ABSTRACT
When women kill, their victims are most likely to be their own children. Home Office statistics indicate that only nine women were sentenced to death for killing another female between 1900–1949, five in connection with robbery, two as a result of revenge or jealousy and two are listed under ‘miscellaneous’. Such statistics reinforce stereotypical ideas about women’s violence – that it is invariably connected to tense family situations – taking the form of explosive attacks which lack intent. It also reinforces deep-rooted sexist beliefs about women’s proneness to hysteria and incapacity for self-control, and as such, appears to be further proof "of female irrationality and emotional instability." While Bettina Heidkamp’s study plays an important role in the feminist struggle to de-pathologise women-carers who kill, such killings continue to present a problem for feminist discourse when they are overlaid by a financial motive.
