Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T18:50:05.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feminism, Punishment and the Potential of Empowerment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Laureen Snider
Laureen Snider
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper argues that understanding the potential roles law and the state can play as transformative tools in counter-hegemonic feminist struggle requires that they be historically and structurally situated and contextualized, for both can be and have been facilitative as well as repressive. The paper examines, first, the negative consequences of using criminal law and the criminal justice system as instruments of reform, arguing that criminal law lacks transformative potential because of its particular role vis-à-vis the welfare state, dominant ideologies, and the struggle for change. Rights struggles are examined next, and it is argued that feminists should engage with law only under certain specified conditions to advance particular aims. The paper suggests some legal dead ends feminists should avoid, then examines alternative strategies which, it is argued, have the potential to empower and thereby to produce real and lasting improvements in women's lives.

Résumé

Cet article défend la thèse selon laquelle la compréhension des rôles potentiels que peuvent jouer la loi et l'État dans la lutte féministe contre-hégémonique en tant qu'outils de transformation nécessite qu'ils soient d'abord historiquement et structurellement situés et contextualisés, les deux pouvant être et ayant été à la fois des outils facilitateurs et des armes répressives. Cet article étudie d'abord les conséquences négatives de l'utilisation du droit criminel et du système de justice criminel en tant qu'instruments de réforme, opposant que le droit criminel ne présente pas le potentiel transformateur nécessaire en raison de son rôle particulier vis-à-vis l'État-providence, des idéologies dominantes et de la lutte pour le changement. Les luttes pour les droits sont ensuite étudiées et l'auteure soutient que les féministes ne devraient se servir du droit que pour atteindre quelques buts particuliers et ce, seulement à certaines conditions bien précises. L'auteure énonce enfin quelques écueils à éviter et termine par l'examen de stratégies alternatives qui, invoque-t-elle, ont le potentiel de donner du pouvoir et, par conséquent, de produire des effets réels et durables sur la vie des femmes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 9 , Issue 01: Law, Feminism and Sexuality/Droit, féminisme et sexualité , Spring/printemps 1994 , pp. 75 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Comack, E., “Legal Recognition of the ‘Battered Wife Syndrome’: A Victory for Women?” (Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology Meetings, San Francisco, November 1991)Google Scholar, citing Ursel, J., “Considering the Impact of the Battered Women's Movement on the State: The Example of Manitoba” in Comack, E. & Brickey, S., eds., The Social Basis of Law: Critical Readings in the Sociology of Law, 2d ed. (Toronto: Garamond, 1991) 261Google Scholar.

2. Smart, C., Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989) at 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Pegahmagabow, M., Wasauksing Ojibwa Band Councillor, cited in Smith ** (1993)Google Scholar.

4. Gilligan, C., In a Different Voice (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

5. Fine, R. “Book Review of The Power to Punish by D. Garland & J. Young, eds.” (1986) 14:1International Journal of Sociology of Law 72Google Scholar.

6. Hunt, A., “Rights and Social Movements: Counter-Hegemonic Strategies” (1990) 17:3Journal of Law and Society 309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979)Google Scholar.

8. Smart, supra note 2.

9. Cohen, S., “The Punitive City: Notes on the Dispersal of Social Control” in Contemporary Crises, vol. 3, (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1979) 339Google Scholar; Cohen, S., Visions of Social Control (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Polity Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Melossi, D., “Strategies of Social Control in Capitalism: A Comment on Recent Work” (1980) 4 Contemporary Crises 381Google Scholar.

10. Ursel, J.,“The State and the Maintenance of Patriarchy: A Case Study of Family, Labour and Welfare Legislation in Canada” in Dickinson, J. & Russell, B., eds., Family, Economy and State (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1986) 150Google Scholar.

11. Hagan, J., “New Legal Scholarship: Problems and Prospects” (1986) 6 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 35Google Scholar; Ericson, R.. Baranek, P. & Chan, J., Negotiating Control: A Study of New Sources (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Cohen, Visions of Social Control, supra note 9.

