Feminist Theory Lilly Cullen Ball Criminological Theory Sixth Edition 2015 SAGE Publications Criminological Theory Background Feminisms roots rest in antiquity The beginning of the first wave of feminist perspective in the US is located during the 19 ID: 547647
Download Presentation The PPT/PDF document "The Gendering of Criminology:" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
The Gendering of Criminology: Feminist Theory
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications
Criminological TheorySlide2
Background
Feminism’s roots rest in antiquity
The beginning of the first wave of feminist perspective in the US is located during the 19
th
century at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 The first wave of feminism is also associated with the abolition of slavery
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide3
Background
The industrial revolution, coupled with the rise of capitalism, had largely changed traditional family and village economies into factory production
There was a near destruction of what previously had been a valued and necessary “household” partnership between spouses, their offspring, and extended households
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide4
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes
In the early literature, many of the same assumptions emerged
These assumptions focused on crime as the result of individual physiological and psychological characteristics of
women
Thought these characteristics were universal to women and that they transcended any historical time frame
Assumption that there was an inherent nature of women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide5
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes
Theoretical and research attention directed toward determining the differences between criminal and noncriminal women
Two classes of women:
Good women who were not criminal
Bad women who were criminal
Assumption that crime resulted from individual choices and women were conceptualized as freely choosing to act
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide6
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Cesare Lombroso
Evolution accounts for the uneven development of groups
In
The Female Offender
, female criminality was described as an inherent tendency of women who had not developed properly into feminine women with moral refinement
Criminal
women were more masculine than
feminine
Short, dark-haired women with moles and masculine cranial and facial features were good candidates for crime
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide7
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Cesare Lombroso
Women also were characterized by physiological immobility, psychological passivity, and amorality featuring a cold and calculating predisposition
Criminal women could adjust more easily than men to mental and physical pain
Criminal women were abnormal
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide8
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: W.I. Thomas
Sex and Society: Men and women were fundamentally
different
Women stored energy; women were more motionless and conservative
Lead to the decline in the stature of women, especially in civilized societies
Underlying these assumptions was a focus on physiological
issues
Focus primarily on
physiological
issues. Men, for example, had more sexual energy than did women. This allowed men to pursue women for sexual reasons and allowed women, in turn, to exchange sex for domesticity
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide9
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: W.I. Thomas
The Unadjusted Girl: Thomas shifted his position on female criminality:
Female
delinquency was normal under certain
circumstances
Punishment of criminals should focus on rehabilitation and
prevention
There was no individual who could not be made to be socially useful
Bad women exploited men for fulfillment of their desires; good women used sex as a protective measure against the future and uncertainty
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide10
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Sigmund Freud
The position of women was based on explicit biological assumptions about their
nature – anatomy is destiny
The
inferiority of women (and their sex organs) was recognized universally
Women
had developed an inferiority
complex (penis envy)
Women
were
irrational; men were rational
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide11
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Sigmund Freud
The deviant woman is one who is attempting to be a
man
To be normal, women had to adjust to and accommodate the glorified duties of wives and mothers at the expense of gender equality
Freudianism
has had a powerful influence on transforming gender and sexual ideology of proper female behavior and sexuality into a scientific
framework
Used for decades to maintain female sexual repression, sexual passivity, and the “woman’s place” in the nuclear family
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide12
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Otto Pollak
Female involvement in crime was highly hidden from public view
Women were inherently deceitful because of physiological reasons
The deceitful nature of women permitted them to commit undetectable crimes
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide13
Prefeminist Pioneers and Themes: Otto Pollak
Women also were vengeful, especially during their menstrual periods
False accusations were typical female crimes because they were an outgrowth of their nature and treachery
Women were treated differently by the criminal law, keeping their criminality hidden
Chivalry in the criminal justice system
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide14
The Emergence of New Questions: Bringing Women In
In 1961, Walter C. Reckless question whether any theory of delinquency would be accepted if a criminologist attempted to apply it to women
Are gendered theories generalizable?
How do issues of social structure and categories of risk apply to gendered criminology?
