MYTHOLOGIES AND STEREOTYPES – A WOMAN’S LOT?

Helena Kennedy

abstract In this article the author, a human rights lawyer, pays tribute to theinfluence that Estela Welldon’s work has had beyond the consulting room. Contraryto the prevailing view held in society as a whole, and particularly propounded byfeminists who viewed women’s abusive behaviour only within the context of apatriarchal society, Welldon’s views helped her to understand women’s violent andperverse behaviour. The article outlines some ways in which legislation concerningcrimes committed both against and by women has changed in the last 20 years.However, mythologies around ‘good womanhood’ which permeate decision-makingstill abound. The article notes areas in which society’s attitude to women is stillprejudicial.

Key words: Estela Welldon, feminism, criminal justice system, ‘good womanhood’,violence against women, law–psychiatry interface

Can I start by paying tribute to Estela Welldon? No verbal palette is richenough or colourful enough to do justice to Estela. She is not just a distin-guished and groundbreaking psychiatrist; she is a remarkable, funny andcharming woman and, above all, a wonderful friend. I feel very fortunatethat she is in my life and I know many of you, her professional colleagues,feel the same.

Estela’s book Mother, Madonna, Whore was a seminal work, which had areach far beyond the psychiatric, psychological and counselling professions.It profoundly influenced my thinking and understanding of so many of myclients and I drew upon it in my own book Eve Was Framed (Kennedy 1992),written in 1991, which looked at women and the criminal justice system.Estela’s book was also a starting point for many other pieces of research,such as the work by Anna Motz, deepening the dialogue which has takenplace around women’s deviant behaviour and its consequences.

Why was it so influential? It broke a taboo. It spoke of women in all theirmanifestations and the pressure on women in a patriarchal society to fulfil

helena kennedy qc is a leading barrister and expert in human rights law and civilliberties and constitutional issues. A frequent broadcaster and journalist on law andwomen’s rights, her publications include the widely acclaimed Eve Was Framed:Women and British Justice (Vintage, 1993; fully updated and reissued in paperback,March 2005) and Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters To UsAll (Chatto & Windus, 2004; published in paperback, March 2005). She is a Bencherof Gray’s Inn, President of the School of Oriental and African Studies, LondonUniversity, and has recently become the Chair of Justice. She has received more thanthirty honorary doctorates. She is currently acting in cases connected to the recentwave of terrorism and is a Member of the House of Lords. Address for correspond-ence: c/o [hilary.hard@btinternet.com]

190

© The authorJournal compilation © 2009 BAP and Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,

Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

many fantasies. It also spoke to a truth, which is that women too can engagein sexually perverse and abusive acts with their children and not just asadjuncts to men. The prevailing assumption based on popular explanationsabout Myra Hindley and others was that women acted perversely to pleasemen. So most inflammatory of all was Estela’s challenge to the sanctity ofmotherhood. What she explained to lay people like me was that somewomen developed a perverse bonding with their child where they saw thechild as an extension of themselves and not as other.

It may be hard for a younger generation to imagine but the fiercest outcrycame from feminists who had created a mythology of their own aroundwomen – that women were the better sex, nobler in purpose and certainlynot given to perversions. Any sexual deviance of women was seen as theproduct of male deviance or perversion. Their critique of patriarchy andpaternalism allowed no room for real debate about the corollary of such apower imbalance. Woman as abuser had no place in the schema manyfeminists had developed.Yet my own experience in the courts ran counter tothat. What Estela did for me was explain why.

It is now over 20 years since Dr Estela Welldon wrote her book. In thatperiod a lot has happened but not enough has changed.

What certainly has happened within the courts is a cultural shift. WhenI first started practising at the Bar judges were very sceptical about psy-chiatry and it had a limited role to play – invoked most often in relation tohomicide cases where a defence of diminished responsibility was beingraised. However, there is now a much greater willingness on the part ofjudges to acknowledge that the court can receive insights from psychiatristsand psychologists, who loan their expertise to the court to explain what mayseem inexplicable or counter-intuitive to an ordinary juror or even an ordin-ary judge. For years I would have an uphill struggle trying to get psychi-atrists, analysts and therapists into the courtroom to deal with the dynamicbetween abuser and abused. Judges would claim that an ordinary jurorunderstood perfectly well that it was not much fun being battered or sexu-ally abused. No expert was necessary. It was feared that the role of the jury– with its collective common sense and the values of the community – wouldbe usurped by professionals from outside the law. Yet the questions contin-ued to be asked: ‘Why didn’t you leave if the violence was so bad?’ ‘Whydidn’t you tell the police/your parent/your teacher when you were sexuallyabused – if indeed you were sexually abused?’ Eventually a new generationof judges acknowledged that people were the products of their life experi-ence and that abusive relationships were complex. Increasingly there is awillingness to reach beyond banalities and to seek understanding of violenceand perversions.

