Gender and crime Flashcards
Gender Patterns:
What are the gender patterns in crime? (2)
Four out of five convicted offenders in England and Wales are male. This highlights the significant gender disparity in crime rates, showing that men are overwhelmingly more likely to be convicted than women.
By the age of 40, 32% of males have a criminal conviction, compared to 9% of females. This underscores the higher rate of criminal conviction among males, further emphasizing the gender differences in criminal behaviour.
Gender patterns:
Do women commit more crime than men (2)
Women’s crimes are less reported – Crimes like shoplifting and prostitution are less likely to be noticed or reported, especially when committed by women.
Women are treated more leniently – Even when women’s crimes are discovered, they are less likely to be prosecuted and often receive lighter punishment.
The chivalry thesis:
What is the chivalry thesis?
The chivalry thesis suggests that women are treated more kindly by the criminal justice system because people, especially men, feel protective towards them. As a result, women often get lighter punishments.
The chivalry thesis:
How can the chivalry thesis be seen through self-report studies? (use two sociologists)
Graham and Bowling (1995) found that, while males were more likely to offend, the difference between male and female offending was smaller in self-report studies than in official statistics. Males were 2.33 times more likely to admit to committing an offense, while official statistics show males as four times more likely to offend.
Flood-Page et al (2000) found that only one in 11 female self-reported offenders had been cautioned or prosecuted, compared to over one in seven males.
Gender patterns in crime:
How can it seen that women commit more crime? e.g. underreporting of female crime? (use two sociologists)
Shoplifting:
Shoplifting, a crime often associated with women, is less likely to be reported because it is often seen as a less serious crime. It may go unnoticed or be handled privately by retailers. Buckle and Farrington’s (1984) study on shoplifting in department stores observed that men committed shoplifting more frequently, but official statistics showed a near-equal number of male and female offenders. This suggests that women’s shoplifting may be underreported.
Prostitution
Prostitution, which is more commonly committed by women, is also underreported. Due to societal stigma, women involved in prostitution may not report crimes like sexual violence or theft, and clients (mostly men) are unlikely to report such crimes either. Heidensohn (1996) argued that prostitution remains a hidden crime, and official crime statistics often overlook the extent of female involvement in this activity.
Gender patterns in crime:
How can it seen that women commit more crime? e.g. leniency in prosecution? (use two sociologists)
Shoplifting Sentencing:
Hood’s (1992) study, women were one-third less likely to be imprisoned for crimes like shoplifting compared to men, even when committing similar offences. This suggests a lenient approach toward female offenders, aligning with the chivalry thesis, where women’s offences are treated with more care and leniency.
Self-report Studies:
Research by John Graham and Ben Bowling (1995) showed that males were more likely to offend in their study, but the gap between male and female offending was smaller in self-reported data compared to official statistics. This indicates that women may be underreported in crime statistics due to more lenient treatment by the criminal justice system, which doesn’t capture the full extent of female criminality.
The chivalry thesis:
How can the chivalry thesis be seen through self-reported studies? (use two sociologists)
Self-report studies (e.g., Graham and Bowling, 1995) show that although males are more likely to commit crimes, the gender gap is smaller when individuals are asked directly about their offenses. For example, males in their study were 2.33 times more likely to admit committing an offence in the previous year, whereas the official statistics show males as four times more likely.
The chivalry thesis:
How can the chivalry thesis through official statistics? (use a sociologist)
Court statistics also appear to support this thesis:
Females are more likely to be released on bail than males.
Women tend to receive fines or community sentences rather than prison terms.
Women are less likely to serve prison sentences for shoplifting compared to men.
Roger Hood’s (1992) study found that women were one-third less likely to be jailed than men in similar cases.
Evaluation against the chivalry thesis:
How can the chivalry thesis not be seen through self-report studies?
There is considerable evidence against the chivalry thesis. For example, David Farrington and Alison Morris’
(1983) study of sentencing of 408 offences of theft in a magistrates’ court found that women were not sentenced more leniently for comparable offences. Steven Box’s (1981) review of British and American self-report studies also concludes that women who commit serious offences are not treated more favourably than men.