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide15
The Emergence of New Questions: Bringing Women In
The first wave of feminism ended in the US in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
Second-wave feminism denounced the domestic sphere as oppressive to women and sought to achieve equality with men in the public
sphere
Contributed to the development of a number of feminist critiques of criminology and to additional questions about equality being raised by feminists
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide16
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Women’s Emancipation and Crime
In the 1960s and 1970s, women showed an increase participation in the workforce, and thus, new explanations of female crime were developed
Adler:
Sisters in Crime
argued lifting restrictions on women’s opportunities in the marketplace gave them the chance to be greedy, violent, and crime prone as men
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide17
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Women’s Emancipation and Crime
Simon:
Women and Crime
argued women’s increasing share of arrests for property crime might be explained by their increased opportunities in the workplace to commit crime
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide18
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Women’s Emancipation and Crime
Steffensmeier argued that there were greater opportunities than in the past for women to commit petty theft and fraud because of a self-service market place
Steffensmeier and Cobb provided data indicating that law enforcement and court attitudes towards female offenders are changing and that now there is a greater willingness to arrest and prosecute women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide19
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Women’s Emancipation and Crime
Criticism of Steffensmeier
Women’s roles might be changing more gradually than can be measured in the relatively short period of time examined by Steffensmeier
There was a failure to examine whether the trends that early research on female crime associated with the women’s movement were actually occurring
Both Adler and Simon ignored the impact of power relations in a patriarchy where the social structure allows men to exercise control over women’s labor and sexuality
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide20
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Patriarchy and Crime
The pervasiveness of male dominance in patriarchal society and its impact on crimes committed both by men and women
The emphasis on power differences between men and women led women into powerless types of crime
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide21
The Second Wave: From Women’s Emancipation and to Patriarchy : Patriarchy and Crime
Sexual abuse was explained by patriarchal dominance
These crimes by men—and, therefore, the victimization of women—reflected the ability of men to use their power against women
Little research has tested the notion that patriarchy explains female crime
Patriarchy is difficult to measure as an independent variable
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide22
Varieties of Feminist Thought: Early Feminist Perspectives
Liberal
Feminism
: Gender socialization as the cause of crime
Marxist
Feminism
: Class and gender division of labor combine to determine the social position of women and men
Radical
Feminism
: Crime is an expression of men’s need to control
Socialist
Feminism
: Examines the connections between capitalism and patriarchy that leads men to crime and women to
subordination (attempts to merge Marxist and radical feminism)
Support has been found for Marxist and social feminist arguments
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide23
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Initial feminist perspectives tended to implicitly treat women as a monolithic or homogenous unit of analysis
Feminist scholars began to argue for the importance of theories and investigations that explore how crime is shaped by the intersection of race, class, and gender (See Table 10.1)
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide24
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Simpson noted that too often it had focused on contrasts between the criminality of males and that of females
Need to address the complex interactive effect of gender, race, and class
Gender alone does not account for variation in criminal violence
Addressed violence and the underclass
The lower class is disproportionately female and African American and, therefore, is relatively heterogeneous, the underclass is racially more homogeneous; it is primarily African American and young
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide25
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Ogle, Maier-Katkin, and Bernard’s theory on homicidal behavior among women
Patterns of homicides by women are different from those by men
Men who kill do so out of a need to control a situation
Women who kill tend to do so because they have lost control over themselves
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide26
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Richie focused on the intersection of race, gender, class, and domestic violence
These women were essentially compelled into crime by their social circumstances
Patterns of offending reflected economic marginalization, culturally constructed gendered roles for African American women, and their experiences with interpersonal violence
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide27
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Miller: Getting Played employed a gendered, ecologically oriented theoretical framework for a comparative (girls and boys) examination of African American female youths' victimization and how this victimization is embedded in their everyday life
Girls’ victimizations often occur in social and public settings
Both girls and boys viewed the victimization as problems of individual character, not the result of the structural and situational context that they shared
Often see much victim blaming
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide28
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Mullins and Miller examined the temporal, situational, and interactional features of women's violent conflicts
Women's conflicts are produced by a long series of interactional sequences that are embedded in broader macro- and meso-social contexts
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide29
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Zhang, Chin, and Miller examined how organizational context and market demand shaped the extent and nature of how women were involved in Chinese transnational human smuggling
Focused on the internal logic of an organized criminal enterprise and found that its strategies were gendered
Smuggling viewed as an altruistic community service
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide30
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Daly and Chesney-Lind presented six distinctive features of feminist theory:
Gender is not a natural fact but a complex social, historical, and cultural product
Gender and gender relations order social life and social institutions in fundamental ways
Gender relations and constructs of masculinity and femininity are not symmetrical but are based on an organizing principle of men’s superiority and social and political-economic dominance over women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide31
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
