GENDER & CRIME

Question 1

Gender and Crime

Answer 1

Males are arrested for significantly more crimes than females

Question 2

Heidensohn & Silvestri, 2012

Answer 2

• Observed that gender differences are the most significant feature of recorded crime.
• For example, official statistics show that 4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales and Male.

Question 3

Eurpool

Answer 3

• The number of women engaged in criminal activity has increased in recent decades - potentially because of technological progress and social norms are liberating women from the home and increasing their participation in the crime market.

Question 4

Gender statistics - chivarly thesis example

Answer 4

• Among offenders a higher proportion of female than male offenders are convicted of property offences (except burglary)
• A higher proportion of male than female offenders are convicted of violence or sexual offences.
• Some sociologists argue that the statistics underestimate the amount of female as against male offending because female crimes are less likely to be reported and less likely to be prosecuted.

Question 5

Chivalry thesis

Answer 5

• Men are socialised to act in a ‘chivalrous’ way towards women. Most criminal justice agents are men, thus, the CJS are more lenient with women.
• Women, resultantly, are less likely to be prosecuted which gives an invalid picture that exaggerates the extent of gender differences in rates of offending.

Question 6

Graham and Bowling, 1995

Answer 6

• Supports chivalry thesis arguing that females are more likely than males to be released on bail rather than remanded in custody.
• Additionally, only 1/9 female offenders receive a prison sentence for shoplifting compared to 1/5 males.

Question 7

Chivalry thesis
EV.

Answer 7

+ Self-report studies do suggest that female offenders are treated more leniently. However, they also provide evidence that males commit more offences.
- Heindensohn (2002) argued that differences in sentencing almost disappear when severity of crime is taken into account.
- Many feminists argue that the CJS is biased against women.
- As Heidensohn argues, the courts treat females more harshly than males when they deviate from gender norms. For example, they argue that the CJS had double standards, with courts punishing girls but not boys for premature or promiscuous sexual activity. More support for this comes from Sharpe, Stewart and Walklate.

Question 8

Sharpe, 2009

Answer 8

• Analysed youth worker records and found that 7 out of 11 girls were referred for support because they were sexually active, but none out of 44 boys
• Believes that women who do not conform to accepted standards of monogamous heterosexuality and motherhood are punished more harshly.

Question 9

Stewart, 2006

Answer 9

• Supported this idea, finding that magistrates’ perceptions of female defendants’ characters were based on stereotypical gender roles.
• Feminists argue that these double standards exist because the CJS 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.

Question 10

Whether or not the CJS is more lenient towards women, as the chivalry thesis claims, women in general appear to have a lower rate of offending than men. There have been 3 proposed sociological reasons for this

Answer 10

Sex-role theory, control theory and the liberation thesis.

Question 11

Sex-role Theory

Answer 11

This is a Functionalist theory which argues that gender differences in crime are due to gender differences in socialisation.

Question 12

Parsons, 1955

Answer 12

• Sex-role Theory
• The father has the instrumental role of provider and the mother the expressive role of carer. While girls have a readily available female role model at home (mother), the boys, who are largely socialised by their mother, tend to reject any behaviour seen as feminine and pursue masculinity.
• This is seen to encourage delinquency as they reject qualities of tenderness and emotion, instead engaging in ‘compensatory compulsory masculinity’ through aggression and anti-social behaviour thus leading to acts of deviance.

Question 13

Cohen, 1955

Answer 13

• Sex-role Theory
• Argues that socialisation can be hard for boys.
• Without a male role model, they can experience anxiety about their identity as men.
• A solution is the all-male street gang, where aspects of masculinity can be expressed and rewarded.
• The behaviour that these groups encourage, such as being tough, taking risks and breaking rules, all encourage deviancy.

Question 14

New Right sociologists

Answer 14

Chubb and Moe

Question 15

Sex-role Theory
EV.

Answer 15

• Walklate (2003) criticises the sex role theory for its determinism. Parsons makes biological assumptions on the role of the women.
• She identifies that Parsons assumes that women are best suited to the expressive role simply because they have the biological capacity to bear children.
• Therefore, whilst the theory attempts to explain gender differences in crime in terms of socialisation, it is limited by its dependency on biological assumptions about sex differences.
• Feminists criticise sex role theory for failing to consider gender differences in power - especially the power men have over women.
• Is the gender of the role-model important?

