Feminist Criminology Flashcards
What are the biological and positivist theories revolving around females and crime?
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
What is Marxist theory fixated on?
Class as the source of inequality
What have Neo-Marxists argued?
Law directly or indirectly serves dominant class interests ; and maintains economic power and inequality
What dies the neutral ideology hide?
The privileges given to the wealthy in the legal system
What is a limitation of Marxist theory?
Crude notion that all law is a mask for the rule of the dominant (rich)
classes.
What is strain theory?
Crime occurs because of the inability of
individuals to achieve goals of monetary success and/or
middle-class status
What is subcultural theory?
Crime located at the level of group
interaction and is important for status/identity within group
What is labelling theory?
Criminal identity is produced through labelling
What is critical criminology?
Crime results from class and status inequalities and punishment is part of that system of inequality. The structure is unjust
What are the facts about the gender gap in crime?
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
What have many criminological theories not explained?
Why men commit the vast
majority of crime
What is Sutherland’s perspective on sex role theory?
Criminal behaviour is learned; boys more likely to become deviant than girls
because girls are taught to be nice based on their reproductive capacities
What is Parsons’ perspective on sex role theory?
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”.
What is Cohen’s perspective on sex role theory?
Delinquency related to the absence of male role models.
Toughness and dominance learned through interaction with
older males.
Delinquency = working-class phenomenon.
What is the liberal feminism perspective on sex role theory?
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.
Where are there gender differences in strain theory?
The types of strain and responses to strain
What is hegemonic masculinity?
The idea that there is a gender order
What has Feminist Criminology enabled?
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
What do all feminist theorists agree on?
Gender inequalities exist and
must be addressed
What do feminist theorists disagree on?
The root of the problem and
What needs to be done
What does liberal feminism focus on?
Formal equality, objectivity & neutrality in law
What did radical feminism criticized?
Criticised feminist scholarship for focusing on women’s difference from men – argued
that this difference was socially constructed to keep women in their place
What is radical feminism’s perspective on gender?
Gender not a question of difference, but a question of dominance
What is the aim of post-structuralist feminism?
Deconstruct the discursive power of law
