Feminist Theories: Gender, Power, and Crime

1. Feminist Theories: Gender, Power, and Crime

2. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • For much of its history, criminology has focused on men • Empirical studies used male-only samples • Theories constructed to explain why men and boys broke the law • Due to males being disproportionately involved in crime • Women’s criminality seen as tangential to the crime problem • Most early criminologists were male

3. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • Early analyses of women were sexist • Viewed female criminality as a departure from “natural” female behavior that is maternal, passive, and gentle • Female lawbreakers had a pathological defect in their biological makeup or within their psyche • Social factors (e.g., inequality) were given little or no importance

4. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • Starting in the 1970s, this male-only focus was challenged • Gender was pushed to the front of the theoretical analysis • Fueled in part by the Women’s Rights Movement, which had two major effects: • Increased the number of women in criminology • Focused attention on the social situation of women vis-à-vis men • Gender-based differences in socialization and inequalities in power

5. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • In the context of the Women’s Rights Movement, feminist criminology emerged • Gender relations become central to understanding human behavior, including crime • Focus on how gender relations are related to crime • Special emphasis on how crime is related to gender-based inequality • Attempt to change structural relationships in society that result in gender discrimination and oppression

6. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • The questions feminist criminology attempts to answer include: • How can female crime be explained? • New theories need to be developed or traditional theories need to be revised to take into account gender • How can the gender gap in crime, and changes in the gender gap over time, be explained? • Gender is a strong correlate of crime, with males committing more crime than women • However, the gender gap has decreased for certain crimes in recent decades

7. The Rise of Feminist Criminology • The questions feminist criminology attempts to answer include: • What role does gender play in the generation of male crime? • Traditional theories devote little attention to the role of gender in producing crime • How does gender “intersect” with race/ethnicity and class to affect crime?

8. Diversity Within Feminist Criminology • There has been a prominent split in feminist criminology between: • Liberal feminism • Focuses on the salience of sex-role socialization and equality of opportunities • More influence early in the feminist criminology movement • Critical or radical approach feminism • Emphasizes the structural inequality in power between men and women • Focuses on the role of patriarchy • Currently directs most theory and research within feminist criminology

9. Liberation and Crime • Significant changes came from the Women’s Rights Movement • Some feminist criminologists believed that if girls were raised like boys and had the same opportunities as boys, their behavior would be more like that of boys • Would lead to equality in crime • This idea was the basis of Rita Simon’s Women and Crime • A major by-product of the Women’s Rights Movement will be a high proportion of women who engage in criminal behavior • Women’s entrance into the workforce would also increase their probability for white-collar crime • However, the Women’s Rights Movement would not increase violent crime

10. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Supported the liberation thesis • As women were demanding equal opportunity in legitimate endeavors, they were also forcing themselves into the world of crime • Women were committing more crimes and engaging in traditionally male offenses • Between 1960 and 1972, female arrests increased: • 168 percent for burglary • 277 percent for robbery • 280 percent for embezzlement • Over 300 percent for larceny

11. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Argued that female offenders are not pathological and instead social experiences influence life-choices, including the choice of crime • Women, at a young age, are taught to be obedient, dependent, modest about their bodies, and to avoid sex play • Also taught to turn to others for gratification, cry when hurt, be spontaneously affectionate, and achieve less in school and work • Socialized in this way by parents, school, toys, etc.

12. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Thus, women are smaller and have been socially shaped toward passivity, dependency, and conformity, while men are stronger and have been socially shaped to be aggressive, achievement-oriented, and willing to break rules and take risks • However, social times have changed, and this is changing the view of the “normal” male and female

13. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Of all the differences between the sexes, only four—size, strength, aggression, and dominance—have been implicated in the overrepresentation of males in the CJS • Size and strength are biological givens • Aggression and dominance are socially learned • In humans, there is almost a complete cultural “override” of innate drives and tendencies • Culture defines what traits are dominant • Cites Margaret Mead’s work • Many examples of very aggressive, tough, stern women with power throughout history (e.g., Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Golda Meir) • These examples challenge the myth of innate female passivity

14. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Thus, social position and social role expectations are more important than sex in determining behavior • During WWII, many women took on traditional male roles • Between 1940 and 1945, women in the workplace and women involved in crime substantially increased • This declined when the men returned

15. Adler: Sisters in Crime • However, traditional roles did not return • Men were seeing women as worthy rivals and feeling less charitable toward them • Women proceeded to widen their social and criminal roles • Men resisted (especially middle- and lower-class men)

