Explaining Female Crime
FUNCTIONALIST SEX ROLE THEORY:
Boys are encouraged to be tough, aggressive and risk-taking – this can mean they’re more disposed to criminal acts.
Parsons: crime and deviance differences can be traced back to gender roles in the conventional nuclear family.
Mother: socialising the children, expressive in the house.
Father: breadwinner, instrumental role outside the house.
Daughter: has access to an adult role model.
Son: rejects feminine models that express tenderness, gentleness and emotion. Distance themselves by engaging in ‘compensatory, compulsory masculinity’ through aggression and anti-social behaviour, which could slip into delinquency.
Boys lack male role models – more difficult to socialise.
The New Right argue that the absence of a male role model in matrifocal parent families leads boys to criminal street gangs as a source of status and identity.
Cohen: the relative lack of a male role model means boys are more likely to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculine identity – in these subcultural groups status is earned by acts of toughness, risk-taking and delinquency.
EVALUATION OF FUNCTIONALIST SEX ROLE THEORY:
Walklate: Parsons assumes that because women have the biological capacity to bear children, they’re best suited to the expressive role.
The differences aren’t really about socialisation because it’s based on biological assumptions about sex differences.
The alternative explanation offered by feminists is based on women’s position in patriarchal society.
CONTROL THEORY – HEIDENSOHN AND PATRIARCHAL CONTROL:
Argues most striking feature of women’s behaviour is how conformist it is – they commit fewer and less crimes than men.
She believes this is because patriarchal society imposes more control on women, leaving them less opportunity to offend.
This patriarchal control operates at home, in public spaces and at work.
The constant round of housework and childcare restricts time and movement and confines them to the house for long periods of time.
Men also exercise control through finances by offering insufficient funds for leisure activities. This restricts women’s time outside the house.
Women who try to reject the domestic role may find their partners seek to impose it by force, through domestic violence.
Many violent attacks result from men’s dissatisfaction with their wives’ performance of domestic duties.
Daughters are also subject to patriarchal control.
They’re less likely to be able to ‘come and go as they please’ or to stay out late.
They therefore develop a ‘bedroom culture’ where they socialise at home rather than in public spaces.
They’re also required to do more homework.
As a result, they have less opportunity to engage in deviant behaviour on the streets.
CONTROL IN PUBLIC:
The threat or fear of male violence against them – especially sexual violence – controls women in public spaces.
The Islington crime survey shows percentages of each gender who wouldn’t go out after dark for fear of crime:
Males: 14%
Females: 54%
Media reporting adds to women’s fears with sensationalised media reporting of rape. The distorted picture of a rapist as a stranger who carries out random attacks frightens women into staying indoors.
Dress, make-up, demeanour, ways of speaking can gain a woman an ‘unrespectable reputation’ in public places.
An example of this is women may not go into pubs by themselves – sites of criminal behaviour – for fear of being regarded as ‘loose’ or a prostitute.
This was also portrayed to a certain extent in education with females having a stricter dress code than males.
CONTROL AT WORK:
Women’s behaviour at work is controlled by male managers and supervisors.
Sexual harassment is widespread and helps ‘keep women in their place’.
Women’s subordinate position means they have limited opportunity to engage in major crime like fraud at work.
CARLEN – CLASS AND GENDER DEALS:
Carlen used unstructured tape-recorded interviews.
She studied 39 women that had the age group of 15-46 years old and were working class.
They had been convicted of a range of crimes including theft, fraud, handling stolen goods, burglary, drugs, prostitution, violence and arson.
20 of them were in custody or youth prison at the time.
Working class females mostly offend according to Carlen.
Carlen adapting Hirschi to explain female crime:
Humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a ‘deal’ of rewards in return for conforming to social norms. People turn to crime when they don’t see the rewards as forthcoming – or if the rewards of crime seem greater.
There are two rewards working class women are offered:
The class deal – women who work will be offered material rewards, with a decent standard of living and leisure opportunities.
The gender deal – patriarchal ideology promises women material and emotional rewards from family life by conforming to the norms of a conventional domestic gender role.
Crime becomes more likely if they aren’t available or worth it.
Carlen thought this was the case for women in her study:
The class deal:
Two-thirds of them had always been in poverty.
Some found that qualifications earned in jail had been no help in gaining work upon release. Others had been on training courses but still couldn’t get a job.
Many had experienced problems and humiliations in trying to claim benefits.
The gender deal:
Some had been abused physically or sexually by their fathers, or subjected to domestic violence by partners.
Over half had spent time in care, which broke the bonds with family and friends.
Those leaving or running away from care often found themselves homeless, unemployed and poor (both gender and class deal).
The focus on external control in these theories is an issue because sometimes the reason is more internal and personal.
ADLER – LIBERATION THEORY:
As society becomes less patriarchal, women crime rates will increase and become more serious. In short, they will mirror the statistics of men.
Evidence:
Both the overall rate of female offending and the female share of offences rose during the second half of the 20th century. for example, between the 1950s and 1990s, the female share of offences rose from one in 7 to one in 6.
Adler argues that the pattern of female crime has shifted. She cites studies showing rising levels of female participation in crimes previously regarded as ‘male’, such as embezzlement and armed robbery.
Evaluation:
The female crime rate began rising in the 1950s – long before the women’s liberation movement, which emerged in the late 1950s.
There’s little evidence that the illegitimate opportunity structure of professional crime has opened up to women, Laidler and Hunt found that female gang members in the USA were expected to conform to conventional gender roles in the same way as non-deviant girls.
ADVANTAGE OF LIBERATION THESIS:
Hand and Dodd: between 2000 and 2008 police statistics show the number of females arrested for violence rose by an average of 17% each year. Similar patterns have been noted in other countries, such as Canada, Australis and the USA.
CRITICISMS OF LIBERATION THESIS:
Steffensmeier and Scwartz: the rise in statistics is due to the justice system ‘widening the net’ – arresting and prosecuting females for less serious forms of violence than previously.
Young: calls this ‘defining deviance up’ to catch trivial offences in the net.
Worrall: in the past, girls’ misbehaviour was more likely to be seen as a ‘welfare’ issue, whereas now it has been re-labelled as criminality.
MORAL PANIC ABOUT GIRLS:
A moral panic is a mass movement based on false or exaggerated perception that come cultural behaviour of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society’s values and interests.
The moral panic over girls may be with girls drinking more or committing more violent acts.
According to labelling theorists this moral panic will lead to:
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Master status.
GENDER AND VICTIMISATION:
70% of homicide victims are male.
60% of female victims were killed by partners or ex-partners.
Men are more likely to be killed by a friend or acquaintance.
4% of violence victims are male and 2% are female.
Women are more likely to be victimised by an acquaintance, and men by a stranger.
18% of males were victims of intimate violence (domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking), compared to 38% females.
Women reported sexual assault 10 times more.
8% of women who experienced sexual assault reported it to the police.
Because 1/3 who didn’t report said the police couldn’t do much to help.
There’s a mismatch of fear and crime because women fear more crime, but experience less of it.
Although there might not be a mismatch because:
Victim surveys, like Lea and Young’s, have found that women are at greater risk than men.
Sparks et al: women were less likely to participate in police interviews about crime.
Walby and Allen: victim surveys may not reflect the multiple incidents of domestic abuse that women face.
Ansara and Hindin: women experience more severe violence and control.