There are several differences in the amount of crime that men and women do. Men are 15 times more likely to commit homicide than women are. By the age of 40, 9% of females had a criminal conviction as opposed to 32% of males. These statistics show that there is a definite distinction in the amount of crime that is committed by the genders. Women have always been thought of as the weaker sex and Sociologists such as Heidensohn argue that men see the need to protect women.
Outline and assess feminist explanations of crime and deviance. Feminist views toward crime and deviance usually challenge the theories, concepts, methods and assumptions of most of the people already involved in the study of crime. They believe that in most condition men dominate the subject of crime and validate more on the male subject. Feminist essentially outline that most crime is caused by men as they appear to offend six or seven times more than a women and through figures such as self-report studies men are still the majority. Crime and deviance is an issue in society however due to women being socially controlled within the patriarchal society it means they are less like to commit crime and therefore have a lower rate.
There are a lot of gender differences in patterns of crime, from which gender commit more crime to which crimes each gender commits more of. In this essay I will be giving explanations on why this different patterns in crime for gender happen. Men have a higher crime rate than women but the gap in this crime rate is slowly closing in recent years. Some Sociobiologists have the explanation that it is biological for the reason women are less likely to commit crimes than men. They argue that women have a more natural desire to be caring and this does not correspond to the values of crime, so they are less likely to offend due to them not having the nature to commit the crime.
Throughout the article, she references women and the culture of overwork, completely disregarding the men in society today that are “workaholics” in order to support their families. Because of her feminist beliefs, she takes a primary view of the issue as one the only effects women in this article. There are however a large number of men who become workaholics in order to support a family, where the woman chooses to stay home with the children for example. When Rebick states “women need to make overwork a major public policy issue,” she is being prejudice towards the male population that is also effected by overwork. She only references woman in her advice on how to overcome the issue, therefore leaving out a major demographic in the workforce.
In this essay I will explore the fundamental reasons why there is a significant difference between crime rates concerning men and women and I will also give reasons why men seem to commit more crimes on the surface and why women seem to commit less crime. I will base my Sociological concepts on Heidensohn but I will also use ideas from Pollack, Adler, Smart etc. The official crime statistics show how recorded crime tends to be a predominantly ‘masculine activity’. One explanation as to why there was a significant difference in patterns of crime concerning gender could be because Sociologists tended to focus on male criminality. Heidensohn (1985) said that female crime was either overlooked or ignored by sociologists or sociologists would merely assume stereotypical ideas on females regarding their criminal activity, for example, they would be too busy cooking and cleaning to have time to take part in crime, whereas men are stereotypically the bread-winners which means they are out in public more and so would have more opportunity to commit crime than women.
Assess Sociological Explanations for Gender Differences in Crime and Deviance Official crime statistics show that men much more likely to commit crimes than women and there is also a difference in the types of crimes each gender is more likely to commit – women committing shoplifting and men committing more violent crimes. There have been numerous different explanations for gender differences in crime including the chivalry thesis, sex role theory, control theory, and the liberation thesis. However, the official crime statistics are largely questioned by sociologists because it has been argued that they only show the criminal justice system’s view that men are more likely to commit the crimes and therefore they look more for male criminals rather than female ones. The chivalry thesis argue that these official statistics are unrepresentative due to the fact that most of the criminal justice agents – such as police officers, judges or magistrates – are men and they are more likely to treat women in a chivalrous way and therefore be more likely to convict men than women. The main idea of the chivalry thesis is this prospect that men are socialised to act in a way more chivalrous – or gentlemanly – toward women so they end up convicting men more than women.
It is a known cultural difference that men usually dominate the world. There are many times when women are abused that they do not file charges against their assailants. Some of the governing assumptions that strengthen the mainstream explanation of the intimate abuse that many women face are as follows: First, men batter women because they are privileged, physically, financially, and socially; it is under the assumption in this belief that we need not understand the violence behind men’s violence beyond that point of the patriarchal explanation. Second, women stay in abusive relationships because of patriarchy. Third, the criminal justice system is sexist.
The first such way is to ignore any legitimate concerns women have; the second way is to classify any emotion as unnecessary and “irrational.” Women get taken advantage of solely because society has considered them emotional, which in today’s modern society is often mistaken for being unstable. This in turn affects a women’s status in life. With this in mind, it is the status that will ultimately define their social mobility, “the lower the status, the more manner of seeing and feeling is subjected to being discredited, and the less believable it becomes” (Hochschile 173). Society has usually seen the lower class as unintelligent and therefore have their opinions denigrated. Even if she has a legitimate case to voice an opinion, “a person of lower status has a weaker claim to the right to define what is going on; less
Serial killers are rarely thought of as women. Perhaps this fallacy is based on the stereotype of women being delicate and sympathetic. For these barbarous killers, often the pretense of nurturing minimized any and all suspicions, but these women are just as immoral as their male counterparts. Patriarchal society is, by definition, male-centered, male-identified, and male-dominated (Johnson 24). Within the notion of male domination is the approval of male violence to implement male domination (Hooks 48).
Most efforts to understand crime have focused on male crime, since men have greater involvement in criminal behavior. This discussion of gender and crime first reviews both current and historical information on the rates and patterns of female crime in relation to male crime. The discussion is followed by a consideration of theoretical explanations of female crime and gender differences in crime. Finally, the authors briefly outline a "gendered" approach to understanding female crime that takes into account the influence of gender differences in norms, in socialization, in social control, and in criminal opportunities, as well as psychological and physiological differences between men and women. Females have lower arrest rates than males for virtually all crime categories except prostitution.