3. Explaining Female Crime Flashcards
- Functionalist Sex Role Theory
- Early sociological explanations focus on socialisation of genders.
- Boys are encouraged to be tough, aggressive and risk taking, and this can mean they are more disposed to commit acts of violence.
• Parsons: traces differences in crime and deviance to the gender roles in the conventional nuclear family.
- Men take the instrumental, breadwinner role, performed largely outside the home
- Women take the expressive role in the home, where they take the main responsibility for socialising children.
- This gives girls access to an adult role model, and means boys reject feminine models of behaviour that express tenderness, gentleness and emotion.
- Instead, boys seek to distance themselves from such models by engaging in ‘compensatory compulsory masculinity’ through aggression and anti-social behaviour.
- Cohen: lack of male role model means boys are more likely to turn to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculinity (status is earned through delinquency)
- New Right theorists argue the absence of male role model in lone parent families leads to boys turning to criminal street gangs for a source of status.
- Feminist Explanation
• Walklate: criticises theory for it’s biological assumptions
- Parsons assumes that because women have the biological capacity to bear children, they are best suited to the expressive role.
• Feminists have put forward control theories and the liberation thesis.
- Heidensohn’s Patriarchal Control
• H: argues the most striking thing about women’s behaviour is how conformist they are (they commit fewer and less serious crimes).
- Patriarchal society imposes greater control over women (less opportunity to offend)
- Control at Home: women’s domestic role imposes severe restrictions on their time reducing their opportunities to offend.
• Women who try to reject their domestic role may find that their partners impose it by force, through domestic violence
- Dobash and Dobash: many violent attacks result from men’s dissatisfaction with their wives’ performance of domestic duties.
- Men also exercise control through financial power (e.g. denying women funds)
• Daughters are subject to patriarchal control.
- Girls less likely to stay out late and thus develop a ‘bedroom culture’ - Control in Public: women are controlled in public places by the threat of male violence against them, especially through sexual violence.
- Islington Crime Survey: 54% of women avoided going out after dark for fear of crime (14% of men),
- Heidensohn: media reporting of rapes adds to women’s fear. - Control at Work: Women’s behaviour is controlled by male managers.
- Sexual harassment is widespread and helps keep women ‘in their place’
- Women’s subordinate position reduces opportunities for criminal activity at work.
- E.g. glass ceiling prevents many women from rising to senior positions where there is greater opportunity to commit white collar crime.
• Patriarchal restrictions on women’ mean they have fewer opportunities for crime.
- Carlen
• Conducted a study of WC women who had been convicted of a range of crimes
- Carlen: although there are MC offenders, most convicted female criminals are WC
• Hirshi: humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a ‘deal’ of rewards in return for conforming to social norms. People turn to crime if the rewards > risks.
- Carlen builds on Hirshi’s work…
• Carlen: WC women are led to conform through promise of two types of ‘deals’
1. Class Deal: Women who work will be offered material rewards
2. Gender Deal: Patriarchal ideology promises women material and emotional rewards from family life by conforming to the norms of a conventional domestic gender role
• Carlen: argues these rewards are not available to WC women.
• Class Deal: women failed to find a legitimate way of earning a decent living and this left them feeling powerless, oppressed and the victims of injustice.
- Gained nothing from class deal so they turned to crime.
• Gender deal: most women either had not had the opportunity to make the deal or saw many disadvantages of family life.
- Some were abused physically / sexually by fathers (some suffered domestic violence)
• Carlen concludes that for these women, poverty and being brought up in an oppressive family life were the main causes of their criminality.
- Evaluation of Heidensohn and Carlen
- Both theories underplay the importance of free will when it comes to crime.
- Carlen’s sample was small and unrepresentative.
- Adler: Liberation Thesis
- Argues that as society becomes less patriarchal, women’s crime rates will become similar to men’s.
- Adler: puts forward ‘lib thesis’ and argues that as women become liberated, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men’s.
- Changes in society: patriarchal controls have lessened, opportunities in education and work and women have adopted ‘male’ roles in both work and crime.
- Women now commit typically ‘male’ offences such as violence and white-collar.
- This is due to increased assertiveness and greater opportunities.
- Evidence of Liberation Thesis
- 20th Century: both overall rate of female offending and female share of offences rose during second half of 20th century (Feminist movement…)
- Denscombe: study of Midlands teenagers’ found that females were adopting more ‘male’ stances such as the desire to be in control and look ‘hard’.
- Criticisms of the Liberation Thesis
- Female crime rate began rising in the 1950s (long before women’s liberation)
- Most female criminals are WC (little benefit from female liberation)
- Chesney-Lind: links to male offences were often through prostitution (unliberated)
Summary
- Functionalist Sex Role Theory
- Feminist Explanation
- Heindensohn (Patriarchal Control)
- Carlen (Class + Gender Deals)
- Evaluation of Heindensohn and Carlen
- Adler: Liberation Thesis
- Evidence of Liberation Thesis
- Criticisms of the Liberation Thesis