Similarly, Abigail Buckle and David Farrington’s (1984) observational study of shoplifting in a department store witnessed twice as many males shoplifting as females
- despite the fact that the numbers of male and female offenders in the official statistics are more or less equal. This small-scale study thus suggests that women shoplifters may be more likely to be prosecuted than their male counterparts.
Self-report studies also provide evidence that males commit more offences. For example, young men are more likely than females to report binge drinking, taking illegal drugs or engaging in disorderly conduct. Hales et al (2009) found that they were significantly more likely to have been offenders in all major offence categories. Other studies suggest that the gender gap increases as the offences become more serious.
Under-reporting of male crimes against women The chivalry thesis also ignores the fact that many male crimes do not get reported. For example, in 2012, only 8% of females who had been victims of a serious sexual assault reported it to the police, while Yearnshire (1997) found that a woman typically suffers 35 assaults before reporting domestic violence.
Crimes of the powerful are also under-represented in self-report and victim surveys, and these are also more likely to be committed by men by virtue of their more privileged position in the job market.
If women appear to be treated more leniently, it may simply be because their offences are less serious. For example, the lower rate of prosecutions of females as compared with their self-reported offending may be because the crimes they admit to are less serious and less likely to go to trial.
Women offenders also seem more likely to show remorse, and this may help to explain why they are more likely to receive a caution instead of going to court.
Evaluation against the chivalry thesis:
How can the chivalry thesis of male crimes against women?
Bias against women:
How can bias against women relating to crime be seen through double standards?
Bias against women
Many feminists argue that, far from the criminal justice system being biased in favour of women, as the chivalry thesis claims, it is biased against them. As Heidensohn
(1996) argues, the courts treat females more harshly than males when they deviate from gender norms. For example:
- Double standards - courts punish girls but not boys for premature or promiscuous sexual activity. “Wayward’ girls can end up in care without ever having committed an offence. Sharpe (2009) found from her analysis of 55 youth worker records, that seven out of 11 girls were referred for support because they were sexually active,
but none out of 44 boys.
- Women who do not conform to accepted standards of monogamous heterosexuality and motherhood are punished more harshly. As Stewart 2006) found, magistrates’ perceptions of female defendants’ characters were based on stereotypical gender roles.
Pat Carlen (1997) puts forward a similar view in relation to custodial sentences. She argues that when women are jailed, it is less for ‘the seriousness of their crimes and more according to the court’s assessment of them as wives, mothers and daughters’. Girls whose parents believe them to be beyond control are more likely to receive custodial sentences than girls who live more ‘conventional’ lives.
Carlen found that Scottish judges were much more likely to jail women whose children were in care than women who they saw as good mothers.
Feminists argue that these double standards exist because the criminal justice system is patriarchal. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the system deals with rape cases. There have been numerous cases of male judges making sexist, victim-blaming remarks. For example, Carol Smart (1989) quotes Judge Wild as saying that
‘Women who say no do not always mean no. It is not just a question of how she says it, how she shows and makes it clear. If she doesn’t want it she only has to keep her legs shut.’
Similarly, as Sandra Walklate (1998) argues, in rape cases it is not the defendant who is on trial but the victim, since she has to prove her respectability in order to have her evidence accepted. According to Adler (1987), women who are deemed to lack respectability, such as single parents, punks and peace protestors, find it difficult to have their testimon believed by the court.
Explaining female crime:
What is the functionalist sex role theory? (use two sociologists)
Functionalist sex role theory
Early sociological explanations of gender differences in crime
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focused on differences in the socialisation of males and females. For example, boys are encouraged to be tough, aggressive and risk taking, and this can mean they are more disposed to commit acts of violence or take advantage of criminal opportunities when they present themselves.
The functionalist Talcott Parsons (1955) traces differences in crime and deviance to the gender roles in the conventional nuclear family. While men take the instrumental, breadwinner role, performed largely outside the home, women perform the expressive role in the home, where they take the main responsibility for socialising the children.
