Too Good Not to Share

My favorite part is how Tina nails Palin's clipped pronunciation of "Alaska," and this Amy-as-Hillary quote: "I don't want to hear you compare your road to the White House with my road to the White House. I scratched and clawed through mud and barbed wire, and you just glided in on a dog sled wearing your pageant sash and your Tina Fey glasses!" Let's hear it for brilliant, funny women!

Another Question for the Looney Left

This is a true story. As most of you know, I am, well, "exploring" the job market. I have made some proactive contacts with programs in the area to see what their hiring situation is. One VERY gracious individual agreed to meet with me for an informal discussion although they do not have a job posted. I think we hit it off - but then she said something QUITE interesting. She was explaining how and why she thought I could be a fit for her program. Then started to stammer a bit (boy do I get that), sort of looked side to side as if she would get hit by lightning, cautioned her next statement with this "Uh, I never thought I would be saying something like this but...." (always a good lead in to a statement) "You know, we really do need more men. Our department is nearly all women and it seems that we should have some representation from men."

Now, I was not bothered by the comment at all, and quite honestly, found her honesty a bit refreshing. But I have thought about this for a few weeks and don't know what to make of it. Strange position for someone of my, well, "demographic" to be in, eh? While I have always been intrigued about the idea of being hired for the "eye candy" factor (when I dream, I dream big), I am not sure if I like the sounds of this!!!!!

Thoughts?

New UC-Irvine Study Finds "Quiet Desperation" Among Academic Women

From Inside Higher Ed:

A recent study exploring gender equity and discrimination in academia -- purportedly the largest qualitative study of its kind --finds "quiet desperation" among academic women:

Interviews with 80 female faculty members at a research university — the largest qualitative study of its kind — have found that many women in careers are deeply frustrated by a system that they believe undervalues their work and denies them opportunities for a balanced life. While the study found some overt discrimination in the form of harassment or explicitly sexist remarks, many of the concerns involved more subtle “deeply entrenched inequities.”

Of course, finding evidence of sex/gender discrimination in academia is hardly revelatory, but the specific themes through which the respondents experienced (or perceived) inequities may indeed offer new insights, providing what the author calls "a more nuanced perspective on discrimination and gender equity". They are:

• Subtle institutional and cultural patterns of discrimination
• Gender devaluation and holding positions of power
• Service is for women
• Perceptions of overt discrimination
• Career, family, and need for alternative models of professional success
  

Interestingly, the study (full text available here; abstract available here), conducted by UCI Political Science professor Kristen Monroe, was criticized by UCI administration upon its release:

Asked for a reaction to the study, Irvine released a statement criticizing it. “Professor Monroe’s article draws attention to the persistence and toll of sex discrimination on women faculty. Unfortunately, the article cannot to be said to offer original insight into the promise and challenge of gender equity in higher education. The formulation of the problem overlooks research in a host of related issues, such as gender schemas, work-life balance, and leadership development among others,” the statement said.

However, Monroe notes that "many of the concerns expressed in the study didn’t have to do with official policies or programs, but with more subtle questions."

Beyond the Call of Duty

I choked up watching this video from CNN.com this morning.

The video features a report about Jiang Xiaojuan, a Chinese police officer who also is the nursing mother of a 6-month old son. Called into emergency duty after the earthquake in Sichuan Province, she soon became aware that among the displaced multitude were several starving infants. Some of the babies were orphans; others had mothers too injured to breastfeed them or whose milk supply had ceased after the trauma of the quake and a prolonged lack of food. So, she decided to breastfeed these infants -- at one point as many as nine of them -- and provide them with nourishment without which they might have died.

This story resonated with me on several levels. First, as a mother who breastfed both of my children, I was moved thinking about the powerful bond that has been forged between this woman and the infants she fed. Honestly, it gives me chills just thinking about it. Second, as a criminologist I was intrigued to hear Xaiojuan remark that by feeding these babies she was merely fulfilling her duty as a police officer:

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction, and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

While she may feel this way, I wonder how many officers (male or female) would agree with her. Myself, I think what she did is pretty extraordinary, and definitely qualifies as going beyond the call of duty. What is more, her heroism (heroine-ism?) certainly ought to silence any remaining critics who would question women's participation in law enforcement. I'd like to see a male police officer breastfeed nine infants!!

