C&D 2: Pat Carlen

Question 1

D: What type of sociologist is PC?

E: Who did she study?

C: How many participants did she have?

Answer 1

D: A feminist

E: Delinquent (criminal), working class, women.

C: 39

Question 2

D: Which social group of women did she think were more likely to commit crime?

E: Why were this group more likely to commit crime?

C: Which theory does this link with?

Answer 2

D: working class women.

E: Because they had less to lose. They had been let down by the two deals that society offers women.

C: Hirschi’s control theory. The idea that most people don’t commit crime because of what they would lose if they did.

Question 3

D: What type of research method did she use?

E: Name one practical problem that PC had to overcome in order to research these women.

C: Why are these women considered a ‘vulnerable group’

Answer 3

D: Unstructured interviews.

E: Access, some of the women were in prison at the time of the research.

C: Because of their earlier experiences in childhood/ care. They had experienced domestic violence and poverty.

Question 4

D: What is ‘the gender deal’?

E: What is ‘the class deal’?

C: What is an ethnographic, oral history?

Answer 4

D: If women play the expressive role in the family, they will be financially and emotionally cared for.

E: If women work hard to earn money, they will be able to buy material things and enjoy expensive leisure activities.

C: Ethnography is a deep/ detailed research method. An oral history is where the women gave a detailed, spoken account of their lives in their own words.

Question 5

D: Why did PC’s women feel they had nothing to lose in the gender deal?

E: Why did PC’s women feel they had nothing to lose in the class deal?

C: How can we criticise PCs study?

Answer 5

D: They had negative experiences in the family. Many grew up in care and had experienced domestic/ sexual violence.

E: Many had grown up in extreme poverty. When they worked, they earned minimal money. The qualifications they gained in prison didn’t help them gain jobs on release.

C: It can be considered unrepresentative- 39 women, who had committed serious crimes are not typical of all female criminals.