Coercion with Morality: Chinese Police Officers’ Gendered Policing Strategies in Domestic Violence Cases

Abstract

Scholars have established China’s pro-mediation policies in policing domestic violence public security offense cases. However, the mediation process remains obscure. This ethnographic study revealed that officers adopted a gender-based morality to press female and male victims into accepting mediation. Specifically, the police moralized victims’ choices and urged male victims to forgive their wives to protect their masculinity while asking female victims to forgive their husbands to protect their children’s well-being. This work advances the scholarship on domestic violence intervention by showing how such a gendered policing strategy disempowers victims of both genders and results in another form of victim-blaming.