TOPIC 7: Gender issues and offending
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- Created by: xemilygraceyx
- Created on: 05-05-16 11:29
Gender differences in crime
- Men more likely to be convicted of serious crimes
- Women more likely to be involved in theft/fraud/handling stolen goods/shoplifting
- Women commit relatively few crimes - far less ikely to be arrested (8% of total UK prison population)
- Female crime largely ignored
- Females less likely to break the law
- Police and courts treat women more favourably - chivalry effect: able to use femininity/cultural capital
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Why is crime male-dominated?
- Heidensoln (1989):
- Male dominance of offenders = majority of offenders are male, appropriate to study them
- Male domination of sociology = sociological topics reflect male view/interests
- VIcarious identification = men study what interests them --> often lives of marginal/exciting
- Sociological theorising = male sociologists constructed theories without thinking about how they could be applied to females, 'gender blind' traditional theories
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Why are women less likely to commit crime? - 1
Biological explanations
- Belief that women are innately different from men - natural desire to be caring/nurturing
- 'Normal' women less likely to commit crime
- Dalton (1964) = hormonal/menstrual factors can influence minority of women to commit crime in certain circumstances
Sex role theory
- Socialisation:
- Girls socialised differently to boys --> values girls hold do not lead to crime
- Parsons = mothers are clear role model for girls, emphasises caring and support
- Farrington and Painter (2004) = female offenders more like to have had harsh/erratic parenting --> little support/praise from parents
- Social control:
- Heidenson = male-dominated patriarchal societies control women more effectively
- 'Very pervasive value system' = women must carry out domestic responsibilities
- Daughters given less freedom
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Why are women less likely to commit crime? - 2
- Marginalisation:
- Narrow range of roles women allowed to have = limits opportunities to commit crime
- E.g. caring for elderly relatives/children
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The changing role of women
- Freda Adler (1975) = women's liberation resulting in increasing levels of female criminality
- Rejects idea that female crime can be explained in biological terms
- Passive men with normal testosterone levels = less aggressive than women
- Women taking on male roles in criminal world
- Criminal women = 'least likely to be affected by feminism'
Denscombe:
- Changing female role over last 10 years = females as likely as males to engage in risk-taking behaviour
- Rapidly adopting male attitudes
Westwood:
- Identities constantly being reconstructed/reframed
- Women reconfiguring identity in more confident/forceful way
Heidenshon:
- Women not taking on male roles = offenders score highly on psychological tests of 'femininity'
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Stephen Jones: the influence of men
- Tested extent to which female offending was of own choosing or if influenced by men
- Interviewed women who had been found guilty of offence - charged jointly with male --> asked them how much co-defendant influenced them
- Ps given letter inviting them to interview --> 50 women agreed
- Conducted in private, tape-recorded --> semi-structured nature
- Engaged in more general conversation about relationship with co-defendants after questions asked
- Controlled environment --> high internal validity
- Privacy maintained
- Answers may have been influenced by questions asked/presence of tape-recorder --> social desirability
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Transgressive criminology
- Crosses over boundary of traditional criminology
- Feminists studied issues like:
- Women's behaviour in response to threat of crime
- Domestic violence
- How women are treated by law
- All males located within general structures that encourage formation of hegemonic masculinities - imbalance of social power creates assumption of superiority among men
- Crisis of masculinity = caused by loss of traditional male dominance in labour market
- Domestic violence/violent crime committed to provide means to accomplish masculinity
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Explaining male crime - 1
Normative masculinity:
- Refers to socially approved idea of what 'real male' is
- Messerschmidt = defines masculinity through difference from/desire for women
- So prized = men struggle to live up to expectations
Accomplished masculinity:
- Masculinity = not natural, state that males only achieve as 'accomplishment' - involves being constantly worked at
- Messerschmidt = businessmen express power over women through control in workplace, men with no power at work express masculinity through violence at home
- Katz = criminology failed to understand role of pleasure in committing crime - search for pleasure placed within context of masculinity, stresses importane of status/control/success
- Doing evil motivated by quest for 'moral self-transcendence' in face of boredom = different crimes provide different thrills
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Explaining male crime - 2
Why is it difficult to construct a male identity in contemporary society?
- Most youths in state of drift - unsure of who they are/place in society
- Period of boredom and crisis - committing offences provides break from boredom
Why are young working class males most likely to be violent?
- Huge changes in economy - decline in manual work/increase in white-collar employment
- Significant proportion of male working-class population excluded from possibilities of regular employment
- Wilson (1996) = resulted in development of urban underclass, manifest range of violent/anti-social behaviours
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Feminist perspectives
Liberal feminism:
- Based on idea that bringing women onto agenda/demonstrating how women ignored in research --> greated understanding of female deviance
- New theories developed to cover females as well as males
Radical feminism:
- Argue that only way to understand crime is to see it through female perspective
- Research should be based on assumption that all men prepared to commit crimes against women if given chance
- Women should consturct own unique approaches to explaining crime and deviance --> should incorporate threat from men
Socialist feminism:
- Stresses that position of men/women can only be understood by locating males/females within context of societies divided by sexism/capitalism
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Feminist perspectives - 2
Postmodern feminism:
- Smart (1990), Cain (1986) = produced very important work - argue that very concerns of criminology actually reflection of male concerns
- Women should be looking beyond these to study how harm comes to women in widest sense possible
- Feminist criminology should not accept (male) boundaries of criminology --> should look at way women are harmed by whole range of processes
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