Question 16

Control theory of deviance

Answer 16

• Argues that women commit fewer crimes than men because they have been socialised to be conformist. In her view, this is because patriarchal society imposes greater control over women and this reduces their opportunities and, in turn, their likelihood to offend. This patriarchal control operates at home, in public spaces and at work.
• Home - Women’s domestic role imposes restrictions on women’s time and movement. Additionally, women who try to reject their domestic role may be opposed with force.
• Dobash and Dobash (1979) argue that men are violent towards women if they are dissatisfied with their domestic duties along with other factors. Men can also exercise control through their financial power. For example, men can restrict their funds for leisure activities which would also limit their time outside the home. Daughters are also subjected to patriarchal control, less able to have the freedom that sons may. As a result, they develop a ‘bedroom culture’, socialising at home with friends rather than in public spaces. Thus, they too have less opportunity to engage in deviant behaviour.
• Public - Women are controlled in public by the threat of male violence (especially sexual) against them. Women’s fears are heightened by media reporting. Though this may prevent women from going out, in most cases, women are raped by someone they know. Women are controlled by what they wear so to not provoke men into becoming violent or sexual.
• Work - additionally, as men are more likely to be in a higher position than women within the work sphere, women’s behaviour is also controlled by men in this way. They also may not be in a high enough position to commit certain crimes such as fraud or theft (glass ceiling). Sexual harassment - more vulnerable
• Women’s subordination in all these areas, Heidensohn argues, reduces their chances to engage in any criminal activity.

Question 17

Carlen, 1988

Answer 17

• Using unstructured tape-recorded interviews Carlen conducted a study of 39 working class women between the ages 15 and 49, who were convicted of a range of crimes including theft, handling stolen goods, drugs, prostitution, violence etc.
• 20 were in prison or youth custody at the times of the interviews. Although she recognises that there are some middle-class female offenders, she argues that the main serious female criminals are working class.
• She adopts Hirschi’s control theory to explain female crime. He argued that humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a ‘deal’ - reward in return for conforming to social norms.
• People will turn to crime if the rewards of crime appear greater than the risks. She argues that working class women are led to conform through the promise of 2 types of rewards/deals: the gender deal and the class deal

Question 18

Gender deal

Answer 18

• Patriarchal ideology promises women material and emotional rewards from family life by conforming to the norms of a conventional domestic gender role

Question 19

Class deal

Answer 19

• A deal that offers women material rewards such as consumer goods in return for working for a wage

Question 20

Carlen, 1988
Deals and rewards

Answer 20

• If these rewards are not available or worth the effort, then crime becomes more likely.
• Carlen argues this was the case with the women in her study.
• In terms of the class deal, the women had failed to find a legitimate way of earning a decent standard of living and this left them feeling powerless, oppressed and the victims of injustice.
• 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, most of the women had either not had the opportunity to make the deal, or saw few rewards and many disadvantages in family life.
• Many of the women had reached the conclusion that ‘crime was the only way to a decent standard of living’.
• They had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
• Carlen concludes that, for these women, poverty and being brought up in care or an oppressive family were the 2 main causes of their criminality.
• Drug and alcohol addiction and the desire for excitement were contributory factors, but these often stemmed from poverty or being brought up in care.
• Being criminalised and jailed made the class deal even less available to them and made crime even more attractive.

Question 21

Adler - The Liberation Thesis (1975)

Answer 21

• Argues that as women become liberated from patriarchy, their crimes will become frequent and as serious and men’s. She argues that changes in the structure of society have led to changes in women’s offending behaviour.
• As patriarchal control 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). Thus, women’s liberation has led to a new type of female criminal and a rise in the female crime rate.
• As a result, women no longer just commit traditional ‘female’ crimes e.g. shoplifting - they commit traditionally ‘male’ offences like violence and white-collar crime.
• This is due to greater self-confidence, assertiveness and the fact that they now have greater opportunities in the legitimate structure (e.g. there are more women in senior positions at work and it gives them the opportunity to commit serious working class crime).

Question 22

Adler - The Liberation Thesis (1975)
EV.

Answer 22

+ Both the overall rate of female offending and the female share of offences have gone up.
+ Studies she cites to illustrate the pattern of female crime has shifting show rising levels of female participation in crimes previously regarded as ‘male’ (e.g. armed robbery and embezzlement).
+ Recently, there has been media talk of the growth of girl gangs. A study by Denscombe (2001) of Midlands teenagers’ self-images found that females were as likely as males to engage in risk taking behaviour and girls were adopting more ‘male’ stances (e.g. the desire to look hard and be in control).
+ Her thesis draws attention to the importance of investigating the relationship between changes in women’s position and changes in patterns of female crime.
- The female crime rate began rising in the 1950s - long before the women’s liberation movement, which emerged in the late 1960s
- Chesney-Lind (1997) argued that, in the USA, poor and marginalized women are more likely than liberated women to be liberated. They did also 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.
- It can be argued that she overestimates both the extent to which women become liberated and extent to which they now engage in serious crimes.

Question 23

Steffensmeier and Shwartz, 2009

Answer 23

• Found that while the female share of arrests for violence grew from 1/5 to 1/3 between 1980 and 2003, this rise in the police statistics was not matched by the findings of victim surveys.
• Similarly, self-report studies showed no upward trend in females’ criminality.
• They conclude 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.

Question 24

Sharpe and Gelsthorpe, 2009

Answer 24

• 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.
• More convictions are being made but many of them are minor or trivial offences.

Question 25

Chesney-Lind, 2006

Answer 25

• 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.

