Women, Murder and Femininity

Living Behind Symbolic and Concrete Barriers of Total Institutions: Reflections on the Transition Between a Domestic Symbolic Patriarchal Imprisonment and a Co-Governed, State-Sponsored Incarceration in Perú

“…However, such cases are much less common, both in Perú and globally (Heise and García-Moreno 2002;Hernández et al 2018). Feminist research in different global settings has demonstrated that, while the men who perpetrate such violence reportedly do so due to a need for control and dominance, the women who kill their violent partners reportedly act from fear, frustration and desperation (Morrissey 2003;Seal 2010).…”

“…Women who have been exposed to IPVA are often defined as 'battered women' (Walker 1990). Seal (2010) analysed representations of battered women who kill their partners to demonstrate the inequities and inadequacies of criminal justice systems in handling such cases. As Morrissey (2003) has suggested, battered women who kill are often charged with murder and, in a legal context, usually employ defence or self-defence to reduce charges.…”

“…Although there is no consensus about whether sex is a differential variable in sentencing (Embry and Lyons 2012), evidence suggests that women who kill are positioned as distant from hegemonic gender stereotypes and are treated more harshly in courts than men who kill their wives (Morrissey 2003). As Seal (2010) has explained, these women raise questions about the alleged masculine/feminine gender binary by breaking the norms of traditional femininity, such as nurturance, gentleness and social conformity. Consequently, these women are stereotypically defined as 'mad' or as 'monsters' (Morrissey 2003;Seal 2010).…”

The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland

“…106 However, this phrasing also invoked the image of the witch, a well-worn archetype for older women who offend. 107 Seal writes that although 'spinster' could be a respectable status in Britain, it remained non-normative. Seal cites the links between 'spinsterhood', celibacy and psychological harm within psychoanalytic thought at the time.…”

Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Social Media: The Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Innocence Campaign

“…It was claimed that where women had been involved in similar cases, they were mere accessories who found themselves taking part because they were either coerced or manipulated by their male partners. Such gender scripts form the staple diet of popular narratives about women who kill (O'Sullivan 2008;Jewkes 2010;Seal 2010), running the gamut from women who are seen as sexually submissive to women who are seen as hypersexual. While tabloid discourse was leaning to the latter, several innocence campaigners we interviewed were convinced that women were incapable of committing the sort of crime that occurred in the Kercher murder because of their gender.…”