P.S. Here is the print version of the story from CNN.com, and a here is a similar report from Reuters. Although the Reuters headline refers to Xaiojuan as a "wet nurse" rather than as a police officer. For some reason, that bugs me.

SUNY Press Dissertation/First Book Award

Junior scholars who study violence against women or other issues related to gender, feminism, and criminology/sociology may be interested in the following announcement:

SUNY Press is proud to announce a new competition for the best single-authored dissertation or first book manuscript in the field of women’s and gender studies. We welcome nonfiction manuscripts that exemplify cutting-edge feminist scholarship, whether the area of focus is historical or contemporary. The competition is open to scholars from all disciplinary backgrounds, but we especially encourage work that speaks effectively across disciplines, and projects that offer new perspectives on concerns central to the field of women’s and gender studies. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Feminist knowledge production
Feminist politics
Activism
Intersectionality
Gendered experiences of people of color
Global and transnational feminisms
Institutions and public policies
Women of color feminisms
Theories and practices of coalition
Gender and globalization
Coloniality, postcoloniality and neo-imperialism
Girls studies
Gender and queer sexuality
Transgender studies
Gender and violence
Feminist philosophy and theory
Gender and disability
Gender and militarism
Gender and labor practices
Feminist science and environmental studies
Feminist pedagogy
Cultural production (media, film, music, literature)

If a winner of the competition is selected, he or she will receive a publication contract with SUNY Press and a $3,000 advance. Runners up may also be considered for publication with SUNY Press. All submissions must be postmarked by July 1, 2008, and should include the following materials:

--Cover letter
--C.V.
--Proposal, including a 4-5 page overview of the scope of the project and analysis of competing titles
--Complete manuscript, at least 150 double spaced pages, 12 pt. Courier font

Please mention the competition in your cover letter, and also indicate if any material from the manuscript has been previously published. The winner will be announced in the Fall of 2008. All submissions must be exclusive submissions to SUNY Press for the duration of the contest, and finalists will be notified by September 1, 2008.

Please direct all questions and submissions to

Larin McLaughlin
Acquisitions Editor
SUNY Press
194 Washington Ave., Ste. 305
Albany, NY 12210
larin.mclaughlin@sunypress.edu

GBOC Lightning Round, Part Deux

As evidenced by the lack of posts over the last few days, everyone is no doubt swamped with end-of-semester duties. (Either that, or everyone has given up on this blog without telling me!) I'm no exception, so in this post I've compiled several items -- all of which I've been meaning to write full posts about -- for another GBOC lightning round.

Item 1: The Work of Justice Now
Last week, Feministing featured a series of stories about Justice Now, an Oakland, CA-based organization committed to "working with women prisoners and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons". Interesting, huh? Here is their mission statement:

Our mission is to end violence against women and stop their imprisonment. We believe that prisons and policing are not making our communities safe and whole but that, in fact, the current system severely damages the people it imprisons and the communities most affected by it. We promote alternatives to policing and prisons and challenge the prison industrial complex in all its forms.

We fulfill our mission by:

Providing legal services and supporting prisoner organizing efforts that promote health and justice;

Working with prisoners, their families and community members on political education and mobilization campaigns;

Building coalitions to create safety for women and individual accountability without relying on the punishment system;

Training the next generation of activists and lawyers committed to working for social justice.

Honestly, I'm not sure that abolition of prisons and police forces is either: (a) feasible, (b) desirable, or (c) the appropriate strategy for addressing the incarceration of battered women and other female victims of violence. That said, I applaud their efforts to assist incarcerated women, and agree that the criminal justice system -- the very system that is designed to offer recourse for those who have been victimized -- too often serves as a source of violence and victimization for women. You can read Feministing's ongoing profile of Justice Now addressing a variety of issues related to incarcerated women here, here, here, here, and here.