12. Henry, S. & Milovanovic, D., “Constitutive Criminology: The Maturation of Critical Theory” (1991) 29:2Criminology 293 at 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Fudge, J., Personal Communication, 15 May 1991Google Scholar; Ursel, J., Private Lives, Public Policy: 100 Years of State Intervention in the Family (Toronto: Women's Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Hunt, A., “The Ideology of Law: Advances and Problems in Recent Applications of the Concept of Ideology to the Analysis of Law” (1985) 19 Law and Society Review 11Google Scholar; Hunt, supra note 6.

14. Maroney, H. J., “Using Gramsci for Women: Feminism and the Quebec State, 1960–80” (1988) 17:3Feminist Perspectives on the Canadian State 26Google Scholar.

15. Palmer, B., Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800–1991 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992)Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966)Google Scholar.

16. Sugarman, D., “Law, Economy and the State in England, 1750–1914” in Sugarman, D., ed., Legality, Ideology and the State (London: Academic Press, 1983) c. 9Google Scholar.

17. Comack, supra note 1 at 5.

18. Findlay, S., “Facing the State: The Politics of the Women's Movement Reconsidered” in Maroney, H. & Luxton, M., eds., Feminism and Political Economy (Toronto: Methuen, 1987) 31 at 32Google Scholar.

19. Sumner, C., Reading Ideologies: An Investigation Into the Marxist Theory of Ideology and Law (New York: Academic Press, 1978).at 6Google Scholar.

20. P. Marchak, “Rational Capitalism and Women as Labour” in Maroney & Luxton, eds., supra note 18.

21. MacKinnon, C., Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; MacKinnon, C. “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory” (1982) 7:3Signs 515Google Scholar; MacKinnon, C. “Feminism, Marxism and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence” (1983) Signs 8:2635Google Scholar; Howe, A., “The Problem of Privatized Injuries: Feminist Strategies for Litigation” (1990) 10 Society 119Google Scholar; Gilligan, supra note 4.

22. Brants, C. & Kok, E., “Penal Sanctions as a Feminist Strategy: A Contradiction in Terms?” (1986) 14 International Journal of Sociology of Law 269Google Scholar.

23. Pitch, T. “From Oppressed to Victims: Collective Actors and the Symbolic Use of the Criminal Justice System” (1990) 10 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 103Google Scholar.

24. Ratner, R. S., “Rethinking the Sociology of Crime & Justice” in Ratner, R. S. & McMullan, J. L., eds., State Control: Criminal Justice Policy in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

25. Under the guise of protecting the public, criminal law and its institutions function to stigmatize and de-legitimate despised individuals, causes or groups.

26. Ericson, R., Baranek, P. & Chan, J., Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Ericson, Baraken & Chan, Negotiating Control, supra note. 11.

27. Spitzer, S., “Towards a Marxian Theory of Deviance” (1976) 22 Social Problems 638CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Ursel, supra note 1.

29. Ekland-Olson, S. & Martin, S., “Organizational Compliance with Court Ordered Reform” (1988) 22:2Law and Society Review 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ratner, supra note 24.

30. Lawyers, radical and otherwise, and professional advocates for prisoners such as the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry Societies, have won several significant legal victories in Canada since the entrenchment of the Charter of Rights in the Constitution in 1982. Constitutional challenges occurred regularly in United States throughout the 20th century, with notable victories coming in the late 1960s and 1970s. See Irwin, J., Prisons in Turmoil (Boston: Little Brown, 1980)Google Scholar. However, as Mandel and Jackson have pointed out, legal rights are not automatically or easily incorporated into bureaucratic routine. See Mandel, M., The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada (Toronto: Wall & Thompson, 1989)Google Scholar; M. Mandel, “Democracy, Class and Canadian Sentencing Law” in Comack & Brickey, eds., supra note 1; Jackson, M., Prisoners of Isolation: Solitary Confinement in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983)Google Scholar. The impenetrability and secretiveness of prison life makes external surveillance almost impossible to maintain, because the curtain can only be breeched briefly, after the fact, when murders or riots have occurred.

