Carlen: Women in Crime - Crime and Deviance (Feminist)

Question 1

What does Carlen focus on?

Answer 1

Gender, social class and crime from a feminist perspective

Question 2

What does Carlen argue?

Answer 2

• That working-class women are expected to make the class deal and the gender deal.
  
  • The class deal offers them material rewards such as
    consumer goods if they work for a wage.
  • The gender deal offers material and emotional
    rewards if they live with a male breadwinner within
    the family.
• When these rewards are not available or turn out not to be worth it, the class and gender deal breaks down. At this point, crime becomes a possibility.
• The women in Carlen’s study identified four major factors linked to their law breaking:
  
  • Poverty
  • Living in residential care
  • Drug addiction
  • The search for excitement
• Poverty and being in care led them to reject the class and gender deals.
• Most of the women lacked legitimate ways of earning a decent living. They had little experience of the rewards of the class deal, such as consumer goods. Crime was a way of trying to solve the problems of poverty.
• Having lived in residential care, many of the women had not experienced the rewards of the gender deal such as fulfilment from family life. They had nothing to lose by committing crime.

Question 3

What research method did Carlen use?

Answer 3

She conducted unstructured interviews with 39 female offenders aged 15 to 46, most of whom were working-class.