Daly and Chesney-Lind presented six distinctive features of feminist theory:
Systems of knowledge reflect men’s views of the natural and social worlds
Women should be at the center of intellectual inquiry, not peripheral, invisible, or appendages of men
These points are the key elements that distinguish feminist perspectives in criminology from conventional criminology
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide32
The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
In the early 1990s, new thinking focused on the relationship between sex and gender, and it focused in part on the idea that sex, rather than being a pre-social biological concept, was in fact socially and discursively constructed
Thinking about sex and gender dualistically can give way to new conceptualizations
Sex and gender may actually be “incorporated” or fused together in ways that make them indivisible except as linguistic constructs
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide33
Masculinities and Crime: Doing Gender
Messerschmidt argued that traditional criminological theories provide an incomplete understanding of crime because they omit gender from their analysis (See Table 10.1)
Traditional theories ignore how masculinity is linked to crime and how various types of masculinity are related to different types of offending
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide34
Masculinities and Crime: Doing Gender
Males are socialized into a hegemonic masculinity
Men define their masculinity in the labor market, the subordination of women, hetero-sexism, uncontrollable sexuality
Men must constantly accomplish/demonstrate their masculinity
If the goal is blocked, men may show their masculinity through crime
Different masculinities (by class and race) emerge and have varying impacts on the contents of criminal behavior
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide35
Masculinities and Crime: Doing Gender
White middle-class boys are able to achieve masculinity through success in sports and in school
White working-class boys manifest oppositional conduct in school such as pranks and other mischief and outside the classroom they “do gender” through theft, fighting, or perhaps hate crimes
Racial minority lower-class and working-class boys are likely to find school boring and humiliating thus they do gender through oppositional behavior that may involve physical violence
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide36
Masculinities and Crime: Doing Gender
Among adult males, wife beating is a resource for affirming maleness
More prevalent among men who are in economically precarious positions
Messerschmidt’s
work was important because it forced scholars to think more carefully about the features of maleness that may be implicated in crime causation and about how the intersection of race, class, and gender shape the gender-specific problems men face and how men respond to them
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide37
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
The questions of “Why do so many men beat, sexually assault, psychologically abuse, and otherwise harm their current and former intimate female partners in ways that few of us can imagine?” underlies DeKeseredy & Schwartz’s male social support theory
Reject the idea men damage women because they are psychological pathological; instead men’s victimization of women is a social product
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide38
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
Can be seen as a strain theory that sees violence as a response to stress flowing from negative relationships
The response to the strain is situated in the context of “being a man” in the context of male peers
When a woman does not do what a man wishes, it can be experienced as insults to their “masculinity”
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide39
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
Men’s definition of and coping with situations where their masculinity feels insult are shaped intimately by “social patriarchy”
A system of gender inequality legitimated by the ideology that males are naturally dominant and privileged and women are naturally subordinate and subservient
When this does not play out, men experience it as stressful and humiliating
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide40
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
A key causal ingredient to why men lash out violently is male social support for violence against women who do not submit to a man’s authority
Male peer groups socialize their members into a very narrow conception of masculinity and differs by the group
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide41
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
Three other factors heighten the risk of female victimization:
Male peer groups “sexually objectify” women
Heavy use of alcohol
Absence of deterrence
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide42
Masculinities and Crime: Male Social Support Theory
DeKeseredy and Schwartz connect the macro level (a system of social patriarchy) with the micro level (an individual’s decision to use violence against a specific woman) with the male peer group as the conduit for this macro-micro connection
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide43
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Pathways to Lawbreaking
Gendered pathways is an approach to explaining crime that is similar to the life-course analysis
Females’ experiences are mapped to explore what led them to crime as well as desistance from it
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide44
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Pathways to Lawbreaking
Daly identified five paths women took to getting to court
Harmed and harming women
Battered women
Street women
Drug-connected women
Other women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide45
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Pathways to Lawbreaking
Brennan, Breitenbach
,
Dietrerich
, Salisbury, and Van Voorhis revealed five types of women
Normal/situational female offenders
Adolescence-limited female offenders
Victimized, socially withdrawn and depressed female offenders
Chronic serious female offenders
Socialized/socially marginalized female offenders
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide46
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Crime
Gendered crime analysis attempts to discover the contingencies within and across gender in order to more precisely specify dynamic relationships between gender and
crime
Examines how women navigate gender-stratified environments, and how they accommodate and adapt to gender inequality in their commission of crime
Women’s criminal opportunities are found to be restricted by situational changes
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide47
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Lives
Gendered lives emphasizes the significant differences in the ways that women experience society compared with men
Requires systematic attention to gender well beyond the analysis of crime
The
gendering of social practices (Bottcher)
Making
friends and having fun
Relating
sexually and becoming parents
Surviving
hardships and finding purpose
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide48
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Lives
Bottcher emphasizes practices rather than individuals while at the same time it challenges the male-female gender dichotomy often found in studies of gender and crime
