Gender, Violence, and Law

The law has been the major site of advocacy, reform efforts and social change in relation to a variety of complex social problems. Gendered violence is one of them. After nearly three decades of advocacy and law reform, what can we understand about current legal responses to, and engagement with, issues of gendered violence? This book aims squarely at critically analyzing legal responses to, interventions in, and remedies for violence against women, with an overarching aim of assessing the extent to which the law has been - or could still be - effectively utilized in the project to end violence in women's lives. Drawing on Canadian, U.S. and UK jurisprudence and spanning a variety of contexts of gendered violence (including domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and rape), Melanie Randall illustrates the persistent complexities and challenges surrounding legal understandings of and responses to violence against women.

Melanie Randall is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Western Ontario. She held the Scotiabank Professorship with the Centre for Research on Violence Against Women and Children, at the University of Western Ontario from 1999-2004. Her current teaching and research interests are in the areas of sex discrimination and legal theory. Her publications include articles on the issue of women’s autonomy rights, and on sexual violence in women’s lives, including state accountability for responding to and remedying this violence, particularly through law.