Item 2: The Motherhood Penalty
A while back Velma posted a very handy table she created examining average professor salary by sex. She also discussed the economic difficulties women with children face in the academy -- the "motherhood penalty," so to speak. Grad School Mommy carries on this important conversation with two posts -- found here and here -- filled with many links and lots of good information about the motherhood penalty. Be sure to check out the posts' comments, too, for even more insight from moms in academia.

Item 3: Beating a Bad Reputation
There is an interesting story in today's Detroit Free Press about the efforts of the Frederick Douglass High School in Detroit -- now a college prep academy -- to outgrow its reputation as a holding pen for students too troubled to last in regular schools:

Once a bad boys' school -- an alternative for those kicked out of other schools -- it has been academically and culturally turned around and now is a college preparatory academy. The only all-boys public school in the state, its freshmen all take JROTC to improve discipline and leadership skills, a National Honor Society chapter flourishes and male mentoring programs help build self-esteem.

I couldn't help but think about labeling theory when I read this article. Turns out the reputation of being "Douglass High" is hard to shake, even though its students now wear coat-and-tie uniforms and excel academically. What really got my attention, though, was this incredibly sobering (and disheartening) statistic:

But [school administrators'] mission is about more than changing the school's reputation. It is about changing negative statistics about urban male students.

Detroit Public Schools ranks last among the nation's 50 big cities, graduating 25% of ninth-graders after four years. The remainder drop out, transfer or take more than four years to earn a diploma, according to a report released by America's Promise Alliance based on research by the Maryland-based Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

"When it comes to boys, 3 out of 4 will not graduate on time," U.S. Secretary of State Margaret Spellings said of Detroit teens during a speech last month at the Detroit Economic Club.

And people wonder why social ills like crime, poverty, and drug use plague urban areas like Detroit....

Economic Status of the Profession

The American Association of University Professors has published the 2007-08 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession.

I made a quick table of the average salaries by gender and rank for full-time tenure track faculty at doctoral institutions:

There are clearly a lot of factors at work here. These data average salaries from the Chemistry faculty with that of English department. Women often self-select into lower paying department. Women who take time off the tenure clock for children may have lower salaries because of their absence from the market. Here is a nice discussion of some of the issues related to the mommy penalty.

This issue is much more complex than I have time for today, but check out the report and see where you fall. And when in doubt - just ask.

Teenage Girls, Physical Violence, YouTube, and our Culture

So...I'm sure by now you all have heard the news story and seen the attendant video of the cheerleader in Lakeland, Florida who was lured into a "friend's" home and then severely beaten by that friend and other cheerleaders. All of this for basically talking smack over MySpace (cyberbullying?) about those friends. So what we have is a vivid depiction of six girls who carefully coordinated (with two male lookouts and everything) a vicious attack (to where she suffered a concussion and fell unconscious) on an unsuspecting girl at a home where no parents were around...and where she was detained with no freedom to leave...and where the violence was recorded for the purposes of uploading it to YouTube and MySpace.... Then she was taken in a car, dropped off at some random location, and threatened with more beatings if she went to the authorities.
Points to consider:
1. What is the deal with these girls being so horrifically violent? Is this not out of the ordinary, but seems so because the recording has so starkly shown us the hostility and aggression of which some girls are capable? Is it possible that girls are actually *just as prone to violence* as boys (not withstanding testosterone and so forth) but have been constrained by social acceptability...but perhaps those standards are eroding or fading or being diluted as the years go by?
2. Is our culture being desensitized to female violence? For example, you turn on The Real World on MTV and we are seeing more frequently verbal violence and even physical violence among girls.
3. Were the girls playing to the camera...performing, if you will? Were they, to some degree, looking for their 15 minutes of fame by recording themselves in this video?
4. What were the girls thinking, in terms of escaping identification, apprehension, and punishment, with the recording of the criminal assault?
5. Are the parents at fault?
6. Has anyone seen the MySpace postings, as I'd like to consider their contents?
7. Has anyone figured out how to download flash video, because I'd like to archive those videos linked from that site to show others?

