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Infanticide stands out as a crime which, in England and Wales, has been marked for at least 200 years by deep-rooted continuities in its representation and treatment by both the criminal justice system and the media, despite the massive political, economic, social, legislative and cultural changes that occurred over this period. Particularly remarkable about this long-standing discourse is its routine emphasis that the guilty mother is also a victim of tragic circumstances that led to the crime and deserving of sympathetic treatment. It also invariably sets infanticide apart as a ‘special case’ which does not necessarily fit with either medical or legal definitions of diminished criminal responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this framing of women who commit infanticide stresses not only their ‘normality’ prior to the offence but also their ‘respectability’, a sharp contrast to the sometimes overtly misogynistic representation of other types of women offenders. This chapter argues that it is above all ‘respectability’ that profoundly shaped the cultural script relating to infanticide in England and Wales between 1800 and 2000, and that this continues to exert a powerful legacy on the relatively small number of cases that now comes before the courts in the twenty-first century.

Killing Eve (BBC 2018–2022) has been hailed as a feminist television show. Its cinematic production values call upon a history of espionage on screen, encompassing international intrigue and glamorised hyperviolent action sequences. Is this violent aesthetic a cathartic reference to newly visible feminist discourse or are we just being sold a new version of old fantasies?

In this chapter Killing Eve is examined in relation to a history of violent women spies on screen, from Emma Peel (The Avengers 1961–1969) to Sydney Bristow (Alias 2001–2006). While Villanelle (Jody Comer) appears to present an amoral account of postfeminist ‘empowerment’, Eve (Sandra Oh) carries echoes of second-wave feminist concerns with community, morality and ethics. With each season the differences between Villanelle and Eve unravel, raising questions about what constitutes ‘quality’ television and how that might intersect with old-fashioned ideas about women's liberation. While the show depicts each character as ‘liberated’ in some respects, they are both entangled in corporate nets which repeatedly put them in danger and pull them back into violence as a form of labour.

Violence continues to escalate globally, despite efforts that are being made to curb it. Even though men constitute the majority of the perpetrators of violence, it is indisputable that some of the violence is also perpetrated by women. Qualitative in nature, this chapter is located within the interpretive research approach. Arguments made in this chapter are grounded in a socialist feminism approach, which foregrounds the importance of class and gender. Thus, this chapter drew from desk review and an empirical study conducted in Lesotho, utilising the Female Correctional Institution in Lesotho as the study site. The chapter explores women's perpetration of varied forms of violence. It aims at shedding more light on the drivers of violence perpetrated by women. The study unearthed that women's violence is mainly driven by poverty, gender inequalities, lack of social capital and self-defence. The author argues that future theoretical engagements and policy responses to women's violence could benefit from empirical evidence, which critically engages feminist approaches. The chapter is envisaged to contribute to the current debates on feminist approaches to women's violence.

Men typically commit more violent crime than women which has led to the concept that it is a male offence. Consequently, there is a tendency to suggest that female offenders are so atypical and abnormal that they require explanation, rather than accepting that all genders are capable of violent behaviour. Women who kill tend to challenge conceptualisations of normative femininity. Accordingly, in an attempt to understand female violence, historians and criminologists have placed women who kill into explanatory categories. Female murderers have often been portrayed as ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad.’ This framework is responsible for the infantilisation, monsterisation and victimisation of violent women. It has also led to womanhood being put on trial: women are not only condemned for their crimes but also for failing to live up to feminine ideals. Nevertheless, the ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad’ framework can be useful to historians as it is often the only narrative that survives. However, it needs to be recognised that while this framework allows historical perceptions of women's violence to be studied, women's narratives are often absent, distorted or overlooked.

This chapter examines the relationship between neocolonialism, neoliberalism and the overrepresentation of Indigenous women and girls in Canada's criminal justice system. Indigenous women are 60% more likely to be convicted of violent offences than non-Indigenous women and they make up 42% of all federally sentenced women – while First Nations people represent approximately 5% of the total Canadian population. With an abolition feminist and decolonial theoretical framework, we argue that even when Indigenous women do commit violent crimes, their criminalisation is contingent on the legacy of colonialism. This includes the ongoing genocide against Indigenous women and girls and a neoliberal criminal justice system that reproduces gendered racial state violence and perpetrates the portrayal of stereotypes about Indigenous women, rendering them as inherently violent and ‘risky’. We examine why and how such a disproportionate number of Indigenous women end up involved in cycles of violence, with subsequent disputes with the law. This chapter advances the field of feminist criminology by building on feminist analyses of penal abolition to critique global neoliberalism and the interlocking systems that sustain the ongoing violence in which First Nations women and girls are involved.

This chapter offers feminist perspectives on the violence exercised by female avengers in popular audiovisual products about narcotrafficking from Mexico and Colombia. Through the case studies of the narcotelenovela Rosario Tijeras (RCN Televisión, 2010) and the B movie Sanguinarios del M1 (Alonso Ortiz Lara, 2011), we explore how recent Latin American narco-narratives rearticulate the ‘rape-revenge’ film. Following Valencia's conceptualisation of necroempowerment (2012), we argue that female characters respond to rape with ruthless methods in an effort to regain agency. We combine existing literature in feminist film studies with postcolonial readings of the specificities of rape-revenge in the narco-universe where the violence these heroines use as retaliation is already the norm for their male counterparts. A close reading of revenge sequences underscores how vengeance can constitute a cathartic outlet for enraged female characters, challenging stereotypes of feminine passiveness and subverting gender hierarchies. However, it also perpetuates a patriarchal order based on toxic ideals of individual power achieved through bloody methods. We examine how empowerment can entrap female protagonists and serve to differentiate the types of violence that each gender has access to, and we discuss the problematic representation of rape as a transformative moment necessary for women to later become powerful.

Obstetric violence is the mistreatment of women in the setting of obstetric care, which includes preconception, medically assisted reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. Obstetric violence follows and perpetuates the devaluation and subjugation of women in patriarchal societies, where socio-cultural conceptions contribute to a view of the female body as faulty and deviating from the male prototype. These shape the perception that female reproductive processes require technological corrections. The medicalisation of reproductive processes and the mechanisation of a normal life event, with the threat of death and other life-changing consequences, disempower women and objectify the body and its functions.

The entrance of women into the workforce and the specialised fields, feminising care professions, failed to shift this paradigm. Female health workers are trained in the procedures instituted by dominant patriarchal structures, expressing values encoded in the professional culture and the institutions where they work. As women conform to the models they are exposed to during their training, perpetuating corporate hierarchies and practices, they act as agents and perpetrators of obstetric violence. Thus, obstetric violence also constitutes a specific type of violence against women at the hands of other women.

The participation of women in contemporary non-state armed groups is an undeniable fact. In recent years, research in international politics has provided a more complex view of both the scale and nature of their contributions, as well as why women choose to engage in political violence – when they do indeed choose to do so. This chapter offers an overview of the literature in this area, while expanding the discussion towards new and emerging questions. In particular, the chapter seeks to engage a growing literature on the legal and social aspects of women's involvement in armed conflict. Discussing women's roles as perpetrators of atrocity and war crimes – including as agents of torture, sexual violence and genocide – it addresses concerns about the meaningful integration of gender into post-conflict and transitional justice processes. This includes discussions about agency and the problematic entanglement of victim/perpetrator narratives in the cases of female ex-combatants.