Feminist Criminology

Question 1

What are the biological and positivist theories revolving around females and crime?

Answer 1

Female criminals are non-female and inherently masculine

Female criminality due to sexual neurosis

The “unadjusted girl”

Gender-blindness within criminology: man as the normative standard

Question 2

What is Marxist theory fixated on?

Answer 2

Class as the source of inequality

Question 3

What have Neo-Marxists argued?

Answer 3

Law directly or indirectly serves dominant class
interests ; and maintains economic power and inequality

Question 4

What dies the neutral ideology hide?

Answer 4

The privileges given to the wealthy in the legal system

Question 5

What is a limitation of Marxist theory?

Answer 5

Crude notion that all law is a mask for the rule of the dominant (rich)
classes.

Question 6

What is strain theory?

Answer 6

Crime occurs because of the inability of
individuals to achieve goals of monetary success and/or
middle-class status

Question 7

What is subcultural theory?

Answer 7

Crime located at the level of group

interaction and is important for status/identity within group

Question 8

What is labelling theory?

Answer 8

Criminal identity is produced through labelling

Question 9

What is critical criminology?

Answer 9

Crime results from class and status
inequalities and punishment is part of
that system of inequality. The structure is unjust

Question 10

What are the facts about the gender gap in crime?

Answer 10

Men more likely than women to experience violence by a stranger

Women less likely to commit violent crime

Women less likely to be the victim of violent crime

Women more likely to be victimised by a male partner or someone they know

Question 11

What have many criminological theories not explained?

Answer 11

Why men commit the vast

majority of crime

Question 12

What is Sutherland’s perspective on sex role theory?

Answer 12

Criminal behaviour is learned; boys more likely to become deviant than girls
because girls are taught to be nice based on their reproductive capacities

Question 13

What is Parsons’ perspective on sex role theory?

Answer 13

The family is the centre of social learning; functional roles of men and women –
men take on the instrumental role while women take on the expressive
role.

For boys without a positive male role model, they may be more likely to engage in
“compensatory masculinity”.

Question 14

What is Cohen’s perspective on sex role theory?

Answer 14

Delinquency related to the absence of male role models.

Toughness and dominance learned through interaction with
older males.

Delinquency = working-class phenomenon.

Question 15

What is the liberal feminism perspective on sex role theory?

Answer 15

Highlighted inequalities between men and women.

Focused on the sex-role differences between men and
women, but argued that these could be unlearned through positive socialisation.

Question 16

Where are there gender differences in strain theory?

Answer 16

The types of strain and responses to strain

Question 17

What is hegemonic masculinity?

Answer 17

The idea that there is a gender order

Question 18

What has Feminist Criminology enabled?

Answer 18

A critical review of accounts of women as victims and offenders;

A critique of traditional criminological theories and their focus on men and
exclusion of women;

The dismantling of gendered stereotypes for both female and male offenders
and victims;

An identification of discriminatory and institutionalised sexism (e.g. the
criminal justice system);

An understanding of the role of gender in terms of why people offend;

An understanding of the intersections between race, class, sexuality and
gender;

An understanding of the inequalities between women and men and how
these shape behaviour and experiences

Question 19

What do all feminist theorists agree on?

Answer 19

Gender inequalities exist and

must be addressed

Question 20

What do feminist theorists disagree on?

Answer 20

The root of the problem and

What needs to be done

Question 21

What does liberal feminism focus on?

Answer 21

Formal equality, objectivity & neutrality in law

Question 22

What did radical feminism criticized?

Answer 22

Criticised feminist scholarship for focusing on women’s difference from men – argued
that this difference was socially constructed to keep women in their place

Question 23

What is radical feminism’s perspective on gender?

Answer 23

Gender not a question of difference, but a question of dominance

Question 24

What is the aim of post-structuralist feminism?

Answer 24

Deconstruct the discursive power of law

Question 25

What is the aim of queer theory?

Answer 25

De-essentialise sexuality; problems of binary categories

Question 26

What does critical race feminism tackle?

Answer 26

Problem of race and gender

Question 27

What comprises an ecological framework?

Answer 27

Individual (including adverse childhood experiences)

Relationships (including influence of one’s peers)

Community (including local issues, such as poverty and unemployment)

Societal (including social beliefs, values, norms about gender and sexuality)

Question 28

What happens when people don’t fit neatly into gender categories?

Answer 28

Expectation that one should conform to certain physical and mental characteristics and
behaviours.

Punishment for failure to conform

Question 29

What are the characteristics of female offenders?

Answer 29

Female offenders less likely to commit serious crimes against property and the person;

Female offenders less likely to participate in or lead criminal groups/gangs;

Female offenders more likely to act as accomplices;

Female offenders more likely to be victims as children and/or adults;

Female offenders more likely to have been diagnosed with mental illness.

Female offences more likely to involve relational concerns;

Female offenders less likely to take risks;

Female offenders more likely to have injected illicit drugs and to have
committed their offence while under the influence of drugs and/or to
support their drug use;

Female offenders are more likely to have dependent care responsibilities,
but less likely to have a partner to look after their children while in prison.

Question 30

What can the pathways approach help us understand?

Answer 30

Why there has been an increase in female criminality over the
years?

Why do females commit crime?

Question 31

When does women and crime create problems?

Answer 31

Battered women envince empathy whereas women who kill children or
innocent third parties creates a dilemma for feminists.

Question 32

What do media constructions of female criminals serve as?

Answer 32

‘Cautionary tales’ to girls and women that their demands for economic and political
equality could have serious consequences

Supports racist notions that non-whites are particularly deviant

“Academic silence about the sexual orientation of criminalized females, coupled
with the notion that their behaviour is a product of masculinisation, sets the stage
for the demonization of another group – lesbian women – all the while ‘celebrating’
the good white, heterosexual, passive woman as the cultural ideal”