Feminist Contribution to Jurisprudence - Essay Example

FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE NAME COURSE DATE Introduction Historically, women are comparatively more vulnerable and responsible than men. Although this statement is true, this does not make women freer than men. On the contrary, women are less free. A woman’s caring and nurturing nature or role in society makes her more vulnerable and so, susceptible to that scourge, private violence. This very nature of women pushes her to be responsible for her family’s welfare. This ensures that the needs of their families are uppermost, putting their very own needs last in their priority of things to do. Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement. It seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. Feminism does not have an agreed meaning or content around the world, and is in many ways so diverse that it cannot be easily characterized. Feminists disagree about what sexism consists of, what exactly ought to be done about it; what it means to be a woman or a man and what social and political implications gender has or should have.1 Since then the mid-1800s, feminist theories and development of the feminist thought has contributed much to the different social structures that define culture. Amongst the leading social constructs, feminist thought has been active in lobbying these concepts in the social and legal fields. This paper attempts to critically discuss the contribution of feminist thought to social and legal analysis. Feminism During the 1970s, feminists were able to improve their knowledge of women’s lives. Instead of establishing women’s shared oppression as women, they began to emphasize the differences between women. Once attention was given to the different experiences of women, for example, the power of some women over other women, and the political and economic interests that were common to some men and some women, problems were created for feminism. The feminist theory of women’s shared oppression was challenged by the differences of interest between women. This development now undermined the basis of feminist political practice. How can feminist politics be a powerful instrument for changing women’s lives for the better if women do not have common interests? The 1980’s saw a shift in the stance of the liberal feminists. Although still believing that the solution to women’s oppression is equal rights, equal opportunity for all, modern liberal feminists realized that lifting formal and informal barriers to women’s opportunities did not simply result in equal opportunities. The demands of both workplace and domestic front were still present. This meant that women could still not compete with men since the men did not have this kind of dual responsibility. Modern welfare liberal feminists focused on campaigning for better child care systems and the like, so women could freely be on equal footing with men for opportunities in the workplace For radical feminists however, changing economic structures, eliminating political and educational barriers, and even socializing children will not abolish the oppression and subjugation of women so long as society is organized in a patriarchal system. They espouse the belief that the only way to change the status of women is to change views on gender itself. The centerpiece of radical feminism is the structure of gender or sexual identity itself. Radical feminism starts with the idea of sexism as gender, the idea that gender is socially constructed within a hierarchy that embodies male domination and female subordination. But Marxist and socialist feminists believe that construction of gender is not the most important issue. They believe that the solution to women’s oppression is a change in the economic system so women will not be economically dependent, marginal and exploited. Many modern socialist feminists, however having become dissatisfied with the traditional Marxist approach because it doesn’t give a coherent explanation for gender and patriarchy, now try to combine economic theories with other theories (radical or psychoanalytical). Gender and Equality Gender is a social system that divides power. In the 1970’s and 1980’s a few liberal feminists started to assert that removing formal or legal restrictions did not really lead to equal opportunity for all. With the double load of work or a career and responsibility for home and family, women found themselves at the losing end. Men did not have this responsibility since this had been delegated to the women. With this situation, liberal feminists focused on the socialization of children, the reorganization of family life and restructuring of state institutions to support family needs. This reflects the dissimilarity between classical liberal and modern welfare liberal views. Essentially, however the standpoint of the liberal feminists (classical or modern) did not change. The still held the view that equal opportunity for all will lift women from oppression. The “feminization of poverty” dramatizes the chronic and increasing economic vulnerability of women. The 1980s came close to creating an underclass of women and children. Feminism has helped some women (physicians, judges, the ambitious) more than it has others (displaced homemakers, domestic workers, the homeless). In spite of the gains of the feminist movement for women’s rights, with providing opportunities in realms traditionally reserved for men, women still work harder than men for less reward. Coming home after work to hearth, husband and kids is additional toll to the already burdened woman. This disparity cuts across