Violence against women was once sanctioned by law.

Joanne Belknap writes, "until the 1970's, very little was known about battered women and their batterers. This is not because battering was nonexistent or less common prior to the 1970s. Rather the abuse of women by their intimate male partners was considered unimportant or even acceptable by those with power."

Belknap points out that many of our early laws "legalized some forms of woman battering." For example "the rule of thumb allowed husbands to beat their wives with rods no larger than the thickness of their thumbs." North Carolina had a "curtain rule" which restricted police intervention (beyond the household curtain) in wife battering only in those cases where permanent injury to the wife resulted. Also, there was the "stitch rule," which permitted arrest of the battering husband "only if an injury required stitches."

In Colonial America, women were usually treated as appendages of men. In fact, the very being or legal existence of the woman was suspended during marriage. Marriage for women was often a form of incarceration, since the husband could, by law, discipline his wife in the same manner as his own children.

Since men made and interpreted laws, the law often treated the murder of a spouse differently, depending on who was murdered. For example,in England, women who murdered their spouses were burned at the stake while men were hanged. The punishment was more severe for women because it was considered treason"to murder one of (the king's) valued subjects." On the other hand "men who killed their wives were viewed as committing a crime similar to the killing of a servant or animal.

British common law further codified the traditional male authority over their wives and children "without regard to the judgments of others." In our American tradition this became "the power of moderate chastisement" and according this power was exercised in the same manner that a man was allowed to correct his apprentices and his children. As recently as 1976, in fact, there was a Pennsylvania town ordinance that "sanctioned a husband's violence against his wife provided he did not do so after ten o'clock in the evening and on Sundays."

Even today despite a heightened awareness on the part of the public and law enforcement agencies on the prevalence of spousal abuse, according to a survey of 324 law enforcement officials which revealed that "a substantial number (of police officials) are uninformed concerning the reality of the complex dynamics involved in battering relationships." Also, many of the officers showed "considerable support for the perception that victims exhibit some behavior which causes the abuse."

So, domestic violence against women has its roots in our history and a legacy of laws that were made, interpreted, and enforced by men. The subjugation of women is deeply ingrained in societies attitudes, the basis of which are the legacy of patriarchal interpretations of the rights of women.

Source:
Imogene L. Moyer, The Changing Roles of Women in the Criminal Justice System. (1992). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press (227-247)

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