gender and crime Flashcards
Collier
hegemonic masculinity in relation to crime refers to a “range of popular ideologies or what constitute ideal or actual characteristics of ‘being a man’” (1998: 21).
Messerschmidt (2003)
different crimes used by different men in the construction of masculinities
people may enhance masculinities by committing different types of crime
Highly gendered patterns of offending,
Football hooliganism
Joy riding; speeding
State terrorism; war crimes
Sexual and domestic violence
Sexual harassment/violence in school & university settings
Street fighting/gang involvement
Jefferson, 2013: 216)
‘The set of ideas, values, representations and practices associated with ‘being male’ which is commonly accepted as the dominant position in gender relations in a society at a particular momen
Hegemonic masculinity
Most valued or admired (or idealised or desired) way of being a man
Patriarchal power…masculinity is socially constructed but becomes institutionalised and both reflects, and is reflected in, institutional hierarchies
Relational concept : gender hierarchy and difference is naturalised
Distinction between hegemonic and marginalised or subordinated masculinities: some versions of masculinity (and femininity) more highly prized than others
masculinity as a project
Masculinity as a project: crime serves as a resource for doing masculinity
Misogyny and the ‘manosphere’
Incels
Pickup Artists
Men Going Their Own Way
Men’s Rights Activists
United in male supremacist beliefs
Men are victims; women are to blame
Progress and movements relating to gender equality, movements addressing sexual violence (e.g. #MeToo) are subjugating men
Women now enjoy more privileges than men; men are subordinated
Incels resist these progressive (i.e. bad) social changes
Feminist brainwashing and misandry
Solea and Sugiura (2023)
Examination of incel activity on mainstream social media platforms
TikTok: 2 accounts, 52 videos, 1657 comments
Background context of rise of anti-feminist/anti-women ‘influencers, such as Andrew Tate
Promotion into the mainstream of such figures by social media platforms
Fringe/extreme ideologies infiltrate mainstream platforms and from there go on to influence mainstream culture, beliefs and practices
Intersection of online harms with real physical harms can generate technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV)
Mainstreaming the Blackpill
Media narrative frames incels as extreme deviant men who use obscure or niche internet forums, i.e. distinct from ‘normal’ men
However, authors argue that the incel phenomenon has become (somewhat) mainstreamed
More palatable and implicit language used on TikTok, rather than extreme content (in order to avoid removal), but evidence of the same incel tropes (e.g. ‘lookism’)
Underestimation of the acceptance and dissemination of incel ideology in mainstream social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok)
Repetition…desensitisation, normalisation
Result is normalisation of extreme ‘blackpill’ beliefs and the reinforcement of misogyny, sexism and the justification of rape culture
Women and Crime
gender differences
Women make up the majority in only a small number of offences: TV licence evasion (approx. 3/4 of prosecutions are of women; TV licence evasion comprises 30% of all female prosecutions); offences relating to prostitution; summary offences relating to children’s school attendance)
Male: female ratio for theft and handling stolen goods offences = 3:1
Male: female ratio of sex offences = approx. 100:1
gender diff - women 2
Shoplifting is the most common indictable offence for which both men and women are prosecuted; shoplifting accounts for 38% of female prosecutions vs. 17% of male prosecutions
why don’t women offend as much - wootton
If men behaved like women the courts would be idle and the prisons empty’
why don’t women offend as much
Incompatible with cultural expectations regarding femininity (however, violence may be used by women to police other women’s/girls’ femininity)
Does not (usually) affirm gendered identities
Informal social controls affecting social life and impeding involvement in crime
Deterrent effects of stigma and social opprobrium?
feminism
Feminist criminologists also concerned with how women – as victims, offenders and professionals – are responded to by and within the criminal justice system.
Aims to scrutinise the exercise of power in the research process by emphasizing how, and by whom, knowledge is produced (reflexivity).
There’s no such thing as unbiased, value-free research.
Aims to give women (and men) voice and to put their lived experiences centre stage in the production of knowledge about them.
Daly conceptual schema
- Gender ratio (addresses gender differences)
Why do men/boys offend more than women/girls?
NB. risks seeing gender differences as immutable or acultural - Gendered crime (addresses ‘rates’ question)
What are the contexts of girls’/women’s and boys’/men’s illegal acts? What is the social organisation of specific offences? - Gendered pathways into lawbreaking (addresses ‘why’ they did it)
What is the nature of, and what explains the character of, women’s and men’s pathways into lawbreaking? What brings people to commit crimes/use drugs/be arrested/imprisoned, etc? - Gendered lives (addresses general life course trajectories that may (not) include lawbreaking)
How does gender organise the ways in which women and men survive, take care of themselves and their children, find shelter and food? How does gender structure thinkable courses of action and identities?
theories of women’s crime - poverty - Carlen
Poverty in combination with other factors (which predominate at different times), including:
Experience of residential care (leads to loosening of informal social controls + lack of attachment and care)
Drug/alcohol addiction
Quest for excitement
Rejection of the gender deal and/or the class deal
poverty - Heimer
In places and times when women are socioeconomically disadvantaged relative to men, women account for a larger proportion of arrests
As women’s unemployment rates increase relative to those of men, women account for a larger proportion of arrests
Victimisation as a pathway into crime for women
‘Blurred boundaries’ between women’s offending and victimisation – often both victims and offenders simultaneously
Very high rates of child and adult (poly)victimisation experiences amongst adjudicated female offenders
Around one third report past sexual abuse
Around one half report past physical abuse
Many women have recent histories of abuse
Also violent victimisation in context of high-risk lifestyles (e.g. involvement in drug use, prostitution, living/working on the streets)
‘Psychological sequelae’ of victimisation experiences
Trauma – repressed then explodes in rage
Self-medication with substances
Normalisation of violence/abuse
has there been a reduction in in gender violence gap
Little empirical support for liberation hypothesis: women caught up in the criminal justice system overwhelmingly poor and from minority ethnic groups
reduction in in gender violence gap- liberation hypothesis ADLER
ising female crime rates attributed to growing number of women adopting ‘male roles’ (esp. paid employment) and to women’s increasing expectations and opportunities
reduction in in gender violence gap- Steffensmeier
“[t]he new female criminal is more a social invention than an empirical reality and […] the proposed relationship between the women’s movement and crime is, indeed, tenuous and even vacuous. Women are still typically non-violent, petty property offenders.”
Box and Hale-reduction in in gender violence gap
argued that the sex composition of the police force (growing numbers of female officers), but not the ‘masculinisation’ of women’s roles, was significantly related to conviction rates for female violent offending. Media exaggeration of female violence had “sensitized both public and police to the alleged relationship between violence and female emancipation [leading to] a harsher stance towards females suspected of violence” (1983: 43).
Harmed and Harming women.- DALY
‘Leading feminist scenario’ (Daly, 1992):
Abused or neglected as a child;
Identified as a ‘problem child’; acts out;
Becomes violent when drinking alcohol;
May be drug-addicted;
May have psychological problems;
Unable to cope with current situation.
Normal violence in girls lives
Many young women see violence as ‘normal’ and routine, but rare for girls to use physical violence regularly (see Batchelor et al., 2001; Pearce, 2004; Phillips, 2003)
Young men and young women consider girls’ use of physical violence (up to a point) to be acceptable (NB. class-based norms and expectations)
Girls and boys’ fights motivated by feelings of disrespect, provocation and righteous indignation
Girls in major Scottish study condemned others’ use of violence but justified or rationalised their own in certain contexts, including:
Victim precipitation
Sticking up for themselves
Retaliation
Protecting own reputation (Burman, 2004; Burman et al., 2001)