There has now been a great deal of legislative movement, driven mainlyby women in parliament, who began to see the legal blocks in obtainingjustice for women and children in cases of rape, domestic violence, forced

HELENA KENNEDY 191

marriages, honour killings. The cross-examination of women about theirsexual history has been radically circumscribed and the defence of provoca-tion has been reformed to acknowledge that women who have experienceddomestic violence may not strike out while they are being battered but snapin a less dramatic way.

However, while there has been a lot of surface legal change, there are stillmythologies around ‘good womanhood’ which permeate the decision-making. Changing attitudes is a harder battle and a longer journey. What itmeans in the 21st century to be a woman still involves double sexual andsocial standards where women are still expected to behave in ways deemedappropriate. The notion of good womanhood is still potent. It has simplybeen reconfigured. Now chastity may not be so valued, women may beexpected to work, have careers and independent lives, but new ideals havebeen established and some old ones remain intact.

Two women a week are killed by partners; every minute a woman inBritain is being hit and each year 80,000 women are raped. Research onthe failure to drive up conviction rates shows that it is still accepted byyoung men that there are circumstances where it is acceptable to hit awoman and circumstances where it is acceptable to force a woman to gothrough with sex when she is saying no. The old attitude that a womanwearing provocative clothing deserves to be sexually assaulted may nolonger be expressed but judgements are still readily made about a womanbeing ‘a slapper’ especially if she is drunk. Binge drinking has become thenew way of damning young women. Cross-examination to undermine awoman in the eyes of a jury may now involve questioning about mentalhistory or even just periods of therapy to suggest instability and incapacityto tell the truth. While there is much greater caution amongst judges andothers about saying the unsayable, it does not stop them thinking theunthinkable. The victims’ movement has been a powerful force for changebut it has created the new stereotype of the perfect victim. Any review ofour newspapers shows that the press and public want their victims pack-aged in an acceptable form. Drink, drugs, any kind of unconventional past,even ethnicity, can conspire to damn a woman as unworthy of the law’sprotection. The Times columnist Mary Ann Sieghart wrote that, when shewas working on a tabloid paper, she was asked by the editor to do afeature on rape. She found an appalling story of a young woman who hadbeen viciously raped but the story was binned when she explained that thevictim was black.

It should come as no surprise to us that the most recent wave of miscar-riages of justice related to women and motherhood. The heightened valuesociety attaches to motherhood and the pressure to be the idealized motherare the background to most of the cases I have done where a mother kills herinfant. It also explains why the first question asked of Sally Clark, thesolicitor convicted of killing her two baby sons, was: ‘You never really

192 BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY (2009) 25(2)

wanted to be a mother, did you?’ Prosecutors often seek to present womenon trial as unnatural.And of course many women feel incapable of admittingto the negative feelings they may have towards their new baby after child-birth because they too feel they are unnatural.

There are a number of trends in contemporary society that I think shouldconcern us. Globalization has brought with it higher levels of anxiety –economic insecurity around employment and pensions, fear of what thefuture holds for future generations, fear of the ‘other’ in the form of immig-rants, asylum-seekers, terrorists and other criminals. Fear has led to everincreasing demands for government to crack down on imagined marauders,with a willingness on the part of the public to write a blank cheque togovernment and a very real authoritarian response. The subsequent loss ofcivil liberties and legal protections has been very significant. ‘Victims’ areused as the alibi for many state encroachments – the system we are beingtold is being balanced in their favour.There has been a huge surge in the useof prison, with an almost doubling of the prison population. The Dutchauction between the political parties as to which can be toughest means thattherapeutic alternatives to prison are increasingly sidelined and pro-grammes of therapy within prison are scant and often the cheap optionrather than anything very real. Calls for a non-adversarial system may soundconsumer friendly, with the court process becoming warm and cuddly, butthe removal of rigour and high standards will inevitably lead to greaterinjustice in the long run.

All of us, as professionals, have a responsibility to speak out about theretreat from principle and the abandonment of safeguards within the systemwhich is taking place. In the early 1990s John Major as Prime Minister calledfor a little more condemning and a little less understanding. His wish wasgranted. Understanding why people commit crime or involve themselves inaberrant behaviour is the only way to create adequate responses, the onlyway to drive down the prison population. But it means having a grown-upconversation with the general public about what it means to be human.

A large part of my work is at that interface between law and psychiatry.Todo it well I have been greatly helped by many of you who work within thetherapeutic community. I have learned greatly from all of you, throughilluminating conversations, hearing your lectures, using you as experts andreading your learned works, and I honestly believe you have played a vitalrole in securing justice within the courts for many people. I want to thank youand especially Estela Welldon for your collegiality in including me, a lawyer,in so many of your programmes.You have made me a better lawyer as a result.

Reference

Kennedy, H. (1992) Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice. London: Chatto &Windus.

HELENA KENNEDY 193