31. Chambliss, W., “The Political Economy of Crime” (1974) 2:2Theory and Society 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Immarigeon, R. & Chesney-Lind, M., Women's Prisons: Overcrowded and Overused (San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1992)Google Scholar.

33. W. Chambliss, “On Lawmaking” in Brickey & Comack, eds., supra note 1; Mandel, supra note 1; Snider, L., “Legal Aid, Reform and the Welfare State” (1986) 24 Crime and Social Justice_210Google Scholar; Ratner, supra note 24.

34. Quinney, R., “Crime Control in a Capitalist Society” in Taylor, I., Walton, P. & Young, J., eds., Critical Criminology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)Google Scholar; Ratner, ibid. 35.

35. Geller, G., “Feminism and Criminal ‘Justice’: An Uneasy Partnership” (1988) 17:3Feminist Perspectives on the Canadian State 100Google Scholar; Faith, K., “Justice, Where Art Thou? And Do We Care?” (1989) 1:1Journal of Human Justice 77Google Scholar.

36. This discussion focuses on male assault of female partners. We have too few studies on lesbian or gay battering to know whether similar patterns prevail in these “family” units or not.

37. “Battering Victims Sentenced” Toronto Star (10 August 1986) A8Google ScholarPubMed.

38. Winnipeg Free Press (18 March 1992).

39. Snider, L., “The Potential of the Criminal Justice System to Promote Feminist Concerns” (1990) 10 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 143Google Scholar. See also Caringella-MacDonald, S., “Marxist and Feminist Interpretations on the Aftermath of Rape Reforms” (1987) 12 Contemporary Crises 4Google Scholar; Klein, D., “Violence Against Women: Some Considerations Regarding its Causes and its Elimination” (1981) 27:1Crime and Delinquency 64Google Scholar; Elias, R., “Which Victim Movement: The Politics of Victim Policy” in Skogan, W. et al. , eds., Victims and Criminal Justice (Berkeley: Sage Publications, 1989)Google Scholar; Morgan, P., “From Battered Wife to Program Clkient: The State's Shaping of Social Problems” (1981) 9 Kapitalistate 17Google Scholar; Geller, supra note 35; Roberts, J., Sexual Assault Legislation in Canada: An Evaluation Report, vols. 1–9 (Canada: Department of Justice, Minister of Supply and Services, 1991)Google Scholar.

40. Ursel, supra note 1.

41. This would seem to indicate that feminist pressure was having an effect on government attitudes before policy was changed.

42. Ursel, supra note 1 at 272.

43. Ibid., at 275.

44. Canada, Solicitor General, Bulletin on Reported and Unreported Crimes, Canadian Urban Victimization Survey #1-4 (1984)Google Scholar.

45. Ursel, supra note 1 at 279.

46. Walker, S., Sense and Nonsense About Crime (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1985)Google Scholar.

47. Expressive offences refer to those committed for primarily emotional motives, as ends in themselves, to demonstrate sexual prowess or win status in a peer group, for example. Rape, especially group rape, much juvenile delinquency and recreational drug use are examples of crimes that are frequently expressive in nature. Corporate crime, professional theft, fraud and bank robbery, on the other hand, are typically instrumental offences committed as a means to an end, the end frequently being monetary gain. As more “rational” offences, they are more amenable to preventive strategies that alter the cost and payoff structure of the offence. Like all ideal-type dichotomies, the distinction between expressive and instrumental offences, while useful for classificatory purposes, is never absolute. Most offences (and offenders) exhibit some features of both types.

48. Walker, supra note 46.

49. Ursel, supra note 1 at 274.

50. Roberts, supra note 39; Spohn, D. & Horney, J., Rape Law Reform: A Grassroots Revolution and Its Impact (New York: Plenum Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Sherman, L. W. & Berk, R. A., “The Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic Violence” (1984) 49:2American Sociological Review 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Dunford, F., Huizinga, D. & Elliott, D., “The Role of Arrest in Domestic Assault: The Omaha Police Experiment” _(1990) 28:2Criminology_ 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Dobash, R. & Dobash, R. E., Social Change (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., at 203.

