qualitative analysis of violent crimes committed by women: contexts and motivations

while men’s violence is assessed within their social life, women’s violence is attributed to personal factors, such as mental stress, aggression and/or womanish nervousness, regardless of social factors. unlike such a common interpretation that tries to associate violence of women with interpretations of stereotypes and individual, in this article, violence of women will be explained in terms of life experiences. the present study is a qualitative study conducted by in-depth interviews with 30 women who have been in prison for committing violent crimes at the time of the interviews (between 2012 to 2014), it was found that women are mainly exposed to violence, and the interpretation of violent crimes of women is not possible regardless of structural inequalities, gender inequalities, marginalization and powerlessness. the story of the women interviewed shows that women’s violence reflects their lifestyle which is intertwined by the exclusions and discrimination of individual, family and community; in other words, women’s violence can be considered as a kind of opposition against the conditions that constantly put them into the victim position. backgrounds and lifestyles of the women under study show that many of them experienced physical, emotional, mental violence and sexual abuse during their childhood, or they have constantly been exposed to mandatory and aggressive relationship due to forced and early marriage which in fact reflects the cultural definitions of the role of men.