Explaining female crime
Heidensohn: patriarchal control
Heidensohn argues that the most striking thing about women’s behaviour is how conformist it is – they commit fewer crimes than men. In her view, this is because patriarchal society imposes greater control over women and this reduces their opportunities to offend. This patriarchal control operates at home, in public spaces and at work. * Control at home * Women’s domestic role, with its constant round of housework and childcare, imposes severe restrictions on their time and movement and confines them to the house for long periods of time, reducing their opportunities to offend. Women who try to reject their domestic role may find that their partners seek to impose it by force, through domestic violence. * As Dobash and Dobash show, many violent attacks result from men’s dissatisfaction with their wives’ performance of domestic duties. Men also exercise control through their financial power, for example by denying women sufficient funds for leisure activities, thereby restricting their time outside the home. * Daughters too are subject to patriarchal control. Girls are less likely to be allowed to come and go as they please or to stay out late. As a result, they develop a bedroom culture, socialising at home with friends rather than out in public spaces. Girls are also required to do more housework than boys. As a result, they have less opportunity to engage in deviant behaviour on the streets. * Control in public * Women are controlled in public places by the threat of male violence against them, especially sexual violence. For example, the Islington Crime Survey found that 54% of women avoided going out after dark for fear of being victims of crime, as against only 14% of men. * Heidensohn notes that sensationalist media reporting of rapes adds to women’s fear. Distorted media portrayals of the typical rapist as a stranger who carries out random attacks frightens women into staying indoors. * Females are also controlled in public by their fear of being defined as not respectable. Dress, makeup and ways of speaking and acting that are defined as inappropriate can gain a girl or women a ‘reputation’. For example, women on their own may avoid going into pubs – which are sites of criminal behaviour – for fear of being regarded as sexually ‘loose’ or even prostitutes. * Similarly, Lees notes that in school, boys maintain control through sexualised verbal abuse, for example labelling girls as ‘slags’ if they fail to conform to gender role expectations. * Control at work * Women’s behaviour at work is controlled by male supervisors and managers. Sexual harassment is widespread and helps keep women ‘in their place’. Furthermore, women’s subordinate positive reduces their opportunities to engage in major criminal activity at work. For example, the ‘glass ceiling’ prevents many women from rising to senior positions where there is greater opportunity to commit fraud.
In general, these patriarchal restrictions on women’s lives mean that they have fewer opportunities to commit crime. However, Heidensohn also recognises that patriarchy can also push women into crime. For example, women are more likely to be poor and may turn to theft or prostitution to get a decent standard of living.
Carlen: class and gender
Using unstructured tape-recorded interviews, Carlen conducted a study of 39 14-46 year old working-class women who had been convicted of a range of crimes including theft, fraud, handling stolen goods, burglary, drugs, prostitution, violence and arson. Twenty were in prison or youth custody at the time of interview. Although Carlen recognises that there are some middle class female offenders, she argues that more convicted serious female criminals are working class.
Carlen uses a version of Travis Hirschi’s control theory to explain female crime. Hirschi argues that humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a deal: rewards in return for conforming to social norms. People will turn to crime if they do not believe the rewards will be forthcoming, and if the rewards of crime appear greater than the risks.
Carlen argues that working class women are generally led to conform through the promise of two types of rewards or deals: * 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.
If these rewards are not available or worth the effort, crime becomes more likely. Carlen argues that this was the case with women in her study.
In terms of the class deal, the women had failed to find a legitimate way of earning a decent living and this left them feeling powerless, oppressed and the victims of injustice. * 32 of them had always been in poverty. * Some found that qualifications gained in jail had been no help in gaining work upon release, while others had been on YTS courses but still could not get a job. * Many had experienced problems and humiliations in trying to claim benefits.
As they gained no rewards from the class deal, they felt they had nothing to lose by using crime to escape the poverty they were suffering.
In terms of the gender deal for conforming to patriarchal family norms, most of the women had either not had the opportunity to make the deal, or saw few rewar4ds and many disadvantages in family life. * Some had been abused physically or sexually by their fathers or subject to domestic violence by their 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.
Many of the women reached the conclusion that crime was the only route to a decent standard of living. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Carlen concludes that, for these women, poverty and being brought up in care or an oppressive family were the two main causes of their criminality. Drug and alcohol addiction, and the desire for excitement, were contributory factors, but these often stemmed from poverty or being brought up in care. Being criminalised and jailed made the class deal even less available to them and make crime even more attractive.
Evaluation
Heidensohn and Carlen’s approaches to female crime are based on a combination of feminism and control theory: * Heidensohn shows that many patriarchal controls that help prevent women from deviating. * Carlen shows how the failure of patriarchal society to deliver the promised ‘deals’ to some women removes the controls that prevent them from offending.
However, both control theory and feminism can be accused of seeing women’s behaviour as determined by external forces such as patriarchal controls or class and gender deals. Critics argue that this underplays the importance of free will and choice in offending. Furthermore, Carlen’s sample was small and may be unrepresentative, consisting as it did largely of working class and serious offender.
The liberation thesis
If patriarchal society exercises control over women to prevent them from deviating, then it would seem logical to assume that, if society becomes less patriarchal and more equal, women’s crime rates will become similar to men’s.
This is the ‘liberation thesis’ put forward by Alder. Alder argues that, as women become liberated from patriarchy, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious men’s. Women’s liberation has led to a new type of female criminal and a rise in the female crime rate.
Alder argues that changes in the structure of society have led to changes in women’s offending behaviour. As patriarchal controls and discrimination have lessened, and opportunities in education and work have become more equal, women have begun to adopt traditionally ‘male’ roles in both legitimate and illegitimate activity.
As a result, women no longer just commit traditional ‘female’ crimes such as shoplifting and prostitution. They now also commit typically ‘male’ offences such as crimes of violence and white-collar crimes.
This is because of women’s greater self-confidence and assertiveness, and the fact that they now have greater opportunities in the illegitimate structure. For example, there are now more women in senior positions at work and this gives them the opportunity to commit serous white-collar crimes such as fraud.
There is some evidence to support this view: * Both the overall rate of female offending and the female share of offences have gone up. For example, between the 1950’s and 1990’s, the female share of offences rose from one in 7 to one in 6. * Alder 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. * More recently, there has been media talk of the growth of ‘girl gangs’, while a study by Denscombe of Midlands teenagers’ self-images found that females were as likely as males to engage in risk taking behaviour and that girls were adopting more ‘male’ stances, such as the desire to be in control and look ‘hard’.
Criticisms of liberation thesis
Critics reject Alder’s thesis on several grounds: * The female crime rate began rising in the 1950s – long before the women’s liberation movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. * Most female criminals are working class – the group least likely to be influenced by women’s liberation, which has benefited middle class women much more. According to Chesney-Lind, in the USA poor and marginalised women are more likely than liberated women to be criminals. * Chesney-Lind did find evidence of women branching into more typically male offences such as drugs. However, this is usually because of their link with prostitution – a very unliberated female offence. * There is 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.
However, Alder’s thesis does draw our attention to the importance of investigating the relationship between changes in women’s position and changes in patterns of female offending.
However, it can be argued that she overestimates both the extent to which women have become liberated and the extent to which they are able to engage in serious crime.