Topic 8a: Feminist approaches to crime and deviance Flashcards
Male domination of criminology - Heidensohn 1
Heidensohn has criticised the male dominance of the subject which she calls malestream criminology. She has suggested that there are four reasons why it is so:
• Male dominance of offenders
As the majority of offenders are male, for many sociologists, it was therefore most appropriate to study them, rather than the minority of female offenders.
• Male domination of sociology
Although the majority of sociology students are women, it has always been the case that the majority of academics have been male. According to Heidensohn, sociological topics of investigation reflect a male view and interests.
Male domination of criminology - Heidensohn 2
• Vicarious identification
This follows from the previous point. What interests males is studied, and applied to crime this is most often the lives of the marginal and the exciting.
• Sociological theorising
Male sociologists constructed their theories without ever thinking about how they could be applied to females. Most traditional theories are ‘gender blind’, which in effect means they ignore the specific viewpoint of women.
Male domination of criminology - Heidensohn eval
Sociology has developed a great deal since Heidensohn identified this male bias. Feminism has become a far more important perspective in the sociology of deviance and there has been a great deal of research on gender and crime eg. on domestic violence.
radical fems 1
Radical feminists argue that the only way to understand crime is to see it through a female perspective - and research should be based on the assumption that all men are prepared to commit crimes against women if given the chance. Women should construct their own unique approaches to explaining crime and deviance and this should incorporate the threat from men
radical feminists dworkin
Dworkin states that rape, sexual intercourse and pornography are the three focal elements of male supremacy, she believes intercourse is only a small step away from rape. She believes women can’t legally or socially give or withold sex. She then adds that all consensual sex for women is used for socio-economic gain. This is clear in prostitution which dworkin sees as part of male supremacy, even when women are not forced into it, she refers to prostitution as gang-rape and abuse of the womens body. She purposely blurs the line between intercourse and rape and She believes that all men will commit rape as it is an inevitable expression of masculine sexuality constructed in western culture.
radical feminists eval
Dworkin’s views can be seen as quite extreme and controversial. Many less radical feminists would not go so far in identifying sexual relationships between men and women as being inevitably patriarchal.
Liberal feminists
• It implies that nothing has really changed over the years (men have always ruled).Yet this overlooks significant historical shifts in male-female relationships. Indeed, Morgan suggests that the term ‘patriarchy’ should be replaced by the more flexible concept of ‘sexual stratification’
• It is too one-sided, suggesting that men exercise fixed power over women in all areas of life. This overlooks the possibility of women having greater power or at least ‘equality’ in some social areas.
postmodern feminists 1
The work of Smart and Cain are particularly important - as they argue that the very concerns that criminology have are actually a reflection of male concerns. The concern of feminist criminology should be to look at the way women are harmed by a whole range of processes and not accept the (male) boundaries of criminology. Smart introduced the idea of a transgressive criminology. She was suggesting that criminology itself as a discipline was tied to male questions and concerns and that it could never offer answers to feminist questions.
postmodern feminists 2
Instead of trying to produce a feminist criminology, by asking the question what can feminism offer criminology, feminists should be arguing - what can criminology offer feminists? The answer to this question was to look at a whole range of activities legal and illegal which actually harm women, and to ask how these came about and how they could be changed. This did lead to feminists looking more closely at the way women stayed in at night for fear of becoming victims, at domestic violence and how women were treated by the law in issues of rape and harassment, where they form the overwhelming bulk of the victims.
postmodern feminists eval
Marxist feminism stresses that the position of men and women in general and with reference to crime, can only be understood by locating males and females within the context of societies divided by both sexism and by capitalism.
Intro
Most feminists share the assumption that women are disadvantaged in comparison with men. In addition, they normally subscribe to the view that these inequalities are ‘socially constructed’ and not natural differences. This has led to sociology and criminology being more reflective of men.
Conclusion
Liberal feminism is based on the idea that by bringing women into the agenda and by demonstrating how women have been ignored in research, then there will be greater understanding of female deviance. In particular, new theories can be developed which will cover both males and females.
