Despite growing awareness of the severity of domestic violence, the lives of battered women are too often misconstrued by the Canadian public and the judicial system. The author argues that stereotypes of victimized battered women emanating from the courts and feminist theory may both prevent women who kill their partner from making valid claims of self-defence and generally undermine women's fight against oppression. The author reviews the doctrine of the battered woman syndrome and its application in the context of self-defence to illustrate how the courts' treatment of the doctrine conveys a narrow and incomplete depiction of battered women. An alternative theoretical framework based on battered women's partial agency is proposed as a means to address feminist theory's simplified representation of battered women. Various law and policy reform initiatives in the criminal justice system are explored to assess how the law may validate and promote battered women's partial agency.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.78223 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Panet-Raymond, Louise |
| Contributors | Sheppard, Colleen (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Laws (Faculty of Law.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001986850, proquestno: AAIMQ88130, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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