There is a growing body of research on the processing of women throughout the Criminal Justice System (Heidensohn, 1985). Such research has raised questions regarding the supposed leniency and chivalry shown towards female offenders by the police, courts and other agencies. According to researchers such as Mary Eaton, (1986) certain female offenders may in fact receive tougher treatment and sentencing should they be viewed as failing the primary role of homemaker. Prostitutes are an example as they are often seen as doubly deviant.
Official statistics include that in every age group males are much more likely to commit crime than females and are twenty times more likely to be sentenced to prison (Social Trends, 1995). Official Statistics also suggest that there are gender differences in types of crime with women less likely to be involved in violent crime. Shoplifting, handling stolen goods and prostitution appear as typical female offences. There is some evidence from victim studies to support the official view of gender and crime. This lends support to Heidensohn’s view that, sex is therefore a ‘crucial variable’ in predicting crime (1989).
New theories are emerging to explain the differences in male/female offending. For example, with men dominant in the public sphere and freer to move around this sphere, the high level of male offending relative to that of women may be understandable. For men have more opportunities to commit offences. Feminist research has also shown that the private domain of the home is ‘even more male-dominated than public street crime’ (Heidensohn). This may be due to the crucial significance of the private domain to men’s sense of dominance.
For feminists, the family is patriarchal, a male dominated institution whose main purpose is to serve the interests of men. Within the family, girls are socialised differently from boys. There are different sets of expectations for the two sexes. Female socialisation still tends to emphasise attractiveness, softness, caring and to discourage competitiveness and aggressive behaviour, which is tolerated and even encouraged in boys.
The family home is the centre of women’s lives; the role of the housewife and mother still confines many women to the home for at least part of their lives. Women are expected to take the primary responsibility for the care of the children, and those who fail to be good wives and mothers face disapproval. Men are not subject to the same expectations and sanctions. The family is therefore a site in which men exercise social control over women. Domestic crime such as spouse and child abuse are now recognised as real crimes and are more widespread than they were once thought. The concept of gender plays a pivotal role in explaining them. For the ‘overwhelming majority of such cases involve men, usually fathers and husbands injuring or abusing their wives and children’ (Heidensohn).
Victimology, while it does owe its origins to feminism, is a growing subfield of sociology which’s increasingly relies on the insights of feminism in its analysis of the distress caused by victimisation, the problem of the fear of crime and the measures taken to avoid victimisation (Zedner, 1994). Thus studies of the victims of domestic violence (Dobash and Dobash) have alerted us to the fact that victimisation is often not a one off incident but a habitual and prolonged affair. An appreciation that women may have good reasons to be more fearful of crime than men has sensitised us to the traumatic effects some crimes have on vulnerable groups. Such fear may lead them to be reluctant to go out, especially after dark.
Feminist research is broadening the debate; they are interested in both why women commit so few crimes compared to men, and why the women who do commit crimes do so. Heidensohn has argued, the understanding of the low levels of female offending relative to that of men requires us to ask questions first about conformity and the socialisation (mentioned above) of women as against that of men. Therefore, the lower rates of crime for women involve different socialisation, stronger control (within the family and outside), also fewer opportunities to commit crime. For example, the types of occupations women are in provide fewer opportunities for significant white-collar crime.
However, it is less clear why women who do commit crime do so. Sometimes the crimes can be related to conventional female roles and responsibilities, prostitution to being the provider of sex for a man and shoplifting to the responsibility for food and clothing (this perhaps is or partly due to the type of family you live in i.e. single parent household). Others may involve women who are under less strict social role than most women are.
Therefore, feminism has used the concept of patriarchy to analyse many areas of social life, including the family and crime and deviance. This focuses on how men have dominated women through control of areas of social life. Within the family females have been socialised into an acceptance of roles and of positions within society, this decreases the likelihood of their being involved in some types of crime. Men have controlled swomen’s behaviour through domination of areas of public life. Women’s lives are still focussed around the home, pubs; streets at night are still male dominated areas.
The big question awaiting the sociology of crime, however, is not what makes women’s crime rates so low but why are men’s so high.