Article and unedited video here.

Is There Still A Need for Women's Studies?

I ran across this article last night about the state of women's studies in the U.K. It seems there are few stand-alone WS departments there, and some are claiming that their goals have been accomplished and they are no longer needed.

I'm not sure this is true, but my perceptions are colored (or should I say coloured?) by the situation in the U.S. I've seen WS expanding in this country, and I would argue these programs are still relevant and timely.

Given that many criminal justice programs share faculty with women's studies, this seems like a relevant issue for criminologists, particularly people like me who study violence against women. I've also seen increased job opportunities for joint WS/CJ positions.

What do you think--are women's studies departments on their way out?

Gender, Politics, and Music Industry Hypocrisy

This clip from hip-hop vlogger Jay Smooth (of hiphopmusic.com and WBAI in New York) succinctly calls out the gender-based hypocrisy of the music industry. He's absolutely right: industry execs fall over themselves to give record contracts to male rappers who are confessed drug dealers and murderers, but a woman who has traded sex for money? Never!



His message is completely on target. Plus, as Jessica at Feministing observes, dude throws in a sly reference to one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time.

P.S. Is it just me, or does Jay Smooth bear an uncanny resemblance to The NY Kid? Must be a Queens thing?

Feminism & Politics

I am always pleasantly surprised when scholars (particularly those I admire) are interviewed by, provide analysis for, or otherwise find exposure outside of academia in the mainstream news media. Such is the case with this recent editorial written by Kimberle Crenshaw and Eve Ensler for the Huffington Post. (OK, OK. So the HuffPo isn't exactly mainstream media -- NPR it ain't -- but you get my point.)

I have mentioned before how influential Kimberle Crenshaw's work has been in shaping both my feminism and my research on violence against women. (I've read her 1991 Stanford Law Review article, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color," probably a dozen times.) Thus, I was pleased to read the essay she wrote with Eve Ensler (whose work with V-Day I've also blogged about) criticizing the stance taken by some contemporary feminists that support for Hillary Clinton is the only authentically feminist political position:

Drawing their feminist boundaries in the sand, they interrogate, chastise, second-guess and even denounce those who escape their encampment and find themselves on Obama terrain. In their hands feminism, like patriotism, is the all-encompassing prism that eliminates discussion, doubt and difference about whom to vote for and why. Armed with indignant exasperation, this "either/or" camp converts the undeniable misogyny of the media into an imperative to vote for Clinton. The balanced reflections and gentle warnings that were voiced months ago have been jettisoned for a one-sided brief about why voting for Clinton is the only sensible thing for women to do.

I was especially excited to see that themes expressed in Crenshaw's academic work -- about the intersections of race- and gender-based oppression, for example -- are echoed in the editorial:

For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics.

Indeed, the relentless pitting of RACE (Obama) vs. GENDER (Clinton) in mainstream political coverage has made me wish many times over that I was teaching a course on feminism or race, class, and gender this semester. Though feminists of color have been writing for decades about the fundamental unfairness of being asked to declare allegiance to either their race or their gender (e.g., "Do you identify more as an African American or as a woman?" "Are you a woman or an Asian American first?" "Which is more important to you, your gender or your race?"), rarely has this discourse occurred beyond academic circles. Suddenly, though, with the Democratic presidential race serving as a literal manifestation of the "race-vs.-gender" dichotomy, this discourse has been thrust center stage in a national (and international) forum. As a feminist scholar, I view this as an exciting development as it offers a rare opportunity to discuss feminism using everyday examples with which most people are readily familiar.

P.S. Mary Poppins has been playing quite regularly at our house since the girls received it as a Christmas gift, which made me wonder: perhaps it was inevitable that I would become a feminist, given how many times I watched that movie as a child and that I was especially fond of the "Sister Suffragette" scene. (Choice lyric: Though we adore men individually/we agree that as a group they're rather stupid. Ha ha!)

