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.
Women have always been thought of as the weaker sex and Sociologists such as Heidensohn argue that men see the need to protect women. Police are more likely to caution a woman for shop lifting than they are a man. Flood-Page et al found that one in eleven female offenders had been cautioned and prosecuted in comparison to one in seven males. Women are also less likely to be prosecuted for an offence and found guilty of offences by juries. This is because women (especially when they have children) are seen first and foremost in the expressive role (mothering and caring).
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. Otto Pollak (1950) argued that women’s crimes are less likely to end up in official statistics due to the fact that “men don’t like to accuse or punish women” so the criminal justice system is more lenient toward them. The chivalry thesis can be supported by the work of Graham and Bowling who used self-report studies and found that men still commit more crimes than women although the gap is now smaller. They also found that women are more likely to be cautioned whereas men are more likely to be arrested. Nevertheless, the chivalry thesis also has many criticisms including results from a study carried out in a
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.
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).
Poverty may mean that crime is the only way that the working class can survive, as crime may e the only way that they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by the capitalist advertising, resulting in utilitarian crimes such as theft. However, it isn’t always utilitarian crime that the working class commit as sometimes the alienation and lack of control over their lives may lead to frustration and aggression which results in non-utilitarian crimes such as vandalism and violence. Marxist’s sometimes argue the state and law-making are a cause of crime because they believe that all laws serve the ruling class, most law is based on protecting private property. The crimes of the working class and ethnic minorities are punished harshly while crimes of the powerful go unnoticed. The ruling class also have the power to prevent the introduction of laws that would threaten their interests.
Since we live in a patriarchal society, and have since the beginning of time, women are more known for supporting the male in whatever his role is, and staying behind the scene. Women in the drug game were almost nonexistent as men felt that women were not strong or wise enough to handle such dangerous and demanding situations. This however, is not the case in either Dorm Room Dealers or Cocaine Kids. While there weren’t many women in the forefront selling drugs, Kitty, Cecelia, and Stopper certainly defied the norm as female drug dealers. Kitty, however, fit more so in the background as her role was not as instrumental in the actual scheme of selling drugs.
When women worked in groups, their leadership and subordinate roles varied by offense. For credit fraud, women were just as likely to be leaders as subordinates, but for false claims, more took a subordinate role. By contrast, more men took a primary role in false claims offenses; but for the remaining offenses, men were just as likely to be leaders as subordinates. There is no variable in the data file for the gender (or race) composition of crime groups; thus, the proportions of men and women working in same- or mixed-gender (or race) groups cannot be determined. For each offense, the men's attempted economic gain was higher than the women's: by a factor of ten for bank embezzlement, five for postal fraud, and two for credit fraud and false claims.
Giddens explains what glass ceiling is and how it influences women. Glass ceiling is a form of discrimination and “is a promotional barrier that prevents a woman’s upward mobility within an organization.” (Giddens 232) Basically, glass ceiling is simply a hurdle that prevents women from promoting. Glass ceiling does not simply include the promotional barrier, but different salaries for comparable work as well. Glass ceiling trends are more common in male-dominated fields. In many occasions, this barrier prevents women from