Dr Bethany Wilkinson

Bethany Wilkinson is a Lecturer in Social Work, her research and teaching areas include gender inequality, intimate partner violence and femicide, social work and law, and social policy. Prior to commencing as a Lecturer in Social Work at the Australian Catholic University, Bethany worked in Social Work research and tertiary education at the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University. She has also worked in direct practice in the welfare sector for eleven years. Her background includes working in the areas of mental health, housing (for women with their children), domestic violence (women and children) and with women who do sex work. 

An overview of her forthcoming book, due for publication by Routledge, in August 2023: Intimate partner, femicide, law, and social justice is set out below: 

  Intimate partner femicide, law, and social justice

  Blurb

Domestic violence is an entrenced social problem across the globe. This book provides in-depth, critical analysis of judicial transcripts about men who are on trial for killing their current or former female intimate partner. The documents demonstrate that legal understandings about intimate partner homicide continue to be based upon outdated notions of 'couple conflict' and gender-neutral constructions of intimate partner violence. Intimate partner femicide, law, and social justice: contested understandings contends that 'what happened' must be aligned with feminist understandings of intimate partner violence and homicide in order to uphold the rights of women to live free from male-perpetrated violence and homicide.

Statement of Aims and Rationale   

This book explores how conceptions of women, men, intimate relationships, intimate partner violence and femicide, are represented in court   documents, on the basis that discursive practices both reflect and contribute to the making of the problem of male-perpetrated intimate partner   femicide. Concepts, explanations and approaches about intimate partner femicide from a variety of disciplines have provided information on the   numbers of women killed (Walklate et al., 2020) notions about the psychopathology of men who kill women (Lysell et al., 2016), gendered power   relations (Dobash and Dobash, 2015 Campbell et a., 2017, Smart, 2002) and system failure (Stubbs, 2016). Intimate Partner Femicide, Law, and   Social Justice contested understandings extends upon this knowledge through uncovering deep seated pre-suppositions about the nature of   intimate partner violence and femicide. Through the deployment of the What's the problem represented to be? approach (Bacchi & Goodwin,   2016) the book makes visible taken for granted assumptions about male-perpetrated intimate partner femicide by judiciary and other legal players.   In this sense the book forges other ways of understanding intimate partner femicide that better serve and support the needs of women who   experience male-perpetrated intimate partner violence, presenting new knowledge that contributes to the prevention of intimate partner femicide.  

References 

Bacchi, C., & Goodwin, S. (2016). Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. Palgrave MacMillan. 

Campbell, J. C., Webster, D., Koziol-McLain, J., Block, C., Campbell, D., Curry, M. A., & Laughon, K. (2017). Risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships: Results from a multisite case control study. In M. Natarajan (Ed.), Domestic Violence: The five big questions (pp. 135-143 ). Routledge.

Dobash, R. E., & Dobash, R. P. (2015b). When men murder women. Oxford University Press. 

Lysell, H., Dahlin, M., Långström, N., Lichtenstein, P., & Runeson, B. (2016). Killing the mother of one's child: psychiatric risk factors among male perpetrators and offspring health consequences. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 77(3), 342-347. https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.14m09564   

Smart, C. (2002). Feminism and the Power of Law. Routledge. 

Stubbs J, 2016, 'Murder, manslaughter and domestic violence', in K. Fitz-Gibbon, S. Walklate (Eds.), Homicide, Gender and Responsibility: An International Perspective (pp. 36 &ndash 52). Routledge. dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315730981 

Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., McCulloch, J., & Maher, J. (2020). Towards a global femicide index: Counting the costs. Routledge.