This thesis research focuses on New Zealand's legal response to domestic violence, exploring how the legal system serves the needs of women who experience abuse from their male partners and ex-partners, and how lawyers make sense of partner violence and the legal response to it. The author uses a feminist post-structuralism theoretical approach and interviewed 10 women, representing their individual accounts using narrative methodology. The women's narratives suggest the legal system does not consistently serve the needs of women seeking protection from partner violence; many women were dissatisfied. Women did not always feel that judges, lawyers, and other legal personnel treated their experiences of violence and psychological abuse seriously or empathetically. Some women also encountered resistance when they attempted to protect their children through supervised access. The author also interviewed 18 lawyers working in the area of domestic violence and analysed their transcripts using discursive methodology. Lawyers utilised many discourses to make sense of, and constitute domestic violence and the legal response to it. Some discourses were consistent with holding perpetrators accountable for their violence, and with protecting women and children. However, many discourses minimised and detracted attention away from men's violence towards women, marginalised women's experiences of abuse and violence, and undermined women and children's protection and safety. The author notes that the legal system maintains and perpetuates gender bias and oppression against women.--AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT

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