Gender and Crime

Question 1

Why are girls less likely to commit crime according to Parsons?

Answer 1

Gender socialisation. Girls have a positive role model at home (mother at home) to learn feminine traits from.

Question 2

Why are boys more likely commit crime according to Parsons?

Answer 2

Gender socialisation. Boys don’t have a role model, fathers are at work, reject anything feminine. To prove their masculinity, boys engage any compensatory compulsory masculinity through aggression and acts of delinquency.

Question 3

Why are boys more likely to commit crime according to A.Cohen?

Answer 3

Fathers are less involved in the upbringing of children. Thus the absence of male role models at home leads boys to turn to all-male street gangs - source of masculine identity. Such gangs promote toughness and risk taking which leads boys into crime.

Question 4

Why are boys more likely to commit crime according to New Right?

Answer 4

In lone parent families headed by women, boys lack a positive male role model.

Question 5

What is the evaluation of Functionalist and New Right theory on gender and crime?

Answer 5

Walklate criticises the sex role theory for basing its claims on biological differences between women, when these are, in fact, socially constructed.

Question 6

Why are women less criminal than men according to Heidensohn?

Answer 6

Women are less criminal than men because society is patriarchal. This imposes greater control over women’s lives which prevents them from breaking the law. Women are controlled in the home, in public and at work.

Question 7

How are women controlled in the home? (Heidensohn)

Answer 7

Women’s domestic role - imposes severe restrictions on their time and movement. This confines women to the home for long periods - reduces opportunites to offend.

Question 8

What happens to women who reject the domestic role? (Heidensohn)

Answer 8

Women who reject the domestic role - partners may enforce it by force, through domestic violence. Men have financial power - deny women funds for necessities.

Question 9

How are daughters controlled in the home? (Heidensohn)

Answer 9

Less likely to be allowed to stay out late. They develop a bedroom culture - socialising at home with friends rather than going out. Girls are given more housework - less opportunity to engage on deviant behaviour.

Question 10

How are women controlled in public by the media? (Heidensohn)

Answer 10

Women are controlled by the threat and fear of violence against them. Media portrays reportings of raoe - adds to women’s fear. Avoid going out at night which prevents them from breaking the law.

Question 11

How are women controlled in public? (Heidensohn)

Answer 11

Women are contrlled in public through the fear of losing their respectability - being regarded as ‘loose’. Womrn avoid pubs - site of criminal behaviour - for fear of being regarded as sexually ‘loose’ or prostitutes.

Question 12

How are women controlled at work? (Heidensohn)

Answer 12

Women’s behaviour is controlled by male mangers through sexual harassment. Women tend to hold subordinate positions which prevents them from committing WCC such as fraud.

Question 13

What is the evaluation of Heidensohn’s theory on gender and crime?

Answer 13

Deterministic - assumes patriarchy forces women into an inferior position - but women can rebel.
Not all women are confined to the home - working women.
Ignores crimes that women can commit in the house - child abuse, neglect, domestic abuse.

Question 14

What was Calen’s research?

Answer 14

Carried out unstructured interviews with 39, 15-49 year old women who had been convincted of a range of crimes.

Question 15

What is Hirschi’s control theory? (Carlen)

Answer 15

The level of integration into societ determines wether a person turns to crime. Those for which the rewards of crime are greaters than the social loss are less likely to break the law.

Question 16

What is the class deal? (Carlen)

Answer 16

The social promise that hard work brings material rewards, e.g. a high standard of living.

Question 17

What is the gender deal? (Carlen)

Answer 17

The social promise that women will receive emotional rewards from family life.

Question 18

How can the class and gender deals fail? (Carlen)

Answer 18

Class deal - fail when women are poor or cah’t find employment.
Gender deal - fail if women have experience abuse.

Question 19

What happens when the class and gender deals are broken? (Carlen)

Answer 19

Leads women into criminality as they have nothing else to lose.

Question 20

What is the evaluation of Carlen’s theory on gender and crime?

Answer 20

Small sample not representative, only looked at w/c offenders.
Deterministic - ignores the free will that can lead women into crime.

Question 21

Why are men criminal according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 21

Masculinity is a social construct which men have to achieve, to achieve this - need to draw on numerous resocurces.

Question 22

What are the types of masculinity? (Messerschmidt)

Answer 22

Hegemonic masculinity, subordinated masculinities.

Question 23

What is hegemonic masculinty? (Messerschmidt)

Answer 23

Most dominant. Prestigious form that most men wish to accoomplish - defined through paid labour, subordination of women, heterosexism and uncontrollable sexuality.

Question 24

What are subordinated masculinties? (Messerschmidt)

Answer 24

Held by gay men - don’t want to achieve hegemonic masculinity.

Question 25

Why do w/c + e/m turn to crime according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 25

They may not havr the resources needed to achieve hegemonic masculinity. Crime can be a resource used by men to achieve the hegemonic masculinity.