While this gives girls access to an adult role model, it tends to mean that boys reject feminine models of behaviour that express tenderness, gentleness and emotion. Instead, boys seek to distance themselves from such models by engaging in compensatory compulsory masculinity’ through aggression and anti-social behaviour, which can slip over into acts of delinquency.
Because men have much less of a socialising role than women in the conventional nuclear family, socialisation can be more difficult for boys than for girls. According to Albert K. Cohen
(1955), this relative lack of an adult male role model means boys are more likely to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculine identity. As we saw in Topic 1, in these subcultural groups, status is earned by acts of toughness, risk-taking and delinquency.
Similarly, New Right theorists argue that the absence of a male role model in matrifocal lone parent families leads to
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Crime and Deviance
boys turning to criminal street gangs as a source of status
Sandra Walklate (2003) criticises sex role theory for its biological assumptions. According to Walklate, Parsons assumes that because women have the biological capacity to bear children, they are best suited to the expressive role.
Thus, although the theory tries to explain gender differences in crime in terms of behaviour learned through socialisation, it is ultimately based on biological assumptions about
More recently, feminists have put forward alternative explanations for women’s patterns of crime and deviance.
Feminists locate their explanations in the patriarchal (male-dominated) nature of society and women’s subordinate position in it.
We can distinguish between two main feminist approaches:
Heidensohn: patriarchal control
Frances Heidensohn (1996) argues that the most striking thing about women’s behaviour is how conformist it is - they commit fewer and less serious crimes than men. In her view, this is because patriarchal society imposes greater control over women and this reduces their opportunities to offend. This patriarchal control operates at home, in public spaces and at work.
Control at home Women’s domestic role, with its constant round of housework and childcare, imposes severe restrictions on their time and movement and confines them to the house for long periods, reducing their opportunities to offend. Women who try to reject their domestic role may find that their partners seek to impose it by force, through domestic violence.
As Dobash and Dobash (1979) show, many violent attacks result from men’s dissatisfaction with their wives’ performance of domestic duties. Men also exercise control through their financial power, for example by denying women sufficient funds for leisure activities, thereby restricting their time outside the home.
Daughters too are subject to patriarchal control. Girls are less likely to be allowed to come and go as they please or to stay out late. As a result, they develop a ‘bedroom culture’, socialising at home with friends rather than in public spaces.
Girls are also required to do more housework than boys.
As a result, they have less opportunity to engage in deviant behaviour on the streets.
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Control in public Women are controlled in public places by the threat or fear of male violence against them, especially sexual violence. For example, the Islington Crime Survey found that 54% of women avoided going out after dark for fear of being victims of crime, as against only 14% of men.
Heidensohn notes that sensationalist media reporting of rapes adds to women’s fear. Distorted media portrayals of the typical rapist as a stranger who carries out random attacks frightens women into staying indoors.
Females are also controlled in public by their fear of being defined as not respectable. Dress, make-up, demeanour and ways of speaking and acting that are defined as inappropriate can gain a girl or woman a ‘reputation’. For example, women on their own may avoid going into pubs
- which are sites of criminal behaviour - for fear of being regarded as sexually ‘loose’ or even as prostitutes.
Similarly, Sue Lees (1993) notes that in school, boys maintain control through sexualised verbal abuse, for example labelling girls as ‘slags’ if they fail to conform to gender role expectations.
Control at work Women’s behaviour at work is controlled by male supervisors and managers. Sexual harassment is widespread and helps keep women ‘in their place’.
Furthermore, women’s subordinate position reduces their opportunities to engage in major criminal activity at work.
For example, the ‘glass ceiling’ prevents many women from rising to senior positions where there is greater opportunity to commit fraud. As a result, they are less likely to be involved in white collar crime.
In general, these patriarchal restrictions on women’s lives mean they have fewer opportunities for crime. However, Heidensohn recognises that patriarchy can also push some women into crime. For example, women are more likely to be poor (for example, as a result of gender inequalities in the labour market) and may turn to theft or prostitution to gain a decent standard of living. We explore this issue
- why some disadvantaged women become involved in crime - next.