55. Ibid., at 180.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Jaffe, P., Wolfe, D. A., Telford, A. & Austin, G., “The Impact of Police Charges in Incidents of Wife Abuse” (1986) 1:1Journal of Family Violence 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Dobash & Dobash, supra note 53 at 183.

60. Ibid., at 183–84.

61. Ibid., at 192–93.

62. Ibid., at 199.

63. Ibid., at 206–09.

64. Horton, J., “The Rise of the Right: A Global View” (1981) 15:7Crime and Social Justice 7Google Scholar; Ratner, R. & McMullen, J., “Social Control and the Rise of the Exceptional State in Britain, United States and Canada” (1983) ?? Crime and Social Justice 31Google Scholar.

65. Elias, supra note 39.

66. Ursel, supra note 1.

67. Dobash, R., Dobash, R. E. & Gutteridge, S., The Imprisonment of Women (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

68. Bartholomew, A. & Hunt, A., “What's Wrong with Rights?” (1990) 9:1Journal of Inequality 1 at 6–7Google Scholar.

69. Fudge, J. & Glassbeek, H., “A Politics of Rights: A Politics with Little Class” (1992) 1:1Social and Legal Studies 45 at 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70. Lahey, K., “Civil Remedies for Women: Catching the Critical Edge” (1988) 17:3Feminist Perspectives on the Canadian State 92Google Scholar.

71. As we have seen, changes in criminal law tend to enlarge the domain of punishment while offering no concrete benefits to women at risk. At best they might have the potential for symbolic advance but not structural change. The distinction is a crucial one because it means the everyday lives of women are unlikely to be made better by, for example, new criminal laws proscribing heavier punishment for rapists, but they may be transformed by statutes delivering higher wages, day care or paid maternity leave.

72. Handler, J., “Social Movements and the Legal System: A Theory of Law Reform and Social Change” (New York: Academic Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Handler, J., “Dependent People, the State and the Modern/Postmodern Search for the Dialogic Community” (1988) 35 UCLA Law Review 998Google Scholar; Cohen, supra note 9.

73. Pashukanis, E. B.Law and Marxism (London: Ink Links, 1978)Google Scholar; Balbus, I. D., Dialectics of Legal Repression (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1973)Google Scholar; Balbus, I., “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on the ‘Relative’ Autonomy of the Law” (1977) 11 Law and Society Review 571Google Scholar.

74. Fudge, J., “What Do We Mean by Law and Social Transformation?” (1990) 5 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 47Google Scholar; Fudge & Glassbeek, supra note 69; Bartholomew & Hunt, supra note 68; Tushnet, M., “An Essay on Rights” (1984) 62 Texas Law Review 1363Google Scholar; Herman, D., “Are We Family: Lesbian Rights and Women's Liberation” (1990) 28:4Osgoode Hall L.J. 789Google Scholar; Herman, D., “Beyond the Rights Debate” (1993) 2 Social and Legal Studies 25Google Scholar; Schneider, E., “The Dialectic of Rights and Politics: Perspectives from the Women's Movement” (1986) 61 New York University Law Review 589Google Scholar.

75. Smart, supra note 2 at 130.

76. S. Gavigan, “Women and Abortion in Canada: What's Law Got to Do With It?” in Maroney & Luxton, eds., supra norw 18 at 272. See also Smart, ibid., at 138–59; Pitch, supra note 23; Fineman, M., “Implementing Equality: Ideology, Contradiction and Social Change” (1983) Wisconsin Law Review 790Google Scholar; Howe, supra note 21; Lahey, supra note 70.

77. Gavigan, ibid.; Smart, ibid.

78. Findlay, supra note 18 at 31.

79. Warskett, R., “Valuing Women's Work: Dealing with the Limits of State Reform” (1988) 17:3Feminist Perspectives on the Canadian State 67Google Scholar.

80. Mitchell, L., “What Happens on the Way to the Bank: Some Questions About Pay Equity” (1988) 17:3Feminist Perspectives on the Canadian State 64Google Scholar.