Totally Unshocking Crime Headlines, Vol. 5

"Murdered Marine Had Protection Order"

This is not a surprising headline. We have all been inundated by the media about the story of the missing pregnant marine and the man who allegedly killed her (currently on the loose). The female marine (Maria Lauterbach) had taken out a protection order on the male marine (Cesar Laurean), after she accused him of raping her.

However, the story is not that simple--which is no big surprise to anyone who studies domestic violence. He is married, but was in a relationship with Lauterbach. She accused him of rape and took out a protection order, but it's unclear in what order those events occurred. After the rape was reported, they continued some kind of relationship--when asked why Laurean was not arrested after the claim of rape, authorities replied:

Military officials have said Laurean was not taken into custody after Lauterbach reported the rape allegation because there was information the two carried on "some sort of friendly relationship" after she filed the complaint. (from CNN)

Ugh. Add this to the fact that her own mother called her a "compulsive liar," and you have a huge mess for law enforcement.

Finally, I have one question: In the same story, the local Sheriff stated:

Brown said the military protection order was not shared with civilian law enforcement.

"We had no reason to be on his trail," Brown said of Laurean. "This has nothing to do with the civilian world. Nothing about this had anything to do with the civilian world."

Riiiiight... because domestic violence between two military officers cannot take place off base. Wasn't VAWA designed to overcome this specific problem? Dr. HnK, any thoughts? Perhaps military bases don't count?

(I have now met my blogging obligations for the week. You get what you ask for, Velma.)

Wow - UNC Football Players Sexually Assaulted by Women

One doesn't see this kind of article too frequently:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2201154/

Domestic Violence and Control

This news story would seem by most to be an unusual occurrence.

The woman in this story was chained to an engine block whenever her boyfriend left their home. He would unchain her upon his return. Tired of the control, she barricaded herself in the bedroom (which had a padlock on the OUTSIDE, should she be required to stay in that room) and signaled a neighbor to call 911. He tried to get her to escape though the window, but it was screwed shut to prevent that option.

Again, this seems unusual and quite extreme. However, the reality is that many women in abusive relationships are controlled to such an extent that they are not allowed to leave their home, or even specific rooms in their home, for fear of abuse. I recall that several women interviewed by Dr. HnK for her dissertation related stories of forced "incarceration" in their own homes.

Sadly, many abused women don't need to be chained to be kept against their will. The coercive (and abusive) power held by abusive men over women (and the threat of future beatings) is enough to keep them incarcerated in their own homes.

Help Aid the Women & Girls of the DRC

Some of you may be familiar with V-Day, the global movement (founded by Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler) to end violence against women and girls. One of their most recent campaigns, "Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource," targets sexual violence against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are several ways to get involved with this campaign, including writing to DRC President Joseph Kabila Kabange and donating to the campaign. Just in time for the holidays, though, comes another terrific way to support the women and girls of the DRC: purchasing one of these beautiful satchels, handmade by Congolese survivors of sexual assault, as a holiday gift for someone special! They're only $20 each, and proceeds from the sale of the bags helps provide economic support to Congolese sexual assault survivors.

Working to End Gender Violence

Given the frequency with which I've been posting about IPV and domestic homicide lately, I wanted to share some good news about gender violence:

The Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University has kicked off a campaign called 16 Days of Activism to End Gender Violence. Why 16 days? The campaign begins on November 25th, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends on December 10th, International Human Rights Day, in an effort to "symbolically link" violence against women and human rights violations.

Want to get involved? Check out the online action kit, or the violence against women bibliography, and spread the word.

Thanks to Feministing for the link.

Again with the Media

You may have heard about this story:

Emily Sander, an 18-year-old college student in Kansas went missing last Friday. Authorities believe they have found her body, and that she was murdered by a man with whom she was seen on Friday night. It seems she was also involved in Internet porn during her college studies. A headline on the main page of MSNBC.com tonight reads:

"Police: Body Likely Missing Porn Star"

Do they really need to refer to her in that way? I'm not sure why this is so upsetting to me--I suppose it is an accurate description. Maybe as a parent I'm particularly struck by this insensitivity, and how her parents have to deal with this characterization of their daughter. Given that sex workers seem to be viewed as somehow "deserving" of their victimization, this may be viewed as an attempt to dehumanize her.