boundaries of race and class, age and lifestyle. All but the most comfortable women face the double burden that poor, working-class, and rural women have always had: the dual roles as the domestic duties wait for them after their paid workday is over, while men enjoy leisure. The struggle for equality means the struggle to treat like persons alike and unlike persons unlike. Under this model, when legal distinctions are made, the responsible sovereign must point to some difference between subjects, which justifies their disparate treatment. That was the model in Reed v. Reed,2 the first equal protection case decided favorably in the Supreme Court for women. Under the expert guidance of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU Women's Rights Project, the Reed Court held that the state of Idaho could not presumptively deny to women the right to administer estates. With respect to such activities, the Court saw that women and men are "similarly situated." That is, no demonstrable difference between the sexes justified treating them differently. Underlying the Supreme Court's ruling in Reed v. Reed3 was a perception that sexism is a distortion of reality. Once the Court made this discovery, it needed to transform its discovery into a legalistic code, to construct an "objective" rule. There then was a need to phrase the rule so that people believe that the rule is detached and appears to transcend the results in particular cases. Feminists have tried to describe for the judiciary a theory of "special rights" for women. These rights are said to adapt the discrete, non-stereotypical, "real" differences between the sexes. On trying to arrive at a definitive list of differences however, the result is the encouragement of the law's tendency to act upon a frozen slice of reality. By doing this, feminists participate in the underlying problem--the objectification of women. Through their conscientious listing, real gender issues are defined out of existence. One way in which oppression is perpetuated is to assume falsely that equality has been achieved when it has not. On the other hand, recognition of the reality of oppression, particularly in the case of women, can perpetuate derogatory stereotypes. The tension between these two dangers is persistent. Radical feminists like Adrienne Rich and Mary O’Brien have focused on women as mothers. They contend that women must be relieved of having the sole responsibility for child rearing, or, women should be in control of them. Some insist that male dominance is the basis of the construction of gender and so means that patriarchy is forever and ensures the subordination of women. In general, radical feminism is focused on the domination of women by man through the social construction of gender within patriarchy. They believe that women will be liberated if the institutional structures of domination are reversed and gender is reconstructed to eliminate poverty. This belief though is not the primary issue, according to Marxist and socialist feminists. It is the principle of Marxist and socialist feminists that in a class-based society that is established on the basic principles of private property and exploitation of the powerless, equality for women is not possible. According to these Marxists, the oppression of women started when capitalism and private property divided the world into private and public spheres of life. This relegated women to the non-economic private sphere, which was not worth anything in market terms. It is the belief of these Marxist feminists that a socialist system must replace the capitalists system, and so bring about a solution to women’s oppression since this means no class will be dependent or exploited by another one. Within the socialist feminist block, however a lot have become dissatisfied with the traditional Marxist approach. The failure of Marxism to account adequately for women’s oppression as women, rather than workers, does not explain the domination of women in the private and public spheres and fails to provide an analysis of gender and patriarchy. Some feminists have attempted to merge economic theories like the Marxist or socialist theories with the radical theories or psychoanalytic theories that try to deal with gender and patriarchy. But in truth, many modern feminists believe that no single theory can explain the facets of the domination and oppression of women. Legal and Social Analysis Every person is entitled to fair and impartial consideration in a court of law. It is thought that because individuals are susceptible to bias and even to the malicious abuse of power, the safest route to impartiality--the best way to facilitate fair judgments--is through neutral processes that can keep any one person from being able to exercise too much power in individual cases. Neutral rules should guarantee that like cases will be treated alike no matter what the judge's personal biases may be. The only problem is that new cases do not always fit within old rules. There are three major problems in adjudication that create barriers to obtaining fair and impartial treatment, particularly within the context of sexism. The first problem is one of administration. Since it is people who administer law, this will reflect the biases of those people in its application. And there is no reason to think that judges, juries, prosecutors, or police will be less biased than the general public is; at least there is no evidence that they will be. This problem is well illustrated in the discussions of sexual harassment and battery. The second problem is that the content of the law may be unfair or discriminatory. The