Justice for Women After Sexual Assault: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.

Justice after sexual assault is often understood and enacted through the criminal legal system such that the outcomes are binary (i.e., justice is achieved or not achieved). Previous research indicates that survivors have specific wants and needs following an assault in order to experience justice, which may or may not align with current practices. We conducted a critical interpretive synthesis of 5 databases to create a sampling frame of 4,203 records; the final analysis included 81 articles, book chapters, and policy documents. Results indicate that justice is an individualized and dynamic process which may include the experience of voice, connectedness, participating in a process, accountability, and prevention. The experiences of safety and control are central to each of these domains. Survivors may seek and enact these justice domains through several avenues, including the criminal justice and legal systems, restorative justice, medical/mental health spaces, activism, art, and social media. Existing actors within currently available justice systems, including legal, medical, and mental health personnel should encourage survivors to identify and define their own experience of justice, including locating helpful behaviors rooted in safety and control, and resist a binary model of justice. Extant systems should therefore be flexible and accessible to help survivors realize their preferred modes of justice.

"It Doesn't Feel Like You Can Win": Young Women's Talk About Heterosexual Relationships.

Scholars have long explored the expectations of women to maintain intimate relationships and the gendered discourses governing those expectations. Despite the dating landscape changes, having intimate relationships remains important for young women. Amid these changes and the impacts of #MeToo/#TimesUp, investigating the discourses at play within women's talk about intimate relationships produces a current snapshot that contrasts with past literature. Young, heterosexual women of diverse racial, educational/work, and relationship backgrounds aged 18-24 years (N = 28) attended one of five online videoconferencing focus groups. Using an eclectic theoretical approach informed by feminist post-structuralism and discursive psychology, we analyzed women's talk about doing relationships. Mobilizing a discourse of intimate relationship necessity/importance, young women (a) were positioned as "the silenc(ed/ing) woman," demonstrating a shared understanding of the necessity of silence when doing intimate relationships; and/or (b) actively took up "the communicative woman," which they conceptualized as the hallmark of a healthy relationship. Tensions between these subject positions were evident (e.g., needing to be "cool"). Also, women described no-win situations in relationships despite attempts to contend with these contradictions and limitations. These findings may contribute to educational materials and youth programming delivered in high school or college.

Factors increasing the likelihood of sole and dual charging of women for intimate partner violence.

Sole and dual charging of women for intimate partner violence (IPV) has risen in some Canadian and American jurisdictions since the implementation of pro-charging policies. Adding to the limited research within Canada by examining court cases from a small, Ontario city, sociodemographic and situational characteristics are assessed to determine if the context in which women were charged differs from that of men, or in which dual charges were laid. Women were more likely to be charged if they were younger, in legal or common-law relationships, and in rural jurisdictions. Dual charging was more likely among women in current and dating relationships.