WUNRN
For copy of Full Text, contact Valerie Hudson - vhudson@bushschool.tamu.edu
What is the Relationship
Between Inequity in Family Law and Violence Against Women?
Approaching the Issue of
Legal Enclaves
by
Valerie
M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen
Brigham
Young University
Abstract: “Family law” is the term applied to the legal regulation of marriage and parenthood within a society, and may serve to express a society’s accepted ideals concerning male-female relations. Adopting a feminist evolutionary analytic (FEA) approach, we hypothesize that nation-states with higher degrees of inequity in family law favoring males, codifying an evolutionary legacy of male dominance and control over female reproduction, will experience higher rates of violence against women. This hypothesis is borne out in conventional statistical analysis, both bivariate and multivariate, suggesting that policy attention to family law so as to make it more concordant with CEDAW norms may have salutatory effects on women’s physical security over time. These results may also have policy implications for societies with, or contemplating, enclaves of inequitable family law.