Court system or gender corset? : A qualitive thesis about the portrayal of women and men in the Swedish court system

This sociological thesis has focus om men´s violence against women, both general and domestic. My aim is to examine how the Swedish court system portrays women as victims and men as offenders in cases with men´s violence against women. I also have a special focus on the perspective of the construction of gender. I executed the thesis by using two qualitive methods; thematic content analysis and observations. The empirical material consisted mainly of court case documents but also of the field notes I took during the observations of two court hearings. My theoretical framework consists of the gender system by Yvonne Hirdman (2003) which mainly describes the different societal positions of power men and women possess and what consequences it has. I’ve also used a victim discourse which examines how victims are expected to act, and react, in connection to be a victim of crime. The thesis showed that the court system in my material maintains stereotypical gender norms regarding the theory of the gender system. It showed considerations based on men´s superior positions and women´s subordinate positions according to the same system. It also showed that the female victims are expected to react according to what the court system see suitable; which in my analyzed cases meant a display of the correct feelings. If the correct feelings were not present, it could affect the outcome of the trial