women relationship with offending Flashcards
key areas
- socialisation, sex role theory and social control
- Patriarchal control
- class and gender deals
- liberation theory
- opportunity structures
- impact of the Criminal Justice system (also see chivalry thesis)
socialisation, sex role theory and social control
- girls are socialised into becoming more submissive and caring, they are more controlled and more restricted.
- girls become conformist and seek non-violent solutions to problems
- Parsons - boys take part in ‘compensatory masculinity’
- Cohen and New Right - absent male role model in a women only household = boys turning to criminal street gangs for identity and status
- peer pressure - girls experience bedroom culture (McIntosh)
- much of female crime involved ‘sexual delinquency’ or ‘status offences’ e.g running from home (behaviour that isn’t classed as delinquent in the adult world)
- explains why older women don’t really commit crime as opposed to older men
- females and males are controlled differently in society - passivity and control (Abbott and Walace) is stressed for women
- female sexuality is more ‘policed’ than men
socialisation, sex role theory and social control eval
Sandra Walklate - criticises Sex Role theory for its biological assumptions, challenged Parsons’s assumptions that women are biologically more suited to the expressive role
Not all boys in lone parent families look to the street for their socialisation and a source of status - nuclear families also produced criminal boys
patriarchal control
- Heidensohn draws on Hirschi’s ‘control theory’
- patriarchal society imposes greater power over women and this reduced their opportunities to offend e.g in the home and work
- Heidensohn acknowledges that patriachy can also push women into crime - through poverty as result of gender inequality in labour markets e.g turning to prostitution
- childrearing and motherhood reduces opps (rejection of this leads to domestic violence)
- Dobash and Dobash - unstructured interviews with women in refuges - found that many SA assaults were as a result of male dissatisfaction with their wives performance of domestic duties, women are also financially constrained by men
Daughters controlled - girls develop a ‘bedroom culture’ of socialising with their friends in private rather than in public areas (thus reducing crime opps) and they have more chores (thus reducing crime opps)
controlled by male supervisors - sexual harassment keeps women in their place
women’s subordinate position - women’s subordinate position reduces their opps to engage in major criminal activity at work. The ‘glass ceiling’
patriarchal control eval
Naffine - this argues women are passive and not active in their decision making - bring in interactionism
Walklate - Heidensohn makes sweeping generalisations about women and men - fails to recognise the differences between women (and between men)
criticisms of Dobash and Dobash’s study as unstructured interviews - what would positivists say / lib fem (Jennifer somerville) changes to family
Intersections with crime and conformity
Sunita Toor - there seems to be low crime rates for British Asian girls of Indian, Bangladeshi etc
- this is a result of strong social control within these groups e.g discipline and respect for authority (Ghuman)
- the role of ‘honour’ (izzat - belongs to the family) and ‘shame’ are fundamental to asian girls’ identities and have prevented girls from becoming involved in criminal behaviour
- dishonour is brought through westernisation, sex - greater patriarchal control from male parents
CONTROL THEORY AND FEMENISM
Carlen - increased likelihood of criminality when society’s mechanisms of social control breakdown, especially when women have little to loose by breaking the law
Carlen study - interviews of 39 women (15-46 yr olds) who committed rage crimes e.g theft - while some female offenders are middle class, most of the convicted serious female criminals are working class
Carlen and Hirshi’s control theory - w/c women conform to societies norms based on the promise of a class deal (material reward) and a gender deal (rewards for conforming to traditional family role) - when these rewards aren’t available or aren’t worth the effort - likelihood of crime increases
class deal - 32/39 women had always lived in poverty - they made a rational choice that they had nothing to loose -
gender deal - Carlen also found many of these women has been sexually abused
Intersections with crime and conformity eval
this isnt the same for all Asian families where patriarchal control over girls is not as strong
this study does make a link between strong control and lower criminality of Asian girls which can be brought in comparison to Asian men who have less control and as a result of a higher rate of criminality
sample size is too small and not representative of all social classes, age or types of crime
like heidensohn’s theory, women’s involvement in crime is understood in terms of external forces on behaviour rather than free will and choice
Liberation thesis
Alder - women are becoming liberated from the patriarchy
- this has led to anew type of female crime, such as violent crime as a result of binge drinking and also a rise in female crime
- changes in structural society have led to changes in women’s offending - increased opps in work and education - increased opps for crime (e.g prositiution now becomes white collar crime)
Denscombe - girls are engaging in risk-taking behaviours and were adopting more ‘male’ stances and want to look ‘hard’
Liberation thesis eval
- most female criminals are w/c, the group least likely to be affected by liberation , Chesney-Lind - says in the USA w/c are more likely to offend bc of this / still rooted in traditional female deviance such as prostitution but branching into ‘male crimes’
- lack of evidence that an illegitimate opportunity structure has opened up for women
- Laider and Hunt - in the U.S girls in gangs were still expected to assume conventional gender roles in the same way non-deviant women did
is female violent crime on the increase
employment related crime - fewer women than men work –> les opps exist for women
where work opp structures differ - so does the pattern of crime e.g burglary is predominantly a male crime - women alone at night attract attention and involve some degree of personal danger as opposed to men
women = less powerful positions within an org. they are more likely to be subject to supervision so are less likely to commit ‘white collar’ crime e.g embezzlement
women = more likely to have primary responsibility for child-care = less opps for criminal behaviour
Police strategies and labelling
social constructionism / cicourel - typifications
police use stereotypes as guidelines in their work - the more the idea of an association between young males and crime becomes established, the more the process of crime = a self fulfilling prophecy
men = more likely to be on streets at night
police / judicial personnel view of ‘typical criminals’ - less likely to view women as criminals - less likely to arrest them
women aren’t seen as ‘real criminals’- lighter sentences
‘medical model’ - women who commit crime are behaving ‘abnormally’ - thus a medical explanation of their behaviour is more appropriate, requiring them treatment rather than punishment (this is reverse sexism)
what are 3 reasons for the underestimation of female involvement in crime
- stereotyped beliefs about women held by powerful control agents
- tighter social controls on many female activities
- limited opportunity structures for women to engage in criminal behaviour
