Gender and crime (women)

Question 1

What do official figures suggest?

Answer 1

Six men are convicted for every one woman in England & Wales (MoJ, 2014)

Question 2

Men are (proportionately) more likely than women to…

Answer 2

• 60x for sexual offences
• 14x for robbery
• 13x for possession of weapons
• 10x for public order offences
• 8x for violence against a person
• 7x for criminal damage
• 4x for theft

Question 3

What does Carlen (1988) suggest?

Answer 3

The “class deal” - being a good employee enables women to acquire objects of financial status
The “gender deal” - performing the expressive role gives women a man’s support and emotional fulfilment
Women who do not stick to these deals are deviant - they’ve broken the social contract
This is more likely if they’re unemployed, poorly educated or lack functional family ties
They turn instead to crime to gain “illegitimate class and gender deals”

Question 4

What is Heidensohn’s (1996) Socialisation Theory?

Answer 4

Women are socialised away from crime because there are harsher punishments for them
Criminal women are more stigmatised and shamed
Women who diverge from consensus norms of socialisation risk being stripped of social protections
Criminal women are abandoning their proper role and also choosing bad behaviour
Women are failures even if they succeed as criminals

Question 5

What are Heidensohn’s (1996) Spheres of Control?

Answer 5

Private sphere - in their own home they are constrained by patriarchal family structures
Public sphere - threats of violence if they are alone at night, they tend to work part-time or lower-responsibility jobs, so they have less opportunity to commit white-collar crime
Relational sphere - women are at greater risk than men of losing their reputation through crime/deviance

Question 6

What is Pollak’s (1950) Chivalry Thesis?

Answer 6

Women are treated with more leniency because the CJS is largely male, courts take pity on them
Courts are reluctant to remove mothers from children, so they avoid imprisoning them
Police feel a “fatherly duty” to educate where nobody’s been physically harmed

Question 7

What is Adler’s (1975) Liberation Thesis?

Answer 7

Feminist movements have changed gender roles so it’s now more acceptable for women to commit crime
Social control of women is weakening - girls/women are now allowed to socialise in the same way as boys/men
Spheres of control are weakening
There’s a new “ladette culture” which celebrates “masculinised” female behaviour