Question 26

A moral panic about girls

Answer 26

• The increase in female arrest and conviction statistics for violent crime may instead be a social construction resulting from a moral panic over young women’s beh.
• The overall effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy and an amplification spiral: reports of girls’ misbehaviour sensitise police and courts, who take a tougher stance, resulting im more convictions, which produces further negative media coverage etc.

Question 27

Burman and Batchelor, 2009

Answer 27

• Point to media depictions of young women as ‘drunk and disorderly, out of control and looking for fights’ as responsible for the moral panic over young women’s beh.
• There has not been an increase in violent offending, but instead an increase in the reporting and prosecuting of young women accused of violent offences

Question 28

Steffensmeier et al.

Answer 28

Found that media-driven moral panics about girls were affecting sentencing decisions

Question 29

Gender and victimisation stats

Answer 29

• About 70% of homicide victims are male.
  10x more women reported having been sexually assaulted by men
  CSEW: women are at less risk of
  victimisation.
• However, what may not be taken into account is the frequency or severity of the victimisation.

Question 30

Explaining Male Crime

Answer 30

• Feminists argue that though ‘mainstream’, non-feminist theories of crime have focused on males, they have not generally questioned what it is about being male that leads men to offend.
• Feminists and postmodernists have investigated this question focusing specifically on masculinity, its forms and how it influences crime

Question 31

Messerschmidt, 1993

Answer 31

• Argues that masculinity is a social construct or ‘accomplishment’ and men have to constantly work at constructing and presenting it to others.
• In doing so, some men have more resources than others to draw upon.
• He argues that different masculinities co-exist within society, but that one of these - hegemonic masculinity - is the dominant form that most men wish to accomplish.
• However, some men have subordinated masculinities.
• Crime and deviance are resources that different men use for accomplishing masculinity.

Question 32

hegemonic masc

Answer 32

• Defined through “work in the paid labour market, the subordination of women, heterosexualism and the driven and uncontrollable sexuality of men.”

Question 33

Subordinated masculinity

Answer 33

• Men who are oppressed by definitions of hegemonic masculinity.
• This include gay men, who have no desire to accomplish hegemonic masculinity, as well as lower-class and ethnic minority men who lack the resources to do so.

Question 34

Methods of demonstrating masculinity

Answer 34

• White, MC youths subordinate themselves to teachers to achieve middle class status (value ed.), leading to an accomplishing masculinity in school: accommodating masculinity. Outside school, their masculinity takes an oppositional form (e.g. through pranks, drinking, vandalism).
• White, WC youths have less chance of educational success, so their masculinity is oppositional both in and out of school. It is constructed around sexist attitudes, being tough and opposing teachers’ authority e.g. the ‘lads’ (Willis): oppositional masculinity.
• Black, lower working-class youths may have few expectations of a reasonable job and may use gang membership and violence to express their masculinity, or turn to serious property crime to achieve material success.
• MC men commit white collar or corporate crime to accomplish hegemonic masculinity
• Poorer groups may use street/property crimes to achieve a subordinated masculinity.

Question 35

Messerschmidt, 1993
EV.

Answer 35

+ Provided a sophisticated analysis on the relationship between masculinities, age, class, ethnicity and crime.
- Blankets whole classes and ethnic groups with stereotypical assumptions
+ His focus on accomplishing masculinity is an original explanation of the high level of male crime.
- Circular argument: is masculinity an explanation of male crime or just a description of male offenders.
- The claim that hegemonic masculinity is the ideal which all men aspire to is questionable: it can be seen as little more than a stereotype. Masculinities may be more complex than Messerschmidt claims.
- The theory doesn’t explain why not all men use crime to accomplish masculinity.

Question 36

Masculinity Crisis

Answer 36

Hegemonic masculinity is in crisis due to the rise of feminism and the blurring of social roles, so men turn to crime to feel “like a man”

Question 37

Winlow: postmodernity, masculinity and crime (2001)

Answer 37

• In the shift from a modern industrial society to a late modern or postmodern de-industrialised society, this has led to a loss of manual jobs where working class men would express their masculinity.
• At the same time, the service sector has expanded, and young working class males can express their masculinity working as bouncers in clubs etc.
• In Winlow’s study, the role of a bouncer was shown to give young men both paid work and the opportunity to demonstrate masculinity through violence and illegal schemes (e.g. protection rackets and drug dealing).
• These men are part of a violent, conflict subculture, where men earn status through their ability to use violence.
• However, the absence of a professional criminal subculture meant there was little opportunity for a career in organised crime.
• (Globalisation and de-industrialisation mean that some men now achieve masculinity through participation in a combination of paid work and crime in the night-time economy)

Question 38

Bodily capital

Answer 38

• Criminal subcultures in the postmodern night time economy maintain their reputation and employability by looking ‘the part’. They use bodybuilding to develop their physical assets. Bouncers for example, need to look large and tough to discourage anyone from challenging them.
• Winlow’s study is important because it shows how the expression of masculinity changes with the move from a modern industrial society to a postmodern de-industrialised one. At the same time, it shows how this can open up new criminal career opportunities for men.