Are women lawyers biased?

The Women’s Consultative Group of the New Zealand Law Society made a submission to the Law Commission dated 8 November 2000 on PRELIMINARY PAPER 41, BATTERED DEFENDANTS: VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE WHO OFFEND.

It includes the following (my emphasis, plus comments in square brackets):

At the heart of the current law on domestic violence in New Zealand, as embodied in the Domestic Violence Act 1995, lies a very simple concept: domestic violence is about the use of power by men to control their women partners. That Act (enacted after a long period of review and public consultation) establishes a clear framework for the analysis of domestic violence based on a variety of international and national human rights instruments including the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. [Note the gendered perspective, including CEDAW.]

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In addition, the paper contains no definition of domestic violence nor any clear articulation of the framework within which it is properly analysed. Namely, the power and control analysis developed in Duluth, Minnesota. [This is the Duluth model which has been strongly criticised by Tom Graves here, and in more detail here. It is also discussed, with further links, here.] The analysis is most commonly depicted in the Power and Control Wheel, which illustrates the factors that characterise violent relationships and illustrates how these factors (or spokes of the wheel) might be demonstrated by behaviour of the abuser. An abuser seeks to maintain power and control through a variety of tactics, many of which can be identified as psychological violence. Physical and sexual violence at the rim of the wheel keep other tactics in place and reinforce the system which keeps an abuser in control of the relationship.

This analysis has been adopted and used worldwide by women’s refuges’ services, the police, judiciary, legal academics and many others. For example, the power and control analysis is currently used by the New Zealand Police when investigating criminal offending relating to domestic violence (see for example the New Zealand Police Family Violence Policy and the Community Education Kit prepared by the then Family Violence Unit, Department of Social Welfare). The discussion paper also does not appear to cite any of the research or literature of New Zealand’s leading expert service agency on domestic violence, the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges. [One piece of research done for the NCIWR is on the economic costs of family violence. It is discussed here, with further comment here.]

It is striking that the only approach to violence considered acceptable by these women lawyers is an extreme feminist one. For other perspectives on women's violence, you could look at, Patricia Pearson, (1997) When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, reviewed here. Similarly, a different approach is suggested in a report published by the Ministry of Social Policy when considering child abuse. See here.

Are these women lawyers motivated by gender politics?

Stuart Birks

23 May 2003, updated 7 December 2005

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