gender and crime

• gender and homocide convictions

  men 15 times more likely
• who proposed the chivalry thesis?

  Otto Pollak
• What is the chivalry thesis?


  women are treated with more leniency within the criminal justice system which leads to official statistics giving an exaggerated gender differences in crime
• evidence for the chivalry thesis

  only 1 in 9 females receive a prison sentence for shoplifting, compared to 1 in 5 males
• Evidence against the chivalry thesis

  - many male crimes not reported - 5 in 6 women who are raped don't report it (2022)
• Functionalist sex role theory


  Difference in socialisation

  Girls able to access adult role model at home while boys male role model at work- boys reject feminine models by engaging in compensatory masculinity throughdelinquency
• Heidensohn: Patriarchal Control


  Argues women commit fewer crimes than men as patriarchal society imposes greater control over women thus reducing their opportunities.
• control over women at home

  Dobash &Dobash (domestic violence)

  'bedroom culture' (protected by not being allowed out)
• control over women at work

  sexual harassment to keep women in their place

  'glass ceiling' prevents women reaching top positions where corporate crime or white collar crime is committed
• control over women in public

  threat of violence

  54% of women avoid going out at dark for fear

  verbal abuse e.g. labelling as 'sluts
• Carlen: class and gender deals


  study of 39 working-class women convicted of crimes.

  Most serious female crimes are by WC women as a result of class and gender deals being unavailable so having nothing to loose
• Carlen: class deals


  promise of decent standard of living and opportunities
• Carlen: gender deals


  promise of material and emotional rewards from family life
• Liberation thesis


  as women assumed more assertive positions in society, female crime would also increase
• liberation thesis -Adler


  women now also commit typically male offences such as white collar crime and violence because they have greater opportunities to do so.
• liberation thesis - Denscombe


  study of teenagers self image found that females were now more likely to engage in risky behaviour to look 'hard'.
• widening the net'


  arresting and prosecuting females for less serious forms of violence
• Defining deviance up


  Making new things deviant that weren't before (Young)
• Hand and Dodd


  between 2000 and 2008, police stats show that the number in female arrests for violence rose by 17% each year.
• moral panic around female crime


  media depicts young women as 'drunk and disorderly, out of control and looking for fights'

  leads to a deviance amplification spiral
• victims of intimate violence (domestic abuse, sexual assault etc.)


  women more than men
• hegemonic masculinity (Messerschmidt)


  dominant, prestigious form of masculinity that most men wish to accomplish (labour, heterosexism, subordination of women)
• subordinate masculinity


  no desire to accomplish hegemonic masculinity, as well as some lower-class and some ethnic minorities who lack resources to do so.
• white middle class youth's masculinity


  achieve status at school by achieving well and achieve masculinity outside of school by drinking, pranks, vandalism etc
• white working class youth's masculinity


  less chance of success, so present masculinity outside and inside school e.g. 'lads' in Willis study
• black lower working class youths


  few expectations of a reasonable job so use gangs and violence to express their masculinity and achieve success
• Winlow's study of bouncers


  bouncers in Sunderland used their jobs as opportunities for illegal ventures in drugs, alcohol and protection rackets by using their masculinity
• bodily capital


  muscular built to maintain their employability and to look the part and embody violence e.g., as a bouncer

  In postmodernity it is exaggerated because typically masculine jobs have declined so turn to body building