Gendered patterns of behavior are not universally applicable to all males or all females
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide49
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Lives
Maher: Sexed Work
is a
consistent examination of the intersections of race, class, and gender in shaping women’s experiences and lives, and illustrates the strengths of feminist scholarship that moves beyond and exclusive emphasis of gender
Women
lawbreakers are less like dependent and passive victims and more like active, creative decision makers who often face contradictory choices
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide50
Gendered Criminology: Gendered Lives
“Doing marriage” on desistance from crime is another way to think about gendered lives
The effect of marriage on the reduction of criminal behavior for adults to be particularly robust across different samples and was significantly more favorable for men than for women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide51
Gendered Criminology: A Gendered Theory of Offending
Steffensmeier and colleagues have made major progress in developing a middle-range explanation of the gender gap
Created a gendered paradigm arguing hat the “road contours of traditional criminological theories can explain variation in both female and male offending, but that gendered concerns mediate how criminogenic factors shape the form and frequency of offending
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide52
Gendered Criminology: A Gendered Theory of Offending
There are five closely interrelated key elements of the organization of gender that increases the probability of prosocial
response by females and
antisocial
by males:Gender norms and focal concerns
Moral development and affiliative concerns
Social control
Physical strength and aggression
Sexuality
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide53
Gendered Criminology: A Gendered Theory of Offending
The five factors influence the circumstances and nature of crime or “the context of offending”
Crime groups are an example of these five factors
Often male dominated
High stratifiedFemales have limited opportunity
Often engage in supportive activities
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide54
Gendered Criminology: Gender Gap – Further Comments
The gender gap issue centers on:
Whether females are actually underrepresented in official data
How females enter into crime
What sorts of crime females commit compared to males
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide55
Gendered Criminology: Gender Gap – Further Comments
Earliest feminist work studied what happened to girls in the justice system
Intense focus on policing young girls’ sexuality and violation of gender norms
Still see this today
Gender matters at sentencing with girls receiving harsher sentencesThe gender gap in arrests have been declining for 30 years
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide56
Gendered Criminology: Gender Gap – Further Comments
For females, economic hardship is a good predictor of criminal behavior
Women’s involvement in corporate crime is rare and often they play minor roles in the crime if they do commit it
A greater percentage of females than males is incarcerated for property offenses and drug offenses
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide57
Postmodernist Feminism and the Third Wave
Postmodern feminism seeks to deconstruct the racial, class, and gender stratification that has resulted from modern Western civilization (See Table 10.1)
Postmodern feminism is also concerned with the constructed image of crime
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide58
Postmodernist Feminism and the Third Wave
The third wave’s distinguishing feature is the tactical approach it offers to some of the impasses that developed within feminist theory in the 1980s (See Table 10.1)
Argues that there is a wide array of discursive locations for women
Emphasizes an inclusive and nonjudgmental approach that does not police or maintain the political boundaries that the second wave employed
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide59
Consequences of the Diversity of Feminist Perspectives
Greater attention has been given to women as victims and survivors of sexual and physical violence
This topic has become central to the feminist perspective in conventional criminology and to left realism
The victimization of women and girls can be tied to a number of feminist perspectives
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide60
Consequences of the Diversity of Feminist Perspectives
The linkage between patriarchy and power forced scholars and activists to examine crimes exclusively against women
The whole milieu of the women’s movement affected criminology
More women and feminists moved into criminology and other academic disciplines
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide61
Consequences of the Diversity of Feminist Perspectives
There are multiple feminist perspectives in criminology
Feminism
has had enough of an impact to transform criminology/criminal justice education so that gender is a central organizing
theme
However, still at the margins of the male-stream
The goal of feminism is not to push men out so as to bring women in, but rather to gender the study of crime
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide62
Consequences of the Diversity of Feminist Perspectives
Feminist perspective seen in public social policies:
Mandatory arrest for domestic violence
Changes in rape laws
New attention given to date rape
Rape shield laws
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide63
Consequences of Feminist Criminology for Corrections
There are several problems facing correctional systems for women
Women
bring different needs to the prison system
A number of women enter prison
pregnant or have dependent children
Inadequate
gynecological services
The
staff is predominantly male
Stereotypical
vocational programs
Rehabilitation
tends to be more restricted for women
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide64
Consequences of Feminist Criminology: New Directions
Forty years ago the role of women experienced major social changes and worldwide attention
Calls for transformative feminist criminology that 1. theorizes gender, 2. contains a commitment to a broader social justice, and 3. is global in scope
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide65
Consequences of Feminist Criminology: New Directions
Other critical perspectives in the field do not explicitly
include gender issues at the center of theory and research, the transformative feminist perspective does
Also seeks to raise awareness of how the corporate media “often misrepresents the majority of women who break the law and hides the circumstances of women who act with violence”
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide66
Consequences of Feminist Criminology: New Directions
The transformative feminist perspective examines globally sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, women’s health, maternity leave, and work-family conflict
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide67
Conclusion
Feminist scholars have succeeded in “gendering criminology” in important ways
An important challenge will be to determine how criminality is affected not only by gender differences but also by gender similarities
There is a growing body of evidence that many risk factors for crime are similar for males and females, though they may express themselves in social relationships in different ways
Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications