Taking Woman Abuse Seriously: A Critical Response to the Solicitor General of Canada's Crime Prevention Advice *

Abstract

While women experience male violence and intimidation in both public and private settings, the most serious and common threats to their physical and psychological well-being are abusive acts committed by known men. However, the Solicitor General of Canada's recent crime advice to women does not address this problem. The principal objective of this paper is to show how this discourse obscures the reality of woman abuse in Canada.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beirne

Messerschmidt

(1991). Criminology. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Toronto.

Brinkerhoff

Lupri

(1988). Interspousal violence. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 13, 407–434.

Currie

DeKeseredy

W.S.

MacLean

B.D.

(1990). Reconstituting Social Order and Social Control: Police Accountability in Canada. The Journal of Human Justice, 2, 29–54.

Currie

(1985). Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. Pantheon; New York.

Daly

Meda Chesney-Lind

(1988). Feminism and criminology. Justice Quarterly, 6, 5–26.

DeKeseredy

W.S.

(1988). Woman Abuse in Dating Relationships: The Role of Male Peer Support. Canadian Scholars' Press; Toronto.

DeKeseredy

W.S.

Hinch

(1991). Woman Abuse: Sociological Perspectives. Thompson Educational Publishing; Toronto.

DeKeseredy

W.S.

MacLean

(1991). Exploring the gender, race and class dimensions of victimization: A left realist critique of the Canadian Urban Victimization Survey. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 35, 143–161.

DeKeseredy

W.S.

Schwartz

M.D.

(1991). British left realism on the abuse of women: A critical appraisal. In Criminology as Peacemaking. ( Quinney

Pepinsky

eds.) pp. 154–171. Indiana University Press; Bloomington.

10.

Dexter

L.A.

(1958). A note on the selective inattention in social science. Social Problems, 6, 176–182.

11.

Dobash

R.E.

Dobash

(1979). Violence Against Wives: A Case Against the Patriarchy. Free Press; N.Y.

12.

Ellis

(1987). The Wrong Stuff: An Introduction to the Sociological Study of Deviance. Collier Macmillan; Toronto.

13.

Edwards

(1989). Policing ‘Domestic’ Violence: Women, Law and the State. Sage; London.

14.

Fonow

M.M

(1986). Occupation/steelworker: Sex/female. In Feminist Frontiers: Rethinking Sex, Gender, and Society ( Richardson

Taylor

eds.) pp. 209–214. Addison Wesley; Reading, MA.

15.

Gorrie

(1990). ‘Victim of harassment told she shares blame.’ Toronto Star, January 23: D1.

16.

Grahame

K.M.

(1985). Sexual harassment. In No Safe Place. ( Wolfe

Guberman

eds.) pp. 109–126. Women's Press; Toronto.

17.

Hanmer

Radford

Jill

Stanko

Elizabeth A.

(eds.) (1989). Women, Policing, and Male Violence: International Perspectives. Routledge; London.

18.

Hanmer

Saunders

(1984). Well-Founded Fear: A Community Study of Violence to Women. Hutchinson; London.

19.

Houston

(1988). What's wrong with sexual harassment. Atlantis, 13, 44–47.

20.

Jones

MacLean

B.D.

Young

(1986). The Islington Crime Survey. Gower; Aldershot, England.

21.

Kelly

Radford

J.R.

(1987). The problem of men: Feminist perspectives on sexual violence. In Law, Order and the Authoritarian State: Readings in Critical Criminology. ( Scraton

ed.) pp. 237–253. Open University Press; Philadelphia.

22.

Kennedy

Dutton

(1989). The incidence of wife assault in Alberta. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 21, 40–54.

23.

Knuttila

(1987). State Theories: From Liberalism to the Challenge of Feminism. Garamond; Toronto.

24.

Lupri

(1990). Male violence in the home. In Trends Canadian Social ( McKie

Thompson

eds.) pp. 170–172. Thompson Educational Publishing; Toronto.

25.

Mackinnon

C.A.

(1982). Feminism, Marxism, method and the State: towards feminist jurisprudence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 7, 515–544.

26.

Messerschmidt

(1986). Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Crime: Toward a Socialist Feminist Criminology. Roman and Littlefield; Totowa, NJ.

27.

Miliband

(1969). The State in Capitalist Society. Quartet Books; London.

28.

Pease

(1985). Obscene telephone calls to women in England and Wales. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 24, 275–281.

29.

Pizzey

(1974). Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear. Penguin; New York.

30.

Radford

(1987). Policing male violence—policing women. In Women, Violence and Social Control. ( Hanmer

Maynard

eds.) pp. 30–45. Humanities International Press; Atlantic Highlands, NJ.

31.

Reiman

(1990). The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. Macmillan; New York.

32.

Russell

(1984). Sexual Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment. Sage; Beverly Hills.

33.

Sacco

V.F.

Johnson

(1990). Patterns of Criminal Victimisation in Canada. Statistics Canada; Ottowa.

34.

Schwartz

M.D.

DeKeseredy

W.S.

(1991). Left realist criminology: strengths, weaknesses and the feminist critique. Crime, Law and Social Change, 15, 51–72.

35.

Simpson

(1989). Feminist theory, crime and justice. Criminology, 27, 605–632.

36.

Smith

M.D.

(1985). Women Abuse: The Case for Surveys by Telephone. The LaMarsh Research Programme on Violence and Conflict Resolution Report Number 12. York University; North York, Ontario.

37.

Smith

M.D.

(1987). The incidence and prevalence of woman abuse in Toronto. Violence and Victims, 2, 173–187.

38.

Smith

M.D.

(1988). Women's fear of violent crime: An exploratory test of a feminist hypothesis. Journal of Family Violence, 31, 29–38.

39.

Smith

M.D.

(1990). Sociodemographic risk factors in wife abuse: Results from a survey of Toronto women. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 15, 39–58.

40.

Solicitor General of Canada. (1983). Canadian Urban Victimization Survey: Victims of Crime. Ministry of the Solicitor General; Ottawa.

41.

Solicitor General of Canada. (1985). Canadian Urban Victimization Survey: Female Victims of Crime. Ministry of the Solicitor General; Ottawa.

42.

Solicitor General of Canada. (1990). Woman Alone. Ministry of the Solicitor General; Ottawa.

43.

Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women. (1991). The War Against Women. House of Commons Canada; Ottawa.

44.

Stanko

E.A.

(1985). Intimate Intrusions: Women's Experience of Male Violence. Routledge and Kegan Paul; London.

45.

Stanko

E.A.

(1988). Fear of crime and the myth of the safe home: A feminist critique of criminology. In Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. ( Yllo

Bograd

eds.), pp. 75–88. Sage; Beverly Hills.

46.

Stanko

E.A.

(1990a). Everyday Violence: How Women and Men Experience Sexual and Physical Danger. Pandora; London.

47.

Stanko

E.A.

(1990b). The case of fearful women: Gender, personal safety and fear of crime. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Baltimore, Maryland.

48.

Statistics Canada. (1986). Household Facilities and Equipment Survey, Household Surveys Division. Unpublished manuscript. Statistics Canada; Ottawa.

49.

Straus

M.A.

(1989). Gender differences in assault in intimate relationships: Implications for the primary prevention of spousal violence. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Reno; Nevada.

50.

Straus

M.A.

Gelles

Steinmetz

(1981). Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family. Anchor Books; New York.

51.

Walklate

(1989). Victimology: The Victim and the Criminal Justice Process. Unwin Hyman; London.