application of the rule of the prior case to the present case will simply perpetuate the injustice if the first case has been decided unjustly even if the judge is detached and impartial. There is no room in the traditional model for the judge to evaluate the rule itself since that would be a legislative matter, and to some extent this is true. But it certainly does not produce justice, nor does it help the victim of the discriminatory rule. In truth, the traditional model tends to divest the judge of responsibility for the content of the rules. It views judges rather like middle-level bureaucrats: They do not make policy; they just carry it out--a rather thin notion of responsibility for people invested with the level of power that is entrusted to judges in any common-law country. The third problem is that the very process of law may be sexist. For example, as long as equal protection is judged according to male norms, the game is rigged at the outset. The very foundation of equal protection law is sexist, so it produces the dilemma of assimilation or special accommodation: two unfair choices. This cannot be fixed without changing the foundation. The possibility of arriving at objective conclusions through neutral processes has always been, a central question for theories of judicial reasoning. Fairness, it has been thought, presupposes the possibility of objectivity: Adjudication should be conducted as science is, using the cases as data, from which to draw: objective conclusions. That is the argument, but the analogy is strained. It is not clear what objectivity means in the context of judicial, review or whether objective truth is a goal, in law. Although there is no single unified feminist position on the nature of truth and knowledge in law, the feminist intellectual movement, like many postmodern movements, regards the truth of all propositions relating to society and certainly to law as depending on context, perspective, and situation. Legal positivism asserts that the focus should be on what is certain than what is uncertain in law. The effect of this attitude is compounded by the likes of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Judge Robert Bork. They argue on other grounds that any twentieth-century problems that were not addressed by the Founding Fathers must be relegated to the legislature. This implies that uncertainty and bias in courts will be eliminated. Feminism, however, continues to maintain that bias still exists, that objectivity is still an illusion, and that this is so not only in individual decision-making but also in the structure of institutions and processes themselves. Feminists point out that social, economic, legal, and political structures regularly operate from unstated norms that reflect the assumptions, attitudes, needs, and, in general, the perspective of certain privileged white males who form, develop, and maintain those structures. The more powerful and pervasive the unstated norm is, the more likely it is to remain unnoticed and unrecognized, and the more likely it is that it will be mistaken for objectivity or neutrality. One of the greatest contributions of feminist jurisprudence has been to point out examples of the repeated use of these unstated norms to challenge, these supposedly neutral assumptions. Feminists are in a particularly good position to do this well, since to many, they are outsiders. Like an excluded minority, feminists have a greater chance of being able to operate from different assumptions and perspectives than those embedded in patriarchal structures. Feminists, however, like any group outside the mainline power centres and arguing against the status quo, have the burden of persuading the insiders that the status quo is wrong. This formidable task is, furthermore, plagued by problems. Feminist Jurisprudence Jurisprudence is the philosophical discipline that examines the fundamental nature or elements of law. The idea of jurisprudence in common usage today can be divided into a broad and a narrow sense. Broadly speaking, jurisprudential theories are political theories that have legal ramifications. In the case of liberal, Marxist, and socialist political theories, these have produced jurisprudential views that follow from their theories and reflect their implications. A lot of existing feminist jurisprudence is an application of one or more of these political theories to the many facets of women's oppression as implied in law. Liberal feminists have always contended that liberal values should be applied equally to women. On the other hand, Marxist feminists insist that Marxist class analysis applies equally to gender. Socialist feminists argue that to alleviate the oppression of sexism, socialist principles should be used. All these feminist theories point to the exclusion of women or, more specifically, the presence of gender discrimination within the general political theories with which they are associated. Other feminist theories are primarily epistemological or psychological and are also associated with various jurisprudential views. In the case of pragmatic feminists, these try to identify with a legal realist view of jurisprudence. On the other hand, post-modern and many radical feminists associate their views with critical legal studies. This just shows that there is no single feminist jurisprudence or one feminist political theory. Despite this, all these views are within the broad umbrella of jurisprudence. John Austin first articulated the theory of legal positivism in his lectures on jurisprudence. In its broadest sense, positivism is also conventionalism. It concentrates on the conventions of