Wife Battering or Domestic Violence? A Genealogy of Intimate Partner Violence Policy in Canada
Date
2025
Authors
Shymko, Bethany
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Publisher
University Of Victoria
Abstract
This project charts the different rationalities the government of Canada has used to govern intimate partner violence (IPV). I employed Foucault's theory of governmentality to problematize different periods of IPV policy and then constructed a genealogy to present these policy periods. Through primary and secondary source analysis, I deconstructed how the government deployed various political rationalities to construct governable subjectivities of victims and perpetrators. Canadian IPV policy falls into two periods: reinforcement of patriarchy and minimization of patriarchy. The first period occurred between 1820 and 1930 and was enforced through temperance legislation and seduction laws. The second period falls between 1970 and the present and is enforced through the criminalization, medicalization, and familiarization of IPV policy. My project found that Canadian IPV policy has not become more attuned to the realities of IPV and instead has attempted to shape the subjectivities of IPV to be more easily governed by the prevailing political rationalities of the day.
Description
Keywords
intimate partner violence, social policy, genealogy, canadian social policy