We'll see what happens when they make arrests, and how the defense attorney presents the argument for the accused. Hopefully it won't end similarly to this case.

Is Domestic Homicide a "Gender Thing"?

I'm not sure this is a gender thing. I mean, there are plenty of examples of women engaging in unconscionable violence against the family – Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, that doctor from Illinois (I can’t remember her name). The interesting thing is that many of these and other women who murder their children are found NGRI. It must be insanity, we reason, for a woman to kill her children. I can’t think of a single case where a man who killed his kids was found NGRI. To be sure, this is a bit of a separate issue, because ABP is talking about IPV – not killing of kids. But I’m sure there are plenty of examples of women killing their partners (anyone know the data on this?). When a man kills a women in any context it is not a good thing – but it is especially vituperative when it is done in the company of the child. My point is that we have cases where women act in violent ways that don’t make sense to us, just like these men have done. It doesn’t make sense for a father to kill the mother of his children in front of the children. It just doesn’t. If we could figure out the cause or how to prevent it – now that would be something to be thankful for…
-------------------------------------------

Thanks to Patch for raising these questions, and for providing me with an opportunity to offer some information about the role of gender in domestic homicide -- that is, intimate partner homicide as well as filicide, or the murder of one's own child(ren).

So, is domestic homicide a "gender thing"? This is a good question. There are a couple of issues that are important to address in order to answer this question.

First, a good way to determine whether gender plays a role in intimate partner homicide is to examine patterns in national data. According to a recent BJS report on intimate homicide trends, since 1975 the number of women killed by an intimate partner has outpaced the number of men killed by an intimate partner. While the margin of difference was relatively small in 1975 (roughly 1.2 female victims for every male victim), by 2005 male intimate homicides (but not female intimate homicides) had declined drastically, putting the ratio at roughly 3.6 female victims for every male victim:


In addition, female murder victims are ten times more likely than male murder victims to have been killed by an intimate partner (3% of all male murders are committed by intimate partners, compared to about one third of all female murders). So, speaking in general terms, intimate partner homicide is a gendered crime to the extent that women are victimized much more frequently than men.

Beyond that is the issue of women's versus men's use of lethal violence in intimate relationships. As Patch pointed out, women do kill their intimate partners. However, there is substantial evidence -- and not in just feminist scholarship, by the way, but also in "mainstream" criminological scholarship -- that most women who kill their intimate partners had experienced a history of violent victimization by that partner. According to Dugan, Nagin, & Rosenfeld (1999), one of the "consistent findings" of IPV research is that "victim precipitation is common in cases of women killing their partner, whereas it is unusual in cases of men killing their partner" (p. 190). As with IPV more generally, there is NOT gender symmetry in intimate partner homicide; while women do kill their intimate partners, they do so for different reasons and with far less frequency.

Specifically, while women tend to kill their intimate partners in response to prolonged (and often extremely injurious) abuse, men tend to kill their intimate partners in response to women's attempts to separate or end the relationship. This finding has been supported by both empiricial research (see, for example, Stout & Brown, 1999) as well as anecodtal evidence like the news articles I linked to in my original post. In fact, increased violence following a period of separation or attempted separation is so common that it has its own term: “separation assault” (Mahoney, 1991). It is widely recognized that perhaps the most dangerous period of time for a female IPV victim is immediately after she moves out, files for divorce, or otherwise makes an effort to leave her partner, as this critical time is when lethal violence is particularly likely to occur. Of course there are always exceptions, but in general women kill intimate partners who beat them, while men kill intimate partners who leave them.

Further evidence of the role gender plays in domestic homicide is the frequency with which men commit "familicide," or the murder of one's spouse and children. As Wilson, Daly, & Daniele (1995) point out, women almost never are responsible for crimes in which both their intimate partner and their children are murdered -- this crime is almost exclusively male-perpetrated. Then there is the related issue of suicide. Very few of the women who kill their intimate partners commit suicide afterward, while by some estimates as many as half of male-to-female intimate partner homicides end with the perpetrator committing suicide. Together these findings lend credence to the idea that men's use of lethal violence against their intimate partners is rooted in power, control, and domination. In societies like ours in which gender is power, we can safely assume that intimate partner homicide is a gendered event.