actual legal systems in order to make its observations about the nature of law. It serves as an explicit objection to the natural law theory. Against the natural law view, Austin (and other legal positivists) argued that although law ought to be both rational and moral, it often is neither. It is, in fact, a serious conceptual error to assume a necessary connection between law and morality. Although an immoral law may be a bad thing, it is not self-contradictory. Comparing an immoral law with the idea of an illegal law, which is self-contradictory, can easily be seen. Thus, the positivists argued, the natural law theorists were confusing what law is with what law ought to be. They were conflating the project of description (what is) with the project of evaluation (what ought to be), and according to the positivists, these two projects should be carried out by different theories. Feminist jurisprudence is part of the “flowering in feminist thought” that has characterized the 1980s and 1990s.4 One prominent feminist scholar, Catharine MacKinnon, explained that feminist jurisprudence is the analysis of law from the perspective of all women. This provides us with a good point of departure, as it captures the central focus of feminism, which is to attempt to embody women's side of things. Feminist theory recognizes that throughout history, men from the perspective of men have almost exclusively conducted public discourse. And so, men have formulated the nature of women, and men have determined the interests of women. Not all feminists hold a single point of view and, of course, not all women are feminists. But all feminism does begin with one belief: that a patriarchal world is not good for women. The one new thing about feminist jurisprudence is the very fact that it is feminism, that it constitutes a critique of patriarchal institutions from the perspective of women. To put it more generally, it constitutes, at least potentially, a genuine critique of patriarchal institutions, structures, and assumptions from the perspective of a group that is outside those patriarchal structures, institutions, and assumptions, at least in the sense (among other things) that it did not participate in their formulation. This is the first time in the history of civilization that anything like that has been possible at a level that can be taken seriously. The idea that conventional thought has a fundamental male bias is at the core of feminist theory. Historically, conventional theories were products of male minds, thinking in male supremacist societies. But the reality is, according to feminist scholars, theories adapted by men are ill adapted to women. The corrective for male-centred theory is for women to consciously produce theory as women, in order to produce a gendered theory for women. This implies that the male bias of traditional thought has affected not only what we think but also how we think. A classic example of sexist jurisprudence is contained in Justice Joseph Bradley's argument in Bradwell v. Illinois that a state may exclude women from the legal profession so that they may fulfill their destiny as wives and mothers. his opinion is now of mostly historical interest. It was never binding precedent, only a separate concurrence, and there is an ample supply of opinions no less traditional and far more influential. Muller v. Oregon, in 1908, upheld “protective” labor laws that allowed states to limit women's working hours. The unanimous Supreme Court opinion in that case baldly stated that women's maternal functions justified their having fewer rights than men. his ruling, too, is history, but the 1990s have brought draconian “fetal protection” policies that threaten all women, pregnant or not, fertile or not, negligent or not. The supporters of these legal efforts to limit women's employment opportunities, restrict their personal freedom, and subject them to unwanted medical procedures concede these policies' “tremendous implications for the women of this country and how they conduct their everyday lives.” 5 Feminists can argue that certain theories posited as universal truths are in fact gender-conditioned contingencies, but these assertions cannot be shown to be true, any more than a Marxist can show that aggression results from capitalism. Any claim that traditional theory is ill adapted to women's reality has to deal with the fact that women have produced theory within male-defined disciplines that is every bit as good as what men have done. This statement generalizes from the lives of “women worthies,” a practice many feminists condemn as “a great disservice to the rest” of women professionals.6 If these “women worthies” are invoked to show that these women succeeded, then feminists are right. It is the assertion of feminist scholars that conventional theory is male-biased and that woman-centred theory is a necessary corrective to this bias. Gendered reality is needed as a premise by both these positions. Even if feminists do not agree on the importance of gender in feminist theory, feminist scholars do share a conviction that any inquiry that fails to take gendered reality into account produces theories that are seriously deficient as explanations of whatever they plan to explain. The female body presents the starting point for much feminist theory. Feminists tend to start with the genitals but no organ occupies a place in feminist theory that can be likened to that of the penis in Freudian theory. The French psychoanalytic theory called ecriture feminine is instructive. For Luce Irigaray, who is widely read in North America, the labia, not the clitoris or vagina, occupy a place