Question 26

Why do white, m/c youths turn to crime according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 26

At school they have to subordinate themselves to teachers to achieve m/c status. This creates an accommodating masculinity. To achieve this hegemonic mascilinity - commit acts of vandalism and anti-social behaviour outside the school.

Question 27

Why do white, w/c youths turn to crime according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 27

Achieve their hegemonic masculinity through anti-social behaviour in and outside the school.

Question 28

Why do black, w/c youths turn to crime according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 28

May use gang membership as means of achieving masculinity.

Question 29

Why do white, m/c men turn to crime according to Messerschmidt?

Answer 29

Can use WCC to achieve masculinity.

Question 30

What is the evaluation of Messerschmidt’s theory on gender and crime?

Answer 30

Fails to explain why not all men use crime to achieve masculinity.

Question 31

How had globalisation affected employment according to Winlow?

Answer 31

Globalisation has led to a decline in tradtional male occupations. W/c men were able to express their masculinity through ard physical labour and providing for their families. There has been an expansion of the service sector including the night time economy of clubs, pubs, etc.

Question 32

What did the night time economy provide? (Winlow)

Answer 32

A combination of legal employment and criminal opportinities for w/c men - express masculinity. Also an opportunity to demonstrate their masculinty through the use of violence.

Question 33

What did Winlow study?

Answer 33

Bouncers in Sunderland.

Question 34

What had postmodernity enabled? (Winlow)

Answer 34

Enabled the emergence of an organised criminal subculture which offers men illegal business opportunities.

Question 35

How did the bouncers maintain their employability? (Winlow)

Answer 35

They have to use their bodily capital - muscular build.

Question 36

Why are women as criminal as men according to Pollack?

Answer 36

Women are as criminal as men. CJS treats them leniently when they break the law. Most CJS agencies such as police officiers, magistrates and judges are men.

Question 37

What are men socialised into? (Pollack)

Answer 37

Socialised into being chivalarous - behave like gentlemen and threat women as ladies.

Question 38

How do men deal with female offenders? (Pollack)

Answer 38

When men deal with female offenders, the police officiers are more likely to issue cautions, while judges are less likely to fail a female offender. This evidence is base of crimes from self-report surveys.

Question 39

How does Farrington and Morris criticise Pollack?

Answer 39

Study of sentencing to 408 offendes of theft in a magistrates court found that women were not sentenced more leniently for the same offence then men.

Question 40

How does Buckle and Farrington criticise Pollack?

Answer 40

Observational study of shoplifting in a department sotre found that there were twice as many male shoplifters, when OCS show that the numbers of male and female shoplifters are equal. This shows that female shoplifters are more likely to be prosecuted.

Question 41

How does Box criticise Pollack?

Answer 41

Self-report studies show women who commit more serious offences are not treated leniently in comparison to men who commit the same crime. Alos, as women commit less serious crimes and show more remorse in court - explains why they are more likely to be cautioned.

Question 42

How does Carlen criticise Pollack?

Answer 42

CJS is patriarchal and the judges’ decisions, when sentencing female offenders, are based on gender norms. When sentencing female offenders, the judges’ decision is based, not on the seriousness of the offence , but in the judges’ assessment of the women as a wide, mother, daughter.

Question 43

Why are women as criminal as men according to Adler?

Answer 43

Women are increasingly becoming liberated from patriarchy, their crimes are becoming as frequent and as serious as that of men.

Question 44

How was greater equality affected women’s criminality? (Adler)

Answer 44

With greater equality, women have started to take on traditionally male role in legitmate and illegitimate activites. As as result, women are nore committing more ‘typically’ male crimes such as violence and WCC.

Question 45

What is the evaluation of Adler’s theory on gender and crime?

Answer 45

Rise is crime began in the 1950s, before the Feminist movement has any impact on women’s position in society.
Most female crimes are w/c - w/c women are least likely to have beem affected by women’s liberation.
Most female offences include links to prostitution, e.g. drugs and prostiution - not a sign of women’s liberation.

Question 46

What do Hand and Dodd say about female criminality?

Answer 46

Increase in female arrests, convictions - female violent crime. So women are becoming like men.

Question 47

What is the evaluation of Hand and Dodd’s theory on gender and crime?

Answer 47

Steffan and Schwartz - no increase in violent crimes by women, instead there is a change in policing, started to arrest and prosceute women for less serious, violent crimes than before, e.g. playground fights.

Question 48

Why had female crime not increased according to Burmann and Bachelor?

Answer 48

Female crime has not increased, media had created a moral panic about crime. Shpw women as drunk and looking for fights.

Question 49

What does Sharpe say about female criminality?

Answer 49

Police have a sterotypical view of a ‘ladette’ - so police criminalise women - increases appearance in OCS. Before women were just cautioned.