16. Adler: Sisters in Crime • Women were seen as sharing the same fortunate and unfortunate criminogenic qualities of men • Two conclusions can be drawn: • The small natural differences between the sexes have been polarized and institutionalized in special ways by different cultures to produce gender disparity • This reveals more about the emotional needs of the society than about the innate possibilities of the individual • When size and strength are discounted by technology, social expectations and social roles, including criminal roles, tend to increasingly merge

17. Liberation and Crime: Impact and Critiques • The liberation thesis work was crucial in bringing gender into criminology • However, there are three main criticisms: • The empirical research does not support its predictions • The increase in female arrests has occurred in traditionally “female” crimes and occurred before the Women’s Right Movement • Also, the increase may be due to changes in police practices

18. Liberation and Crime: Impact and Critiques • However, there are three main criticisms: • Crime is actually more common among those women who did not achieve gender equality—those trapped in economically marginal positions • True equality may reduce crime • The liberation thesis did not consider the structural roots of the inequality between men and women • Did not address patriarchy

19. Patriarchy and Crime • Radical feminism places patriarchy at the center of its analysis • Has especially illuminated disparities in sentencing and crime control and victimizations of women by men and their sanctions • The oppression of women, including their criminal victimization, is seen as a major cause of female offending • Argues a need for gender-specific theories that take into account the role of patriarchy and the gendered experiences of women • One popular theory is Meda Chesney-Lind’s feminist theory of female delinquency

20. Chesney-Lind: “A Feminist Theory of Female Delinquency” • Existing theories cannot explain female crime • Focus exclusively on men without taking into account female social experiences • Does not agree with the liberation perspective • Argues girls are frequently the recipients of violence and sexual abuse and can do little to fight back against their abusers • Patriarchy is conducive to such abuse because females are, in general, objectified as sexual property • Girls are easily defined as sexually attractive by older men • In addition, official action of the juvenile justice system is a major force of oppression and reinforces women’s place in society

21. Chesney-Lind: “A Feminist Theory of Female Delinquency” • Parents often insist on their daughter’s arrest • More girls than boys referred to the juvenile court by their parents than by law enforcement • Escape from abuse is not easy and leads to a pathway to crime for girls • Run away from sexual victimization • Runaways are often returned home by the state • Once on the street, they are forced to commit crimes to survive • Steal money, food, clothing • Prostitution to obtain money • Thus, their survival strategies are criminalized

22. Chesney-Lind: “A Feminist Theory of Female Delinquency” • The backgrounds of adult women in prison show virtually all were victims of physical and/or sexual abuse as children • Over 60% were sexually assaulted and over half were raped • Often ran away and began engaging in prostitution and became addicted to drugs

23. Chesney-Lind: “A Feminist Theory of Female Delinquency” • To fully understand female crime: • Need to have qualitative research with girls • Examine family and school settings and their impact on girls • Understand the intersection of poverty, race, and gender on delinquency • Understand official reaction to girls’ delinquency

24. Gendering Traditional Theories • Along with gender-specific theories, there have been many efforts to “gender” traditional theories of crime to explain female crime and the gender gap • Many of the variables that explain male crime also explain female crime and the gender gap • Association with delinquent peers, beliefs favorable to crime, low social- and self-control, strains, the perceived costs and benefits of crime, and opportunities for crime explain both male and female crime and the disproportionate amount of male crime

25. Gendering Traditional Theories • These same factors, however, may have a larger effect on males • Differential association with delinquent peers is more likely to lead to crime for males • Traditional theories also do not take into account why there are gender differences in the effect of certain factors • They also do not take into account gender identity, gender discrimination, differences in physical size/strength, partner abuse, and sexual abuse

26. Gendering Traditional Theories • Recent efforts to apply biopsychological theories to the explanation of female and male crime • Moffitt et al. (2001)—females are less likely to possess the traits of negative emotionality and low constraint • Gendering of general strain theory (GST) • Broidy and Agnew (1997)—explain the gender gap with GST • Males and females experience similar amounts of strain • Males are more likely to experience strains conducive to crime • Males often react to strain with moral outrage, while females react with depression and guilt (less conducive to other-oriented crime) • Males are more likely to cope through crime because they have higher negative emotionality, lower constraint, more deviant associations, lower social- and self-control, and more beliefs favorable to crime

