 199–201 measure of, 69, 71 politicization, 97 repeated, 174–176 symmetrical, 70 tolerance of, 57–58, 62, 67, 68 Wage discrimination, 6, 50, 106 Wales and women in policing profession, 26 Walker, Lenore, 8, 13 Welfare state in Finland, 89–90 Wife abuse, see also Spousal abuse and Confucian beliefs, 56–57, 65 context of, 73–76 correlates of, 76–79 and education, 65 and focus groups, 60–63 and financial dependence, 73–74 and generational differences, 62 imbalance in, 72 patterns of, 51–53 prohibition of, 168 response by police, 76 sanctioning of, 166–168 in South Korea, 47–81 theoretical explanation, 53–60 tolerance of, 77–79 and value system, 57 Wife rape, 11–12, 135–162, see also Rape characteristics of victims, 152–156 criminalization of, 161 laws governing, 136–141 perception of by wife, 149–150 prevalence of 147–149 reporting of, 150 responses to, 148–152 survey of, 135, 141–147 Wife-to-husband violence, 51–52 WOMAN INCORPORATED, 204–205 Women battering of, 9, 11, 189–192 as citizens, 1 in the corrections system, 37–42

147

Index

148

corruption of morals, 1 in the court system, 32–35 in the criminal justice system, 17–44 and criminality, 90–108 duties of, 2 economic dependence on men, 73–74, 191–192, 194 equalities of, 1, 4, 18–19, 69, 78–79, 121, 218 as homicide victims, 7 as judges, 24–27, 33–34 and law, 32–35 as law enforcement personnel, 24–28 and law representation of, 13–14 as lawyers, 5, 24 legal issues, 1 in politics, 91, 189 as prison staff, 25, 37–42 reproductive functions of, 2, 6 right to vote, 5 as sexual property, 2, 11–13, 137 as slaves, 2 in South Korea, 47–81 status in society, 2, 204, 207 as victims, 7–14 wages of, 6, 18–19, 50 in the workforce, 5–6, 17–19, 64 barriers, 54 Women’s crisis center, 204–205 Women’s Hotline, 52 Women’s movements, 2–4 against violence, 204–206 and arrest avoidance, 172–174 Women’s resource/crisis center, 204–205 Women’s Rights Convention, 3