Although the study found that when men and women defendants appear before the magistrates' court in similar circumstances and charged with similar offenses, they receive similar treatment, court processes, language, and actions tended to reinforce the central role of women as homemakers and subordinate to men in the family structure. This dominant model of the family was implicit in pronouncements from the bench, pleas of mitigation, and probation officers' reports. The defendant's family context was the basis for much courtroom discussion. By judging both female and male defendants in the context of their families, the court preserved differences based on sexual inequality within the dominant family structure. To break this pattern, the courts must pose defendants' problems and their solution in terms other than those rooted in the dominant view of gender roles in the nuclear family. 16 tables, 21-item bibliography, subject index.