Women, Policing and Male Violence

Edited by Jalna Hanmer, Jill Radford, Elizabeth Stanko Routledge, 1989
Review by Wendy Fidkalo-Weight

Women, Policing and Male Violence is an edited collection of research devoted to exploring police response to violence against women and evaluating current reforms in four Western democratic countries: Holland, Australia, England and the United States. This work exposes the failure of police to treat violence against women as "real crime" and, by uncovering the needs of women, forms a significant beginning in our exploration of how the policing of male violence can be improved.

Jill Radford traces the history of women and police in England, using newspaper excerpts to support her view that women's concern to combat male violence formed part of the call for suffrage and for female representation among police officers. She argues that early nineteenth century concerns over violence directed at women and children by men, including the failure of police and the judicial system to treat such violence seriously, and the intimidation of interrogation, parallel those being voiced by women today.

Of particular interest is Radford's presentation of how, after initial refusals to accept women as legitimate police officers, government institutions ultimately usurped feminist organizations to their own ends of controlling women. The clarity of Radford's work is useful in understanding the principles by which patriarchal institutions sustain themselves in the guise of progress and by which they diffuse the energy of feminists working for real change. She uses this historical perspective of male violence and policing to urge feminists to be cautious of superficial and tokenistic reforms which ultimately serve to uphold and strengthen the status quo.

Elizabeth Stanko and Kathleen Ferraro of the U.S., Suzanne Hatty of Australia, Jalna Hanmer of Britain and Olga Zoomer of the Netherlands describe their research into the policing of violence against women with a focus on the rank and file police officer's response to wife battering. The contributors review a wide variety of studies across several countries, including Canada, documenting recent government action on violence against women. They examine the effects of pro-arrest policies currently presented as the most successful way of protecting women and ensuring their safety.

Through the information gathered in their interviews, the authors clarify the reasons why police officers are still reticent to lay charges and discuss the problems associated with implementing pro-arrest policies in police forces where the masculine rank and file culture continues to excuse the batterer and blame the victim. Public violence is viewed by the police as "real crime" while private violence is seen as an issue to be resolved through mediation. Coupled with the perception that responding to family assault is a social service, wife-battering is considered by many officers as a low status and non-policing issue.

Though somewhat repetitive in their presentation, the findings of these five major studies show police officers are likely to view women as tormentors, making violence a justifiable response, or as helpless and unwilling to change. Officers, the vast majority of whom are men, see male violence as a natural and understandable response. Throughout the book these attitudes are contrasted with the voices of women experiencing the violence as unprovoked and highly debilitating to their self-esteem. These invisible effects, ignored by a male stream legal and academic standard which defines violence as physical harm and does not account for psychological harm, may be the most significant of all.

The most common police response to wife-battering involves mediation and allowing men "cooling off time," thus minimizing and supporting the violence and working only to sanction that which is considered overly public or overly excessive. Olga Zoomer notes how even the language used by police officers minimizes the significance of violence, specifically the use of terms such as "domestic dispute," "family dispute," and "marriage problems" in lieu of more appropriate terms such as (wo)manslaughter.

Although much of the book focuses on the use of pro-arrest policies to ensure the safety of women, the authors point out that such policies can lead to a greater loss of control for women in situations where their real need is to gain control. Further, the authors highlight the contradiction inherent in feminist promotion of pro-arrest policies which tacitly support the use of policing as a method of social control. It is still debated, Kathleen Ferraro asserts, whether the existing legal system, designed to maintain women's subordinate status, can work to support women. She believes that to empower women rather than reinforce dependency, women must have knowledge of the law, its implementation, and an understanding of their own needs. Such reforms involve a fundamental shift in police attitudes toward women and women's autonomy.

The authors acknowledge that women's lives and experiences of policing and violence are affected by the interaction of differing structures of power related to race, class, age, and sexuality, although much of the research focuses on white, heterosexual women. Emphasis is placed on the need for feminists to hold police accountable for differential enforcement in order to ensure new legal protection is not used to separate women into "deserving" and "undeserving" groups.

The selection of work from Western, democratic, capitalist countries negates the value of this book as an internationally representative work. Within each of the countries the research also fails to examine the situation of rural women, living outside of urban areas with large police forces. As I closed the final pages, I felt unresolved and full of questions. Nonetheless, the book had done what the authors intended, in opening the issues of policing and male violence to feminist critique, thus providing an excellent new resource for Women's Studies courses and for all of us who are working to end violence against women.

Wendy Fidkalo-Weight is Co-coordinator of the Manitoba Teachers' Society Equality In Education Resource Team. She has recently completed her Master of Education degree at the University of Manitoba, focusing on gender issues in science and technology.