Post #299
1200 words; 5minutes to read
Post by Felicia De Sousa , Ph D Student and Associate Editor
Summary: Gender neutral policies around intimate partner violence can end up harming the women they are intended to help. The new law does not do enough to address this issue
Criminal justice policies are often designed to make the legal system fairer and more consistent. However, policies that apply the law equally to everyone can be simplistic and fail to achieve their goals.
Mandatory gender-neutral arrest policies (MGNAPs) are one example. These policies are based on the principle of equal protection and equal access to justice, but they overlook the reality that intimate partner violence (IPV) is not experienced equally. Violence between intimate partners remains a gendered issue, with women in Canada experiencing significantly higher rates of victimization and facing greater risks of severe injury and death.
MGNAPs and Criminalizing Self-Defense
Rather than recognizing the context in which women experience and respond to abuse, MGNAPs can shift attention toward the incident itself. They risk treating defensive acts as criminal behaviour instead of recognizing them as responses to ongoing victimization.
Research consistently demonstrates that many women arrested for IPV are themselves survivors of prolonged abuse. In a Canadian study examining women arrested in IPV incidents, 90 percent reported experiencing physical, emotional, and sexual abuse from the same male partner against whom they were charged with using force. These findings suggest that many women who come into contact with the criminal justice system are not primarily aggressors but are responding to repeated violence.
Mandatory charging policies can make this problem worse by limiting police discretion. When officers are required to lay charges whenever an assault has occurred, they have little opportunity to consider patterns of coercion, ongoing abuse, or whether force was used in self-defence. Women’s actions may be interpreted as mutual violence rather than resistance to victimization.
Increasing police discretion introduces other risks, though. MGNAPs were introduced because law enforcement historically dismissed domestic violence as a private, family matter, and concerns exist that those approaches will persist today. While training aims to correct these biases, research demonstrates that such training is often ineffective. Ultimately, police discretion in IPV cases remains a double-edged sword with pitfalls on both sides. Ideally, solutions should focus less on legal interventions and more on social approaches that address the interpersonal nature of IPV. Yet, this continues not to be the case.
The consequences of criminalization extend far beyond the initial arrest. Women charged after using force in self-defence often experience employment barriers, including difficulty obtaining future work because of a criminal record, as well as child welfare involvement, social stigma, and lasting psychological distress. Many also fear leaving their children with abusive partners and are required to prove their fitness as caregivers while their abusers retain access to their children. Rather than enhancing safety, criminalizing self-defence can reinforce women’s vulnerability.
An Intersectional Approach: Women’s Experiences with IPV and MGNAPs
While gender is central to understanding IPV, race, class, immigration status, language, and other social positions shape both women’s experiences of abuse and how they are treated by the criminal justice system. The reality is that women with lower socioeconomic status and women of colour are disproportionately affected by IPV and face significant barriers to obtaining protection, justice, and support services. Limited financial resources, language barriers, and employment discrimination make navigating the criminal justice system substantially more difficult.
Black and racialized women also deal with stereotypes that portray them as strong, angry, aggressive, or inherently violent rather than as victims deserving protection. These stereotypes stand in contrast to dominant perceptions of the “ideal victim” that are often associated with white women. Additionally, for women of colour, racial stereotypes exist that question their ability as caregivers, which is exacerbated when accounting for the burden of carrying a criminal record. Consequently, Black and racialized women may be less likely to be believed, viewed as credible victims, or receive appropriate support following abuse.
Bill C-16: Where Are We Now?
In late 2025, the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, in response to growing concerns about IPV and femicide. The Act received Royal Assent in June, 2026.
Notable provisions in this law include recognizing femicide in the Criminal Code, creating a new offence addressing coercive control, and classifying intimate partner homicides as first-degree murder, even in the absence of evidence of premeditation.
Yet the overarching question remains: Can a gender-neutral legal framework adequately respond to a form of violence that is fundamentally gendered?
While this law expands legal recognition of coercive control and strengthens sanctions against perpetrators, it offers little guidance on how police and justice system actors should interpret women’s use of force when responding to ongoing abuse.
Although Bill C-16 acknowledges that women are disproportionately affected by IPV, its provisions continue to apply equally to all individuals. In principle, equal treatment promotes fairness. In practice, however, the same structural issues that have contributed to the criminalization of survivors under MGNAPs may continue despite this legislative reform.
Critics of the legislation argue that even with this change, women’s actions are evaluated without sufficient consideration of the coercion, fear, and repeated victimization they often face. Although self-defence is recognized in Canada, survivors subjected to coercive control must still navigate the trauma of a criminal trial to prove the circumstances they experienced, along with the many consequences of criminalization already mentioned.
Survivors remain vulnerable to criminalization even with legislation that is intended to protect them.
Conclusion
Addressing IPV requires more than legislative reform or mandatory policing policies. It also requires confronting the broader social conditions that sustain gender inequality and violence. A criminalizing approach to a social issue is ineffective as rates of IPV remain high despite harsher policing on the issue.
The long-term goal should be creating safer, more equitable communities, but in the interim, changes can be made in how IPV cases are handled. Police responses should recognize that women generally do not use violence at the same rates or for the same reasons as men. Rather than treating every incident as equivalent, officers should be equipped to recognize coercive control, patterns of abuse, the effects of trauma, and when the use of force is an act of resistance or self-defence Yet, MGNAPs restrict the police from making this distinction, and if removed, there runs the risk of replaying history by dismissing IPV and its nuances entirely.
Since we can’t quickly shift from a criminalizing approach to a social response, what we can do is invest more in prevention and intervention programs for those who use violence. Many programs are limited in availability and resources, and some risk serving more as a procedural requirement for the judicial process rather than a real opportunity for change. Recognizing that many people who commit harm have also experienced trauma does not excuse violence; it simply highlights the need to address the root causes of violence and support long-term change. Acknowledging the existence of the victim-offender overlap does not take away from the experience of the victim, but protects them from future harm by taking a proactive approach.
Without broader changes, gender-neutral approaches will continue to produce unequal outcomes for women.
About this blog: The John Howard Canada blog is intended to support greater public understanding of criminal justice issues. Blog content does not necessarily represent the views of John Howard Canada. All blog material may be reproduced freely for any non-profit purpose as long as the source is acknowledged. We welcome comments (moderated).
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