Functionalist sex role theory for explaining female crime
- Created by: rebeccamellors
- Created on: 23-11-16 21:00
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- Functionalist Sex Role Theory
- Early explanations of gender differences in crime focused on differences in the socialisation of males & females
- Example - boys are encouraged to be tough, aggressive & risk taking meaning they are more disposed to commit acts of violence/criminality
- Parsons (1955) traces differences in crime & deviance to the gender roles in the conventional nuclear family
- Men take the instrumental, breadwinner role performed largely outside the home
- Women take expressive role in the home where they take the main responsibility for socialising the children
- This gives girls access to an adult role model but it tends to mean boys reject feminine models of behaviour that express gentleness & emotion
- Instead boys distance themselves by engaging in 'compensatory compulsory masculinity' through aggressive & anti-social behaviour that could slip over into acts of delinquency
- Men have less of a socialising role than women in the nuclear family so socialisation for boys can be difficult
- Cohen (1955) this lack of an adult role model means boys are more likely to turn to all male street gangs as a source of masculine identity
- New Right theorists argue the absence of a male role model in matrifocal lone parent families leads to boys turning to criminal street gangs as a source of identity & status
- Sandra Walklate (2003) critiises sex role theory for its biological assumptions.
- Parsons assumes that because women have the biological capacity to bear children they are best suited to the expressive role
- Criticism - although the theory tries to explain gender differences in crime in terms of behaviour learned through socialisation, it's ultimately based on biological assumptions about sex difference
- Early explanations of gender differences in crime focused on differences in the socialisation of males & females
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