Carlen: class and gender deals
Using unstructured tape-recorded interviews, Pat Carlen
(1988) conducted a study of thirty-nine 15-46 year old working-class women who had been convicted of a
goods, burglary, drugs, prostitution, violence and arson.
Twenty were in prison or youth custody at the time of the interviews. Although Carlen recognises that there are some middle-class female offenders, she argues that most convicted serious female criminals are working-class.
Carlen uses a version of Travis Hirschi’s (1969) control theory to explain female crime. Hirschi argues that humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a ‘deal’, of rewards in return for conforming to social norms. People will turn to crime if they do not believe the rewards will be forthcoming, and if the rewards of crime appear greater
than the risks.
Carlen arques that working-class women are generally lar to conform through the promise of two types of reward.
or ‘deals’:
- The class deal: women who work will be offered material rewards, with a decent standard of living and
leisure opportunities.
- The gender deal: patriarchal ideology promises wore conforming to the norms of a conventional domestic material and emotional rewards from family life by
gender role.
If these rewards are not available or worth the effort, crimes
with the women in her study.
becomes more likely. Carlen argues that this was the case In terms of the class deal, the women had failed to find = legitimate way of earning a decent living and this left ther feeling powerless, oppressed and the victims of injustice.
Thirty-two of them had always been in poverty.
Some found that qualifications gained in jail had been re help in gaining work upon release. Others had been on training courses but still could not get a job.
Many had experienced problems and humiliations in trying to claim benefits.
As they had gained no rewards from the class deal, they felt they had nothing to lose by using crime to escape from poverty.
In terms of the gender deal for conforming to patriarchal family norms, most of the women had either not had the opportunity to make the deal, or saw few rewards and many disadvantages in family life.
Some had been abused physically or sexually by their fathers, or subjected to domestic violence by partners.
Over half had spent time in care, which broke the bonds with family and friends.
Those leaving or running away from care often found themselves homeless, unemployed and poor.
Many of the women reached the conclusion that:
‘crime was the only route to a decent standard of living. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Carlen concludes that, for these women, poverty and ben brought up in care or an oppressive family life were the t main causes of their criminality. Drug and alcohol addicto and the desire for excitement, were contributory factors, these often stemmed from poverty or being brought up care. Being criminalised and jailed made the class deal er less available to them and made crime even more attra
Evaluation
Heidensohn and Carlens approaches to female crime are based on a combination of feminism and control theory:
Heidensohn shows the many patriarchal controls that help prevent women from deviating.
Carlen shows how the failure of patriarchal society to deliver the promised deals to some women removes the controls that prevent them from offending.
However, both control theory and feminism can be accused of seeing women’s behaviour as determined by external forces such as patriarchal controls or class and gender deals.
Critics argue that this underplays the importance of free will and choice in offending.
Furthermore, Carlen’s sample was small and may be and serious offenders.
unrepresentative, consisting as it did largely of working-class
The liberation thesis
If patriarchal society exercises control over women to prevent them from deviating, then it would seem logical to assume that, if society becomes less patriarchal and more equal, women’s crime rates will become similar to men’s.
This is the ‘liberation thesis’ put forward by Freda Adler
(1975). Adler argues that, as women become liberated from patriarchy, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men’s. Women’s liberation has led to a new type of female criminal and a rise in the female crime rate.
Adler argues that changes in the structure of society have led to changes in women’s offending behaviour. As patriarchal controls and discrimination have lessened, and opportunities in education and work have become more equal, women have begun to adopt traditionally ‘male’ roles in both legitimate activity (work) and illegitimate activity (crime).
As a result, women no longer just commit traditional
‘female’ crimes such as shoplifting and prostitution. They now also commit typically ‘male’ offences such as crimes of violence and white-collar crimes.