analogous to that of the penis in Freudian thought. “A woman … touches herself constantly without anyone being able to forbid her to do so, for her sex is composed of two lips which embrace continually. Thus, within herself she is already two—but not divisible into ones—who stimulate each other.” But “in order to touch himself, a man needs an instrument: his hand, a woman's body, language.”7 Ecriture feminine liberates psychoanalytic theory from male supremacy, and it presents a provocative argument that the implications of psychoanalytic theory extend far beyond the individual psyche into social institutions. Two early psychoanalysts, Karen Horney and Clara Thompson, accomplished the first task (to an apathetic or hostile reception); several contemporary psychoanalysts, Jacques Lacan and his followers, the second (to an enthusiastic international reception).8 Some feminist theory starts with physiology rather than anatomy. Robin West, for instance, maintains that American jurisprudence is hostile to women because it is based on the assumption that a human being is separate from all other human beings. For West, as for Irigaray, social institutions depend on supposedly universal truths that are, in fact, contingent on being male. Unlike Irigaray, West builds a bridge from physical differences to existential reality that avoids the arbitrariness of the arguments from anatomy. West relies on facts that do not have to be subjected to the kind of intricate, subjective interpretation that psychoanalytic theory gives to the genitals. The four functions she emphasizes are exclusively female, and three of them involve the kind of physical connection between bodies she is talking about. Everyone knows that childbirth, menstruation, heterosexual penetration, and breast-feeding happen only to women. The difficult question is what, if anything, follows from these facts. We need not believe that the exclusively female material experiences are trivial in order to question West's inference that they are more critical than the experiences which men and women share. Do we know, for instance, that menarche has a greater effect on personality than does the transition from elementary to secondary school, or that having sex with a man changes a woman more than leaving home, going to college, or getting a job? West commits the same error that psychoanalytic theorists have made; she presumes that what is different about men and women are what are most important. Some familiar theory posits links between physical differences and socialization. The “object-relations” psychoanalytic theory of Nancy Chodorow emphasizes the relationship between learned gender difference and the fact that “women mother.” For Chodorow, the social assignment of child rearing to women affects boys and girls differently because of the physical differences between the sexes. Chodorow ends up about where West does, but by a less direct route. Chodorow's thesis starts with the fact that infants and children in Western culture typically have one woman as primary caregiver and socializer. “Mothering” affects boys and girls differently because the reciprocal relationship between mother and child differs with the child's sex. A mother perceives a daughter as like her but a son as different. This school of feminist jurisprudence shows the influence of Marxist scholarship and the Critical Legal Studies movement. The emphasis is not on sexual differences but on what Catharine MacKinnon calls “power in its gendered forms.” MacKinnon contrasts the “difference” approach with her own “dominance” approach. She presumes that male bias in law results not from differences in male and female character but from men's subjection of women. MacKinnon's typology expresses the crucial difference between the two approaches.9 “Women's activity as institutionalized has a double aspect: their contribution to subsistence and their contribution to child rearing. Whether or not all women do both, women as a sex are institutionally responsible for producing both goods and human beings.”10 These theories come under the “grand theory” concept discussed earlier in this paper. They rest on the premises that cannot be proven to be true. But this uncertainty has not stopped people from utilizing these theories. These theories succeed or fail as analytical tools by what they help us see and what they let us do. Feminist Jurisprudence has, then, not one but several explanations of gendered reality. These theories start from different premises, but they are not mutually contradictory. No theory must emphasize biology or socialization or power, to the exclusion of all other possible sources of gendered reality. Nor do disagreements among these authors mean that one must be right and the others wrong. Any of them could be at least partly right; any or all could be wrong. But none of these theories is new, original, verifiable, or even necessarily feminism.. Both separately and together, they fail to accomplish what they promise. Conclusion Society’s double standards exist and permeate. Years of feminist struggle continue to find ways to first get out of this vicious cycle where one is born into and is acculturated. If and when women finally gets out of the male centred structures, she has yet to find new perspectives that will be able to crush these double standards and essentially win survival for both sexes. Legal structures erected by the male dominant cultures exist and permeates as much. Women who are aware of the urgent struggles know that the law is a prime battle venue where women’s cause when won over and protected will have sustainable benefits over