The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
or even male-gender-related. Studies published in the 1980s identified larceny and thefts, such as forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement, as constituting considerable numbers of females’ arrests and convictions but still identified these offenses as male-gender-related (Eaton, 1986; Leonard, 1982). Some studies on shoplifting have found no gender differences (Hudson, 1989; Smart, 1976), but far more have found that shoplifting is male-gender-related (Buckle & Farrington, 1984; Hirtenlehner & Treiber, 2017; Mawby, 1980; N. L. Piquero, Gover, MacDonald, & Piquero, 2005), and that men and boys steal more items and items of greater value than the food and clothing typically shoplifted by females (Buckle & Farrington, 1984; Gibbens & Prince, 1962; Hoffman-Bustamante, 1973). Similarly, the 2018 UCR arrest rates reported in Table 4.1 in the previous chapter indicated embezzlement as the only gender-neutral offense and larceny-theft as approaching male-gender-related for youth but solidly male-gender-related for combined ages. Research since the 1970s suggests that larceny and theft rates show more gender convergence than any other crimes (e.g., Chilton & Datesman, 1987; Kline, 1993). Notably, a study on arrests found women’s arrest rate growth was particularly evident among African American women, coinciding with the feminization of poverty (Chilton & Datesman 1987), and a study of habitual/career criminals, found women were significantly more likely than men to be arrested for forgery and fraud (Delisi, 2002). J. J. Roth and King’s (2019) aggregate-level study of larceny arrests found that unemployment, income, and drug arrest rates significantly impacted women and men, but women more so. They concluded that across gender, “larceny is more likely to occur (or be detected by law enforcement or witnesses) in areas with lower unemployment and incomes” (p. 123).
Burglary
Research on burglary consistently finds it male-gender-related and the 2018 UCR data reported four fifths (81%) of burglary arrests were of men and boys (see Figure 5.1). In one of the few studies on burglary and gender, Decker and his colleagues (1993) drew on over a hundred interviews with burglars and found men were more likely to commit additional crimes on top of the burglary (at the same incident), to start their “burglary careers” at a younger age, and to have committed more burglaries than women. Women burglars were more likely to co-offend and to report having a drug addiction (there was no gender difference in using drugs) (S. Decker et al., 1993). Kuhns and his colleagues’ (2017) large study of burglars found women reported more drug use and that their burglaries were “primarily motivated by their drug use,” and men were more likely to get arrested for the robberies they committed (p. 116). Using the same data set, Mullins and Wright (2003) found regardless of gender, most burglars were initiated into this crime with “older friends, family members or street associates,” but men were more likely recruited by male peers, whereas women and girls were more likely recruited through boyfriends (p. 819). Moreover, female respondents were more worried about what their families would think about them. Roth and King’s (2019) recent aggregate UCR study on larceny referenced earlier also studied burglary and found “unemployment” had the biggest impact on both genders’ burglary arrests, and drug arrests were also related to both genders’ burglary rates. Both income and percentage of Black people in the neighborhood predicted women’s, but not men’s, burglary, but contrary to hypotheses, a greater percentage of Black women and lower median income both significantly decreased women’s burglary rates.
Robbery
Research on robbery consistently finds it highly male-gender-related; indeed, 85% of the 2018 UCR arrests were of men and boys. Ira Sommers and Baskin’s (1994) in-depth study of young women robbers found two thirds of the women reported the robbery occurring in the course of and subsequent to other crimes, such as prostitution, drug-dealing, nonviolent theft, and fraud. Most of the robberies were spontaneous and not planned. Regarding motivations to rob, 89% reported committing the robbery to obtain money, with four fifths of those stating that it was money for drugs and the remaining one fifth wanting the money for clothes, jewelry, and electronic equipment. About 10% reported their motivation was loyalty to friends, vengeance, or the excitement. Notably, however, for many of these women, their early robberies were not motivated by financial desires, but their subsequent robberies were financial, usually to buy drugs. Almost three quarters of their victims were strangers, chosen because they looked weak or vulnerable. These young women were equally likely to rob other women as rob men, but they were less likely to use a weapon if their victim was a woman. Sommers and Baskin’s (1993) findings are also interesting in terms of agency and co-offending: “From early on” in their offending, the women “reported that they acted out of self-determination and not in concert with or for boyfriends” (p. 149). They co-offended about two thirds of the time, 60% were committed with other women, and if with men, “they did so most often as equal partners” (p. 149).
J. Miller’s (1998) robbery ethnography found overall gender similarities in motivations to rob: to get money, primarily for status or material goods (e.g., jewelry), and to a lesser degree to support a drug addiction, and less often, for the thrill of it or for revenge. Young men were more likely to report the pressure to have their own money and to own status goods. Far more gender differences existed in carrying out the robbery. Men used primarily one method to rob: “physical violence and/or a gun placed on or at close proximity to the victim in a confrontational manner” (p. 47). Women, on the other hand, were more eclectic, reporting three strategies. The primary strategy was targeting female victims (71%), but they also worked with men (friends, relatives, or boyfriends) to rob men (50%), and in a third strategy promised men sexual favors for money but did not “deliver” (50%). The latter is similar to Maher’s (1997) “viccing,” which refers to a type of robbery specific to sex workers who rob their clients. Maher and Curtis (1992) view viccing as motivated by sex workers’ frustration with the devaluation of their work and their bodies and their extreme vulnerability to victimization.
Rennison and Melde’s (2014) unique approach to studying robbery relied on 4,660 robbery victims’ accounts from 1993 to 2011 NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) data. Four fifths (80%) of robbers were men/boys, one tenth (10%) women/girls, and 5% included both genders (the remaining 5% were unknown). Men/boys robbing alone or together (25%) were 12 times as likely to use guns as women/girls robbing alone or together (2%), and almost twice as likely as mixed-gender robberies (15%) to use guns. For both women/girls (62%) and men/boys (65%), over four fifths of the time their victims were their same gender. Rennison and Melde (2014) are the first to take on the inconsistency of robbers wanting to pick easy victims: Robbers (especially men) see women as easy victims, and yet these victim reports indicate a third of men robbers’ victims were women/girls. And men/boys are far less likely to rob women/girls when co-offending with other men/boys, suggesting the masculinity pressure of male peers (p. 290).
Male offenders have suggested that females are likely to carry less cash, and thus robbing them is less profitable. Perhaps more importantly, there is a social stigma associated with males using force against females, and thus males receive no status enhancement for engaging in such behaviors. In fact, doing so may lose social standing for males. (Rennison & Melde, 2014, p. 291)
White-Collar Crimes (WCCs)
“The gendered structure of white-collar crime is, perhaps, the least studied topic in the field of criminology” (Dodge, 2013, p. 197).1 Kathleen Daly’s (1989) classic study of WCC convictions in U.S. federal courts was the first feminist analysis to dissect what appeared as a gender-neutral offense in much of the research, and still often does when simply looking at percentages. Daly’s (1989) study found that women constituted 45% of bank embezzlement convictions, but less than one fifth of the convicted offenders in the remaining WCCs (18% of postal fraud, 15% of credit fraud, 15% of false claims, 6% of tax fraud, 5% of bribes, 2% of security frauds, and 0.5% of anti-trust crimes). Moreover, when she closely analyzed the these seemingly WCCs, she not only found major gender differences in WCC offenders, but also concluded that many of the women’s WCCs should not have been charged as WCCs because they were usually employed as clerical workers (men were usually employed as managers and administrators); most (60%) of the convicted embezzlers were bank tellers (only 14% of men embezzlers were tellers); their financial gains were significantly smaller (probably because their offenses