Battered Women Case Study

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Recommended: Feminism and domestic abuse

A battered woman is a woman who endures repeated abuse at the hands of another individual, such as her partner. Battered women who commit intimate partner homicide normally kill out of fear. This is why either self-defence or battered women syndrome seems to be the appropriate path to take in court. However, neither option adequately reflects the situation the woman went through or helps the defendant in her case. Another factor is how the media covers these cases. Media outlets have found it more essential to attract more readers by shining these women in a negative light despite the situation they went through. As a whole, society is on the verge of being more sympathetic to the women who go through this ordeal. However, there still needs …show more content…

Women typically kill for a sense of security. This need to re-establish security can be from the abuse from their partner or other stressors, such as financial support. Economic studies have shown that financially and socially disadvantaged areas have higher intimate partner homicide rates (Diem & Pizarro, 2010). However, the second factor of this point is that this is seen in wealthy countries (Stöckl et al, 2013). Women in these areas might not have the social support such as women’s shelters to go to in these abusive relationships, leaving these women with the idea that homicide is the only option (Diem & Pizarro, 2010). It is seen that these women can also lack support from friends or family as well, whether they live in socially disadvantaged areas or not (Diem & Pizarro, 2010). In these cases the women have a hard time leaving their abusive relationship. When these cases are in court, social factors that aid in leaving the situation have typically undermined a defendant’s case. However, if more can be done to show how these women lacked these social structures both inside and outside the courtroom, there could be continued improvement both for their case and how society views these …show more content…

Similar to women in heterosexual relationships, women in lesbian relationships have a pattern of committing intimate partner homicide out of fear (Mize & Shackelford, 2008). For instance homophobia and discrimination both from family members and their community can add to the personal stress on the relationship (Mize & Shackelford, 2008). In these cases the women continue to lack emotional and social support, which the legal system seems to believe they have. What women in abusive lesbian relationships lack, is availability and safety in women’s shelters for same-sex relationships. Women’s shelters are more suited to stop men from accessing the victim’s location and information in heterosexual relationships rather than lesbian relationships. This is due to the difficulty in differentiating between the abused and the perpetrator in these relationships. A woman who is the perpetrator could easily pretend to be an abused victim and become a resident in the same women’s shelter as her victim, or could pretend to be the victim and access her records over the phone (Mize & Shackelford,

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