AbstractMany feminists have questioned the extent to which the law can ever effectively deter violence against women given the ways in which the law and criminal justice systems often act to reinforce deeply sexist assumptions about women, their sexual and social identities and their relation to the social (male) world. While acknowledging law's ineffectiveness in fundamentally reordering social relations, a number of scholars and policy makers believe that it is an institution that can be used to make substantive gains for women. The agreement by states on the establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC), combined with a Statute that augments international legal prohibitions on violence against women, has given traction to optimistic views on international criminal law's capacity to proactively address female specific harms. Moreover, there is confidence that transformative international legal norms will, in turn, enable and support domestic law's capacity to advance accountability for violence...