A review of the psychiatric literature reveals a view of women convicted of homicide as suffering from significant psychopathology. However, a case can be made that such studies suffer from gender bias, sex-role stereotypes, and a priori expectations. A different view of these women emerges from the sociological literature on interspousal violence. Mate slayings were found to be frequently victim-precipitated, and a much higher proportion of husbands than wives provoked their mates into killing them. In addition, a large percentage of women who killed their mates reported having been subjected to repeated physical, verbal, or emotional abuse and claimed the killing was in self-defense. While women who kill have traditionally been judged as guilty, incompetent, or insane, the self-defense plea has been used successfully in a number of homicides in which the woman had been physically abused by her victim. 37 references.