This is because of women’s greater self-confidence and assertiveness, and the fact that they now have greater opportunities in the legitimate structure. For example, there are more women in senior positions at work and this gives them the opportunity to commit serious white-collar crimes such as fraud.
There is some evidence to support this view. For example:
- Both the overall rate of female offending and the female share of offences rose during the second half of the 20th century. For example, between the 1950s and 1990s, the female share of offences rose from one in 7 to one in 6.
Crime and Deviance
Adler argues that the pattern of female crime has shifted. She cites studies showing rising levels of female participation in crimes previously regarded as ‘male’, such as embezzlement and armed robbery.
More recently, there has been media talk of the growth of ‘girl gangs’, while a study by Martin Denscombe
(2001) of Midlands teenagers’ self-images found that females were as likely as males to engage in risk-taking behaviour and that girls were adopting more
‘male’ stances, such as the desire to be in control and look ‘hard’.
Criticisms of the liberation thesis
Critics reject Adler’s thesis on several grounds:
The female crime rate began rising in the 1950s - long before the women’s liberation movement, which emerged in the late 1960s.
Most female criminals are working-class - the group least likely to be influenced by women’s liberation, which has benefited middle-class women much more. According to Chesney-Lind (1997), in the USA poor and marginalised women are more likely than liberated women to
Chesney-Lind did find evidence of women branching out into more typically male offences such as drugs.
However, this is usually because of their link with prostitution - a very ‘unliberated’ female offence.
There is little evidence that the illegitimate opportunity structure of professional crime has opened up to women. Laidler and Hunt (2001) found that female gang members in the USA were expected to conform to conventional gender roles in the same way as non-deviant girls.
However, Adler’s thesis does draw our attention to the importance of investigating the relationship between changes in women’s position and changes in patterns of female offending
However, it can be argued that she overestimates both the extent to which women have become liberated and the extent to which they are now able to engage in serious crime.
Activity
Discussion
Female crime: explanations on trial
…go to www.sociology.uk.net
Females and violent crime
One trend in the official statistics that seems to support Adler’s liberation thesis is the increase in the female arrest
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and conviction statistics for violent crime. For example, according to Hand and Dodd (2009), between 2000 and 2008, police statistics show the number of females arrested for violence rose by an average of 17% each year. Similar trends have been noted in other countries, including Canada, Australia and the USA.
If these police statistics are an accurate picture of offending, it suggests that females are increasingly committing typically
‘male crimes, since violent offending has traditionally been a male form of crime.
Female crime: explanations on trial
…go to www.sociology.uk.net
Females and violent crime
One trend in the official statistics that seems to support Adler’s liberation thesis is the increase in the female arrest
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and conviction statistics for violent crime. For example, according to Hand and Dodd (2009), between 2000 and 2008, police statistics show the number of females arrested for violence rose by an average of 17% each year. Similar trends have been noted in other countries, including Canada, Australia and the USA.
If these police statistics are an accurate picture of offending, it suggests that females are increasingly committing typically
‘male crimes, since violent offending has traditionally been a male form of crime.
The criminalisation of females
However, evidence from other sources paints a different picture. For example, in the USA, Steffensmeier and Schwartz (2009) found that while the female share of arrests for violence grew from one-fifth to one-third between 1980 and 2003, this rise in the police statistics was not matched by the findings of victim surveys. That is, victims did not report any increase in attacks by females.
Similarly, self-report studies showed no upward trend in females’ criminality.
Net widening Steffensmeier and Schwartz conclude that in reality there has been no change in women’s involvement in violent crime. They argue that the rise in arrests is due to the justice system ‘widening the net’ - arresting and prosecuting females for less serious forms of violence than previously.
Similarly, Chesney-Lind (2006) argues that a policy of mandatory arrests for domestic violence has led to a steep rise in the female violence statistics in the USA. Where a couple fight, both may be arrested, even though it is likely that the woman is the victim. Females previously ignored by the justice system now find themselves being labelled as violent offenders.