27. Gendering Traditional Theories • Gendering control theory • Costello and Mederer (2003)—argue women are more controlled than men and thus have lower crime rates • Women are socialized to exercise more self-control and show more concern for others • Women are more closely supervised and are more likely to be sanctioned by others when they display aggression • Women are more involved in noncriminal activities (e.g., childcare and household work)

28. Gendering Traditional Theories • Karen Heimer and Stacy De Coster gendered differential association theory/social learning theory • Build off the work of Sutherland and Akers • Argue social learning theory can explain the gender gap in criminal behavior • Association with delinquent peers increases the likelihood of crime • Some argue that females are less often exposed to delinquent peers, partly due to close supervision by parents and others • Females argued to respond less to antisocial associations due to stronger moral commitments and constraining effects of female “typescripts”

29. Masculinities and Crime: Doing Gender • James Messerschmidt challenged traditional and feminist criminology • Traditional theories do not examine how “being male” is related to crime • Feminists have a stereotypical view of men and do not see the variations among men • Messerschmidt sees criminality and masculinity intertwined • In social situations, men are constantly confronted with establishing their manliness, and when legitimate means of demonstrating masculinity are denied, crime becomes a resource in which to do this

30. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Focus on the sociology of masculinity • Argues gender intersects with race and class to create different masculinities • Meaning of masculinity varies by structural location • Crime can be a way to “do gender” or show masculinity • Need to create a theory that recognizes that illegal behavior, like legal behavior, personifies both social practice and social structure

31. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Recognizes that all individuals engage in purposive behavior and monitor their own action reflexively • Social structures organize the way individuals think about their circumstances and generate methods for dealing with them

32. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Masculinity is accomplished and constructed in specific social situations • Hegemonic masculinity is the idealized form of masculinity • Defined as work in the paid-labor market, the subordination of women, heterosexism, and the driven and uncontrollable sexuality of men • Emphasizes practices toward authority, control, competitive individualism, independence, aggressiveness, and the capacity for violence

33. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • In social situations, men undertake processes that show they are a “man” • Crime is a suitable resource for “doing gender” when other resources are lacking • When masculinity is threatened, questioned, or undermined, crime is more likely to result

34. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Men portray masculinity in different ways depending on their position in the social structure • Men experience their daily world from a particular position in society and differentially construct the cultural ideals of hegemonic masculinity • For example, white, middle-class boys strive for a career • Have a calculative attitude, high value on rationality and responsibility • Geared toward school where masculinity is accomplished through sports and academic success • Sport creates an environment supporting competition, winning, toughness, and endurance, and subordinates other types of masculinity like those who participate in nonviolent games (e.g., debate) • Seek to obtain appropriate qualifications for a respectable career with a secure income to stay in the middle class • Thus, hegemonic masculinity involves work in the paid labor market, competitiveness, personal ambition/achievement, and responsibility

35. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Hegemonic masculinity also involves dominance, control, and independence • School discourages these elements • Middle-class, white boys accomplish gender by conforming to school rules and by dominating student organizations • “Accept” school values and thus school is an influential restraint on middle-class, white youth • However, outside of school, these same boys construct age-specific forms of criminality to restore the aspects of masculinity the school denies • Pranks, vandalism, thefts, drinking outside school

36. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Accommodating masculinity is a controlled, cooperative, rational gender strategy of action for institutional success • White, middle-class boys are drawn to different masculine constructs within the school and thus develop this accommodating masculinity • Their agenda is to become an accomplice to the institutional order and reap the benefits it offers • They accomplish gender in the school setting and simultaneously reproduce class and race relations through the same practices

37. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Because school both creates and undermines hegemonic masculinity, some white, middle-class boys draw primarily on nonviolent forms of youth crime creating an opposition masculinity • This is based on the hegemonic masculine ideals the school discourages • White, middle-class boys construct their gendered actions in relation to how such actions might be interpreted by others in the particular social context in which they occur

38. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Students who fail to achieve academically and/or occupy the lowest status positions in school exhibit the highest rates of youth crime • For white, middle-class boys who are not successful at schoolwork and do not participate in school sports, school is a frustrating masculine experience • Thus, they seek out other masculine- validating resources, such as vandalism and drinking

39. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • White, working-class boys also experience school as emasculating • Engage in age-specific crime to “do gender” • However, also have an in-school opposition masculinity as well • Oppose school and its conformists both inside and outside of the school • Schooling seen as irrelevant • Value manual rather than mental work • Evolve into an unstructured, counterschool group • Target those who value school • Enjoy fighting in and out of school as a way to construct masculinity around physical aggression • Also engage in pranks and vandalism in and outside of school

40. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Outside of school, white, working-class boys also disproportionately engage in hate crimes • Their public masculinity is constructed through hostility to, and rejection of, all aspects of groups that may be considered inferior in a racist and heterosexist society • A specific racial gender is constructed through the practice of racist violence • Similarly, homosexuality is seen as unnatural and effeminate, so violence against homosexuals is a way to “do gender” for these working class youths

41. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • White, working-class boys also intermittently participate in theft to get extra cash in order to participate in the youth culture • Go to events, wear the right clothes, date, etc. • These boys also often work over 10 hours a week during the school year • Allows them to show their manhood • Puts them in contact with adults • However, they are locked into dead-end jobs, making less money than those who conformed to the school • This reproduces class, race, and gender relations

42. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Lower-working class, racial minority boys often do not have access to paid labor, and their parents are unable to subsidize their youth culture needs, thus the youth gang becomes crucial • The youth gang is where resources are available to sustain a masculine identity • The street group is a collective solution to their prohibitions and a lifestyle that takes the form of street crime

43. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Lower-working class, racial minority boys often do not have an occupational future that can be anticipated, and thus hegemonic masculinity is threatened • Turn to physical violence within and outside the school to achieve masculinity • School has less significance to these youths • Become involved in serious property crimes (e.g., robbery) and in publicly displayed forms of group violence such as “turf wars” • Robbery is a means to get money and dominates and humiliates the victims • Seen as “hardmen” and doing a stickup is doing masculinity by manufacturing an angle of moral superiority over the intended victim

44. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Young, middle-class and working-class men produce unique types of masculinity (situationally accomplished by drawing on different forms of youth crime) by acknowledging an already determined future and inhabiting distinct locations within the social structural divisions of labor and power • Young men experience their everyday world from a specific position in society and so they construct differently the cultural ideals of hegemonic masculinity

45. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Oppositional masculinities are based on a specific relation to school generated by the interaction of school authority with class, race, and gender dynamics • For white, middle-class boys, a nonviolent oppositional masculinity occurs primarily outside school • For white, working-class boys and lower-working class, racial minority boys, specific types of oppositional masculinities prevail both inside and outside school • For each group of boys, a sense of masculinity is shaped by their specific relation to the school and by their specific position in the divisions of labor and power

46. Messerschmidt: Masculinities and Crime • Critiques of Messerschmidt’s theory • Females are omitted from the analysis • However, argues some females may embrace “bad girl” femininity • True of female gang members • Or may adopt and embrace a masculine identity and “be one of the guys” • The listing of the ways men demonstrate masculinity is narrow • The motivation theory—the need to do masculinity—may overexplain/overpredict many criminal acts that are committed simply because they are fun or gratifying • Some support that crime is sometimes used to achieve masculinity and threats to one’s masculinity increase the likelihood of crime

47. Messerschmidt’s Body Friendly Criminology • Recently, Messerschmidt has suggested the role of the body be considered in the link between masculinity and crime • Our bodies constrain or facilitate social action • Physical size and strength are sources of opportunity and structure the nature of conformity and crime • Being strong = good at sports, good fighter • Being weak = may be defined as weak and thus prey on more vulnerable victims (e.g., young female relatives in private places)

48. An Integrated Theory of Gender and Crime • Many theories have tried to explain female and male crime and the gender gap in crime • Darrell Steffensmeier and Emilie Allan have attempted to integrate multiple theories in their gendered theory of female offending • Note traditional theories have shortcomings • Do not explain why the gender gap is largest for serious crime • Do not shed light on gender differences in the context of offending • Does not explain why females are less likely to participate in or lead criminal groups • Does not explain why female offending often involves relational concerns • Thus, they draw on traditional and feminist theories • Consider many causal factors of traditional theories and how gender influences an individual’s standing on these factors • Also consider other causal factors (e.g., consequences of motherhood)

49. Steffensmeier and Allan: “Toward a Gendered Theory of Female Offending” • No unified theoretical framework has been developed for explaining female criminality and gender differences in crime • Argue traditional gender-neutral theories provide reasonable explanations of less serious forms of female and male criminality • However, they are not very informative about the specific ways in which differences in the lives of men and women contribute to gender differences in type, frequency, and context of criminal behavior

50. Steffensmeier and Allan: “Toward a Gendered Theory of Female Offending” • Gender mediates the way the traditional theories’ factors play out into sex differences in types, frequency, and contexts of crime involvements