Finally, there is evidence to suggest that filicide -- the murder of one's child(ren) -- follows similar patterns. A recent Journal of Family Violence study examined filicides in Quebec by sex of and presence of self-destructive behaviors in the perpetrator (Leveillee, Marleau, & Dube, 2007). The authors note that men who kill their children often do so within the context of IPV, while this tends not to be the case for women. In addition, depressive disorders are more common among filicidal women than men who exhibit no self-destructive behaviors:

"[M]en compared to women are more likely to commit spousal homicide, to kill a higher number of victims, to be going through a conjugal separation, to have committed conjugal violence, to have threatened suicide, and to have threatened to kill their spouse. For the group of individuals who commit no self-destructive acts, women are more likely to present with a depressive disorder, whereas men are more likely to [have] maltreated their children. Men who do not commit a self-destructive act are characterized by a significantly higher likelihood of maltreatment against their children and of tyrannical discipline, whereas men who commit a self-destructive act perpetrate filicide as a means of reprisal against their spouse. Results underscore the importance of considering the different groups of individuals who commit filicide as a function of sex as well as presence or absence of self-destructive behaviour" (p. 287).

One last thing about NGRI verdicts for women who kill their children. Yes it is true that women who kill their children sometimes are found NGRI. While I am not as familiar with this literature as I am with the domestic homicide literature, I do know that these verdicts often are returned in cases in which the mother suffered from a diagnosed and documented mental illness. In Andrea Yates' case it was postpartum psychosis. She had been institutionalized several times, had attempted suicide more than once, and by all accounts was in exceedingly fragile mental health at the time she killed her children. Similarly, Regina Moss Monroe (who threw her three children to their deaths off a bridge because she believed that God had instructed her to do so) also had a diagnosed mental illness. Does this mean that all women who kill their kids are insane? No. Do some women kill their kids simply out of convenience, or poor anger management skills, or neglect? Of course. Does it make the deaths of the children any less tragic when the mother is declared insane? By no means. But it is important to note that, especially in some of the most well-publicized cases, filicidal mothers often have a history of, well, insanity. This may be less true for filicidal fathers because these murders tend to happen in the context of intimate partner homicide, as I mentioned above. (For more on issues of gender and mental illness in cases of maternal filicide, see West & Lichtenstein, 2006).

Gendered patterns in intimate partner homicide (as well as filicide and familicide) attest to major differences in men's and women's use of and motivations for committing lethal violence against intimate partners. Sadly, men's use of lethal violence often boils down to "if I can't have you, no-one can," even (and sometimes especially) if that means killing the children (and/or themselves) to emphasize the point. While there may be isolated cases of women killing their partners for similar reasons, the totality of the evidence demonstrates that domestic homicide is indeed a "gender thing".

1. Dugan, L., Nagin, D., & Rosenfeld, R. (1999). Explaining the decline in intimate partner homicide: The effects of changing domesticity, women's status, and domestic violence resources. Homicide Studies, 3(3), 187-214.
   
2. Mahoney, M. R. (1991). Legal images of battered women: Redefining the issue of separation. Michigan Law Review, 90, 1-94.
3. Stout, K. & Brown, P. (1995). Legal and social differences between men and women who kill intimate partners. Affilia, 10, 194-205.
   
4. West, D. & Lichtenstein, B. (2006). Andrea Yates and the criminalization of the filicidal maternal body. Feminist Criminology, 1(3), 173-187).
5. Wilson, M., Daly, M., & Dainele, A. (1995). Familicide: the killing of spouse and children. Aggressive Behavior, 21(4), 275-291.
   

Clemency in Colorado

An interesting piece - check it out. I will write more commentary later, but I think this is an important issue. I am concerned about the role of race and gender in clemency decisions, but I am happy that the state read and reflected on recent scholarship.

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6754209