Tactics of Antifeminist Backlash against the U.S. Battered Women’s Movement

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Conclusion: The future of human trafficking research

Scholarly publications to date have overwhelmingly focused on describing general dynamics of trafficking and trafficking routes, based largely on anecdotal information. Another of the largest segments of the research literature so far comprises commentary on the human trafficking policy debates. Although these debates are often described as fairly homogenous across the globe, this collection reveals substantial regional variation in this discussion. Political, epistemological, and resource differences between governments have had a profound effect on legal and social responses to traffi cking. Therefore, attention to the theories of trafficking propagated in specific locations will continue to be essential to research in the field. Despite the challenges of studying trafficking, there are several possible directions for future research. The preceding chapters exemplify innovative approaches to radically contextualized research, providing some potential ways forward. I will outline a few of these possibilities here.No Full Tex

Fathers' rights activism and law reform in comparative perspective (Book review)

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Family law reform and domestic violence: Lessons from Australia

This chapter reviews efforts to assess the outcomes of Australian family law reform, particularly as it affects domestic violence cases. Australia has adopted and implemented a number of family law reforms, including shared parenting and friendly parent provisions. Although the hope was that shared parenting would decrease the number of contested custody cases, it actually had the opposite effect, increasing the number of cases filed and the burden on the court system. In addition, the research found that there was a significant amount of conflict in these families. Moreover, the adoption of friendly parent provisions discouraged reporting of violence and abuse. These reforms had the effect of increasing inappropriate child custody arrangements, a fact that became evident because of Australia’s robust research infrastructure; this research later led to the adoption of standards that prioritized protection from harm over shared parenting.No Full Tex

Domestic and family violence

Stereotypes of crime and deviance are focused on violence perpetrated by strangers in public spaces. However, women and girls face their greatest risk of victimisation from known men. The domestic home and private family life are two primary contexts for such victimisation. Domestic violence refers to violence and abuse by current or former intimate partners. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, emotional or psychological abuse and economic abuse. Domestic violence is generally understood to describe the type of ongoing abusive, controlling and violent behaviour that was originally called ‘wife beating’. While the shift to de-gendered terminology reflects the recognition that violence and abuse extends beyond heterosexual men’s violence against women, domestic violence remains a highly gendered phenomenon.No Full Tex

Domestic violence and family law: recognition and appropriation

The battered women’s movement in the United States contributed to a sweeping change in the recognition of men’s violence against female intimate partners. Naming the problem and arguing in favour of its identification as a serious problem meriting a collective response were key aspects of this effort. Criminal and civil laws have been written and revised in an effort to answer calls to take such violence seriously. Scholars have devoted significant attention to the consequences of this reframing of violence, especially around the unintended outcomes of the incorporation of domestic violence into criminal justice regimes. Family law, however, has remained largely unexamined by criminologists. This paper calls for criminological attention to family law responses to domestic violence and provides directions for future research.No Full Tex

‘You only get what you fight for’: Understanding the backlash against the US battered women's movement

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Gender bias in the courts: Implications for battered mothers and their children

In the courtroom, female litigants face not only a battle with an ex-partner who is trying to gain custody of their children but also face a far more sinister opponent: the deeply entrenched gender bias permeating the United States legal system. Gender bias impairs not only a woman’s chances of winning relief from her abuser but also limits the ability of her attorney, if female, to prove her case. In this article, Molly Dragiewicz provides compelling evidence for these assertions, demonstrating, through data coming from diverse sources, that the decks are indeed stacked against the average female litigant’s likelihood of obtaining justice and relief from a court system that professes equality under the law but in many cases delivers anything but. The oft-used moniker of the “good old boys’ club” is quite horrifyingly accurate when describing how women rank vis-à-vis men in what goes on behind the courtroom doors. Dr. Dragiewicz’s summary of the evidence ought to raise critical self-examination by our courts and their agents of the practices they use in adjudicating women’s custody cases in jurisdictions across the country.Full Tex