...this is just a catfight that escalated into a simple macing. While that might constitute assault and battery, we don’t often send people with clean records to incarceration for that. Especially when the perp is a woman.
Now if it were a man...and he pointed his finger at the woman...
Exactly. Juries, and especially judges, are used to dealing with bad males all the time. Often, the male defendants can be made to look quite scary, and a jury wants to save themselves and people they love from such males. Judges deal with the kind of scum we see on every episode of "COPS".
In order for a woman to get prison time, she has to be REALLY scary, someone who just snapped at a romantic rival is not threatening to the average jury member. Add in the mother and astronaut hero worship factors, and you've got either an acquittal, or a conviction on a lesser charge.