time. And this freedom is not taken geographically and literally. Freedom to equality is freedom to ambition and individual development while doing all the biological tasks of women. Gender systems have remained oppressive and anti-change. These gender relations are embedded in laws that govern people on how to live. Though these laws are based on the why’s of lifestyle and culture, generations have ceased to question laws created during the historical times when much oppression was done on women. There is need to review the context when these laws where made and redefine it considering the modern situations where small gains for women have been realized. Violence on women are still very much evident in the world, even amidst feminist movement. Its one thing that women are given suffrage rights, reproductive rights and gender rights. But at the end of the day, the situation rests upon how man and woman end the day at the office, the day at the home or the day at the bar. Police and the law can penalize the violence that happens on women but this is done in lieu of laws that guide society behaviour. Violence on women is not the same as violence on men. There is basic violence that happens to women that cannot happen to men. And that is the type of specific violence that the law needs to address. A male dominated and oriented law won’t be able to understand and address how to manage or penalize this kind of violence. Problems in adjudication that continually make fair and impartial treatment unrealizable must be eradicated considering social constructs of sexism, gynocentrism are being debated and developed among law makers and law abiders. Fairness and impartiality are really difficult to attain due to cultural similarities and differences, blindness of the law to sex and gender and the objectivist attitude toward justice. But still, factors affecting fairness are just right before court such as the bias of the judge, lawyers, jury, witnesses and historical cases from where these new cases are juxtaposed. Feminist Jurisprudence is emerging from the struggles of women. There is no more fundamental concept than the physicality of men and women. There is even no more fundamental concept on the truth that women by nature are the ones that nourish children in particular and living things in general. The injustice done to women is as much and injustice to all of mankind. Women’s rights and welfare must be incorporated in each law and especially for the laws that directly affect women, it must articulate preservation of women’s hopes and dreams. Feminists shall continue to work and struggle to further the law’s appreciation of women’s right and struggles. From law on suffrage, to laws on reproductive rights that discuss abortion issues, to laws that define when the community is able to help the battered wife, to sexual harassment law that guide human relations policies both in the public and private sector workplaces, the battle for women’s liberation is being fought and sometimes won. Each time there is a rape, a wife beaten or a girl who gets pregnant accidentally, social structures are instantly there to judge, accuse and easily comment on the situation using the existing status quo’s point of view. Feminist jurisprudence is imperative in social and legal analysis so that freedom may strengthened not only for women but for all of humankind. REFERENCES Beal, R. “ ‘Can I Sue Mommy?’ An Analysis of Women's Tort Liability for Prenatal Injuries to Her Child Born Alive,” San Diego Law Review 21 (March 1984): 370. Brownmiller, S., Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (May 11, 1993) p.23-26 Estrich, S. “Rape” in Feminist Jurisprudence (Smith 1993) p. 158-187 EEOC Decision 82-13, 29 FEP Cases 1855 ( 1982). Gilligan, C. In a Different Voice Harvard University Press; Reissue edition (September 1993). P. 24-63 Haslanger and Tuana, “Topics in Feminism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = . Harding S. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge, Thinking from Women’s Lives. Cornell University Press (June 1991) p. 25. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence", (1983) p. 635, 638. MacKinnon, C. Sexual Harassment: Its First Decade in Court. Mansbridge, J., Why We Lost the ERA. University Of Chicago Press (September 15, 1986) p.197 Marks, Elaine and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. New French Feminisms Pantheon (September 13, 1987) MacKinnon, C. (1989). Toward a feminist theory of the state. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press MacKinnon, Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (1983) New York: Longman, 1983; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1984). , p. 234. Offen, Karen 1988. "Defining Feminism: A comparative historical approach", in Signs. Vol.14, No.1: p. 119, 135 Haslanger, S. Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2004) Plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-topics/notes.html#1 Ramazanoglu, C., Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression, Routledge; 1 edition (May 24, 1989) p.6 U.S. Merit System Protection Board, Sexual Harassment in the Federal Workplace: Is It a Problem? (1981). as cited in MacKinnon. United States Commission on Civil Rights, Under the Rule of Thumb: Battered Women and the Administration of Justice 5-11 ( 1982). This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 23–24. WALKER, L. The Battered Woman. p. 20. See also Dutton & Painter, "Traumatic Bonding: The Development of Emotional Attachments in Battered Women and Other Relationships of Intermittent Abuse", 6 VICTIMOLOGY: AN INT'L J. 139 Read More