Gendered Violence Regimes: Context, Policy and Practice in Intimate Partner Violence in France and Sweden

This paper argues for more complex analyses of welfare state gender regimes by focusing on a key element frequently forgotten in cross-national comparisons: intimate partner violence (IPV) and responses thereto, especially criminal justice system (CJS) responses. We return to the notions of gender regime and welfare regimes, and critically elaborate them through the notion of gendered violence regime, to analyse gendered socio-political and judicial institutions and practices. According to Haney (2004), welfare state regimes, gender regimes and judicial regimes tend to match together in how policies are named, debated and implemented. However, many comparative welfare analyses do not attend to violence; moreover, violence and responses thereto are rooted in institutions and inequality regimes (Walby 2008).

Building on earlier work (Hearn, Strid et al. 2016), we use comparative methods to address discursive dynamics and judicial practices in France and Sweden in the light of transformations in gender regimes, illustrative of broader contextualizing and theoretical concerns. First, we review relevant laws and policy, inspired by the Critical Frame Analysis (Verloo 2007), noting differences, similarities and convergences in welfare and judicial systems. Second, we focus on judicial practices in two countries, particularly in CJS treatment of IPV. In Sweden, more explicitly gendered structural policy is accompanied by cases being constructed and treated more individually by professionals with real expertise on domestic violence; while in more corporatist regime France, only very serious cases are so treated, and less individual, more proceduralised assessment of cases by workdays lost is used. CJS procedure impact the construction and definition of the problem, especially regarding how professionals consider the gendering and seriousness of the violence in making a case.

Finally, we critically interrogate how useful “regime” typologies are, including in providing avenues for intersectional analyses combining sociological theories of change (Muller 2005) and transformation (Felstiner et al. 1980).