Moving Beyond Self-Defense: Reevaluating the (Gendered) Motivations for Female Homicide Offending Across the Victim–Offender Relationship

Abstract

Objectives: Examine gender similarities and differences in defensive, offensive, and instrumental motives for homicide, disaggregated by the victim–offender relationship (intimate partner homicide [IPH] vs. non-IPH). Methods: Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, logistic regression models compared the victim, offender, and situational characteristics of IPH and non-IPH incidents perpetrated by men (N = 35,868) and women (N = 5,146) in the United States from 2003 to 2021. Results: While female IPH offenders were more likely to engage in defensive violence, women who killed outside their romantic relationships were more similar to their male counterparts in their use of offensive and instrumental violence than traditionally assumed. Conclusions: The findings suggest that women's violence cannot solely be attributed to their recent experiences of victimization, and women who kill do so for a variety of defensive and offensive reasons. Future work should consider whether and how women's motivations for violence are gendered across distinct contexts.