Bringing it all back home: Feminist struggle, feminist theory and feminist engagement with law, the case of wife battering

I canvas the significant contribution of feminist jurisprudence and the insights gained from feminist engagement with the law. In particular, I elaborate an understanding of ideology that encompasses materiality as well as ideas.;I identify a number of ideological constructions which I argue are important to the shaping of women's subordination and to the response at law to women's claims. While acknowledging the importance of the feminist work on the public/private dichotomy, I argue that the work ultimately suffers from its situation in liberalism and legalism.;I argue that the socialist feminist work on the state and the family has not adequately addressed the problem of violence, nor the underlying ideologies. I examine the social construction of violence and the ways that criminal law and the media are implicated in that. Through the example of wife battering and violence against women, I demonstrate that criminal law is permeated by other ideologies and social practices at the same time as it assists in constituting those ideologies. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).