Lecture 18: Law & Gender Guest Lecture

Question 1

Chivalry hypothesis

Answer 1

• Put forward by Otto Pollack in the 1950s
• Women were “child-like” and unaware of their actions
• They need to be guided back towards sex-appropriate roles
• Legal actors, predominantly male, will be more lenient
• It wasn’t empirically tested, just anecdotal

Question 2

Empirical findings on the chivalry hypothesis

Answer 2

• Research in the 1970s and 80s confirmed the discrepancy between sentencing male and female offenders
• Theory slightly changed: women are weaker and in need of greater protection, not punishment
• It plays into benevolent sexism

Question 3

selective chivalry hypothesis

Answer 3

• Also known as the “Evil Woman Hypothesis”
• Popularized by Chesney-Lind in her work on female delinquency
• Female offenders are treated more punitively due to their violations of appropriate gender and social norms
• Patriarchy seeks to control and punish, not lenient
• Punitiveness is based on tacitly agreement-upon gendered expectations rather than legal factors
  Important theory for the discussion of intersectionality

Question 4

support for the selective chivalry hypothesis

Answer 4

• Overall, very little support for the theory, even when intersectionality is factored in
• Gender dominant trait for female offenders, race for male offenders, according to research
• Caveats:
• U.S. heavy and varies a lot by jurisdiction
• What about the null?

Question 5

familial paternalism

Answer 5

• Put forward by Kathleen Daly in 1987
• Two papers: one quantitative, one qualitative
• Court distinguishes between families and non-familied offenders
• Chivalry and selective chivalry ignore the family unit
• Familial paternalism is the hardest theory to study because little data exists on family status

Question 6

two main arguments for familial paternalism

Answer 6

• Familied offenders will be treated more leniently than non-familied offenders, regardless of gender
• Of those who are familied, female offenders will get more leniency than male offenders

Question 7

familial paternalism and social control/cost theories

Answer 7

• Merges social control theory with social cost theory
• Judges prioritize the emotional and caregiving role of mothers over the economic roles of fathers