In the UK, too, Sharpe and Gelsthorpe (2009) note that net-widening policies are producing a rise in the official statistics for females’ violent crimes. There is a growing trend towards prosecuting females for low-level physical altercations, even in some cases for playground fights. Most convictions are for minor offences not involving weapons.
This trend is an example of what Jock Young (2011) calls
‘defining deviance up’ to catch trivial offences in the net.
Worrall (2004) argues that in the past, girls’ misbehaviour was more likely to be seen as a ‘welfare’ issue, whereas now it has been re-labelled as criminality.
Gender and victimisation
Large-scale national victim surveys such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW 2012) show gender differences in the level and types of victimisation, and in thel relationship between victims and offenders.
Homicide victims About 70% are male. Female victims are more likely to know their killer and in 60% of these cases. this was a partner or ex-partner. Males are most likely to be killed by a friend or acquaintance.
Victims of violence Fewer women than men are victims di violence (2% versus 4%). In addition:
Women are most likely to be victimised by an acquaintance, men by a stranger.
More women than men were victims of intimate violence (domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking) during ther adult lives (31% versus 18%).
Ten times more women reported having been sexually assaulted than men.
Only 8% of females who had experienced serious sexual assault reported it to the police. A third of those who didn’t report it said they believed the police couldn’t do much to help.
Mismatch between fear and risk? Research shows women have a greater fear of crime but the CSEW shows they are at less risk of victimisation. However, some local victim surveys such as by Lea and Young (1993) have four that women are in fact at greater risk than men. There s also some evidence from early studies (such as Sparks eta
1977) that female victims of violence may be more likely to refuse to be interviewed.
Furthermore, victim surveys do not necessarily convey the frequency or severity of the victimisation. For example, in
A moral panic about girls?
If female participation in violent crime is not in fact increasing, how do we account for the increase in criminalisation of females for this kind of crime? One view is that it is a social construction resulting from a moral
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panic over young women’s behaviour. For example, Burman and Batchelor (2009) point to media depictions of young
for fights’.
women as ‘drunk and disorderly, out of control and lookin
Reports featuring binge drinking, girl gangs and so on may be affecting the criminal justice system. For example, Sharpe (2009) found that professionals such as judges, probation officers and police were influenced by media behaviour was rapidly getting worse. Similarly, in the USA Steffensmeier et al (2005) found that media-driven moral stereotypes of violent ‘ladettes’ and many believed that girl panics about girls were affecting sentencing decisions.
The overall effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy and an amplification spiral: reports of girls’ misbehaviour sensitisa police and courts. who take a tougher stance, reculting in more convictions, which produces further negative media coverage and so on. As Burman and Batchelor put it, What we are witnessing is not an increase in violent offending, but the increased reporting, recording and prosecuting of young women accused of violent offences.’
Explaining female crime:
What is the control theory? (use 2 sociologist)
Explaining female crime:
What is the liberation thesis? (use two sociologist)
Explaining female crime:
How can the control theory be seen through control at home? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How can the control theory be seen through control in public? (use two sociologist)
Explaining female crime:
How can the control theory be seen through control at work? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
What is the class deal?
Explaining female crime:
What is the gender deal?
Explaining female crime:
How can the class and gender deal lead to crime? (use two sociologists)
Evaluation of class and gender deal:
What are the criticisms of the class and gender deal? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How can the liberation thesis lead to crime being committed? (use two sociologists)
Evaluation of the liberation thesis:
What are the criticisms for the liberation thesis? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How can women be seen to committing violent crime? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How can the criminalisation of women be seen? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How is there a moral panic about girls relating to crime? (use two sociologist)
Explaining female crime:
How are women victims are crime? (use two sociologists)
Explaining female crime:
How is there a mismatch between fear and risk? (use two sociologists)
Men committing crime:
How does masculinity link to crime? (use two sociologists)
Men committing crime:
What are criticisms of Messerschmidt?
Men committing crime:
How does post-modernity, masculinity and crime link together? (use two sociologists)
Men committing crime:
How does bodily affect why men commit crime? (use two sociologisst)
Men committing crime:
