This study explores women’s experiences of the criminal justice system in response to experiencing male violence in their intimate relationships, in a northern British Columbia community. Employing qualitative research methodology, this research utilized semi-structured interviews with women who had experienced male violence in their intimate relationships. Study findings revealed that participants were victims of structural violence and covert and overt oppressions. While all participants spoke of system strengths through their positive interactions with RCMP, the majority of women felt their interactions with the criminal justice system were negative. Many women did not feel their specific protection order or more broadly, the criminal justice system process upheld their legal rights to safety.
Many social workers experience high levels of emotional exhaustion (Kim, Ji, & Kao, 2011), directly contributing to poor professional retention, with numbers of social workers leaving the field between 20 and 40% annually in some sectors (Font, 2012). Additionally, social work is a highly gendered field (Sloan, 2012), and expectations of social workers’ emotional labour as well as their prospects for influence and advancement reflect this (Lane & Flowers, 2015). Rather than examining the struggles social workers face (the subject of numerous studies already), this qualitative study examines the experiences of six female social workers, who self-identified as being emotionally healthy, thriving in their job, and who intended to continue as social workers... .