81. Fineman, supra note 76; Fineman, M., “Dominant Discourse, Professional Language and Legal Change in Child Custody Decisionmaking” (1988) 10:4Harvard Law Review 727CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Weitzman, L., The Divorce Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

83. Geller, supra note 35; Daly, K. & Chesney-Lind, M., “Feminism and Criminology” (1988) 5:4Justice Quarterly 101Google Scholar; Rafter, N. H., “Chastizing the Unchaste: Social Control Functions of a Women's Reformatory, 1894–1931” in Cohen, S. & Scull, A., eds., Social Control and the State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983)Google Scholar; Rafter, N., Partial Justice (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

84. Williams, P., “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights” (1987) 22 Harvard Civil Rights—Civil Liberties Law Review 401Google Scholar; Herman, “Are We Family …”, supra note 74; Herman, “Beyond the Rights Debate”, supra note 74.

85. Smart, supra note 2.

86. See, for example, Dodge, B., “More Sinned Against: Women and the Law in 19th Century Ontario” (Trent University Archives, Peterborough, Ont., 1988)Google Scholar [unpublished paper]; Chunn, D. E., “Boys Will Be Men, Girls Will Be Mothers: The Legal Regulation of Childhood in Toronto and Vancouver, 1920–45” (Paper presented at the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Meetings, Windsor. June 1988) 1Google Scholar; McLaren, J. & Lowman, J., “Prostitution Law Experiment in Canda, 1892–1920: Unravelling Myth and Reality” (Paper presented at the Canadian Law and Society Association, Windsor, 1988)Google Scholar.

87. Smart, supra note 2.

88. Zipper, J. & Sevenhuijsen, S., “Surrogacy: Feminist Notions of Motherhood Reconsidered” in Stanworth, M., ed., Reproductive Technologies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

89. McLaren & Lowman, supra note 86; Rafter, Partial Justice, supra note 83; Walkowitz, J., Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Garland, D., Punishment and Welfare (London: Gower Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

90. Hamilton, R. “The Collusion with Patriarchy: A Psychoanalytic Account” in Hamilton, R. & Barrett, M., eds., The Politics of Diversity (Montreal: Book Centre, 1986) 385Google Scholar.

91. Bliss, M., A Living Profit: Studies in the Social History of Canadian Business, 1883–1911 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974)Google Scholar.

92. MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory”, supra note 21; MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory”, supra note 21; Howe, supra note 21; Pitch, supra note 23.

93. Smart, supra note 2 at 22.

94. Gilligan, supra note 4.

95. MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory”, supra note 21; McKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence”, supra note 21.

96. Kellough, G., The Abortion Controversy: A Study of Law, Culture and Social Change (Ph.D. Thesis, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 1990)Google Scholar.

97. Kellough, G., “Pro-Choice Politics and Postmodernist Theory” in Carroll, Wm., ed., Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice: Studies in the Politics of Counter-Hegemony (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1992) 81Google Scholar.

98. Hunt, supra note 6.

99. Kellough, supra note 97 at 16.

100. Hunt, supra note 6 at 313–14.

101. Dahl, T. S., “Taking Women As a Starting Point: Building Women's Law” (1986) 14 International Journal of Sociology of Law 239Google Scholar.

102. Knopp, F., “Community Solutions to Sexual Violence” in Pepinsky, H. & Quinney, R., eds., Criminology as Peacemaking (Bloomington, IL.: Indiana University Press, 1991) 181Google Scholar.

103. Carby, H., “White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood” in The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982)Google Scholar; Anthias, F. & Yuval-Davis, N., “Contextualizing Feminism—Gender, Ethnic and Class Divisions” (1983) 15: 62 Feminist Review 59Google Scholar.

104. Sugar, F. & Fox, L., “‘Nistum Peyako Seht'Wawin Iskwewak’: Breaking Chains” (1989) 3:2C.J.W.L. 465 at 482Google Scholar.

105. Smart, supra note 2.