Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Publication
Hastings Journal on Gender and the Law
Volume
34
Abbreviation
Hastings J. on Gender & Law
First Page
55
Abstract
This essay considers gender violence as a consequence of systemic problems rooted in patriarchal structures, transacted through poverty and inequality, and embedded in a historically conditioned political economy. It is informed by the scholarship that propounds the need to develop community responses independent of the carceral system as a means to address the systemic source factors that contribute to Intimate Partner Violence (“IPV”), with attention to restorative and transformative justice approaches (RJ/TJ). This essay advances anti-violence scholarship to suggest the need to reconceptualize gender discrimination, poverty, and inequality as cause and consequence of social ills, and, moreover, to contribute to social theories about harm. That is, to understand the political economy as the structural environment from which the social pathology of inequality originates — a factor inextricably related to IPV — as a legacy of colonialism and slavery. In sum, these matters are best considered in historical context and addressed through tools and approaches offered by RJ/TJ.