Gender

• Gender patterns in crime

  • 4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales are male
  • A higher proportion of female offenders are convicted of property offences
  • Males are more likely to be repeat offenders
• Chivalry thesis


  Most criminal justice agents are men and men are socialised to act in a 'chivalrous' way towards women
• Pollak: man have a protective attitude towards women, men hate to accuse women and thus punish them, police officers dislike to arrest them
• Graham & Bowling: study found that males were 2.33 times more likely to admit to having committed an offence in the previous 12 months
• Flood-Page: 1 in 11 female self-reported offenders had been cautioned or prosecuted
• Females are more likely than males to be released on bail rather than remanded in custody
• Farrington: study found that women were not sentenced more leniently for comparable offences
• Functionalist sex role theory


  Women perform the expressive role in the home, boys seek to distance themselves from such models by engaging in compensatory compulsory masculinity through aggression and antisocial behaviour
• Cohen: relative lack of an adult male role model means boys are more likely to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculine identity
• Walklate: biological assumptions
• Patriarchal control

  Because patriarchal society imposes greater control over women and this reduces their opportunity to offend
• Control at home

  1. Women's domestic role, imposes restrictions on their time of movement, reducing their opportunities to offend

  2. Dobash & Dobash: violent attacks result from men's dissatisfaction with their wives performance of domestic duties
• Control in public

  1. Controlled in public places by the threat or fear of male violence against them

  2. 54% of women avoided going out after dark for fear of being victims of crime

  3. Lees: in school boys maintain social control through sexualised verbal abuse (slut)
• Control at work

  1. Women's behaviour is controlled by male supervisors and managers

  2. Subordinate position reduces the opportunities to engage in major criminal activity at work

  3. Heidensohn: are more likely to be poor and me turn to theft or prosecution to gain a decent standard of living
• Class and gender

  Hirschi: control theory, people will turn to crime if they do not believe the rules will be forthcoming, and if the records of crime appear greater than the risks
• The class deal

  1. Women who work will be offered material rewards, with a decent standard of living and leisure opportunities

  2. Women had failed to find a legitimate way of earning a decent living and this left them feeling powerless/oppressed
• The gender deal

  1. Patriarchal ideology promises material and emotional rewards from family life by conforming to the north of a conventional domestic gender role

  2. The women have not had the opportunity to make the deal, also a few rewards and many disadvantages in family life
• Largely WC evidence
• Relies too heavily on structural factors
• Liberation thesis


  As women become liberated from patriarchy their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men's
• Opportunities in education and work become more equal to adopt traditionally male roles in both activity and illegitimate activity
• More women in higher corporate positions gives the opportunity to commit serious white-collar crimes
• Between 50's and 90's the female share of offences rose from 1 in 7 to 1 in 6
• The female crime rates began rising in the 1950s long before the women's liberation movement in the 60s
• Masculinity and crime

  Masculinity is a social construct or accomplishment, and men have to constantly work at constructing and presenting it to others
• Types of masculinity

  • Hegemonic masculinity (dominant)
  • Subordinated masculinity (gay, WC or ethnic minority)
• White MC youths

  1. Have to subordinate themselves to teachers in order to achieve MC status = accommodating masculinity

  2. Outside of school = drinking, pranks, vandalism
• White WC youths

  1. Oppositional in and out of school

  2. Sexism, Willis' lads
• Black lower WC

  Gang membership and violence to express masculinity
• Is masculinity an explanation of crime or just a description of male offenders
• Doesn't explain why they use masculinity
• Postmodernity, masculinity, and crime

  De-industrialised society led to the loss of many of the traditional manual jobs
• Study of bouncers in Sunderland


  • Working as bouncers provided young men with paid work and the opportunity for illegal business ventures in drugs
  • Absence of a professional criminal subculture meant there was little opportunity for a career in organised crime
• Bodily capital


  • The ability to use violence becomes not just a way of displaying masculinity, but a commodity with which to earn a living
  • Bouncers seek to develop their physical assets by bodybuilding; looking the part so as to discourage competitors from challenging them
• Shows how the expression of masculinity changes with the move from a modern industrial society to a post-modern de-industrialsied one