The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
and 1970s), more women hoping to study what is now referred to as feminist criminology, were accepted into law school, and criminology, psychology, social work, and sociology advanced degree programs, resulting in feminist criminology growing at increasing rates. The first edition of this book was published in 1996, when there was far less research published on women, girls, and crime, and most of it was in the United States and England. Fortunately, this research has significantly expanded not only in the United States and England, but around the world. However, this makes it much more difficult to adequately include all this research, so the book’s focus is on the United States.
This book is dedicated to the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (#MMIWG). Later in this book we will come back to MMIWG, but it is necessary to identify colonization and resistance to it as very much related to feminist criminology, just as slavery is. The same could be said about the United States that is stated in this quote from Canada’s 2019 MMIWG Report:
In the 16th century, “explorers” commissioned by European states arrived in what is now Canada to claim newly “discovered” lands for their benefactors, with the purpose of drawing out its resources for their funders in Europe. They were looking for resources—loot—and hoped to find them in the Americas. While the term “explorer” may suggest a kind of harmless searching or wandering, these voyages were anything but that. Instead, they set the stage for a full-scale assault on Indigenous Nations and communities that has lasted nearly 500 years. (National Inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019, p. 234)
Historically, women and girls were left out of victimization and offending studies or, if included, were typically done so in sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, and other stereotypic ways. A study of U.S. and British criminology publications from 1895 to 1997 found “a glaring and persistent deficiency” in the representation of women and girls in criminology studies, which was attributed at least in part to the underrepresentation of women criminologists (Hughes, 2005, p. 21). Similarly, historical accounts of criminology often ignored women criminologists’ contributions to the field (Laub & Smith, 1995).
On a more positive note, significant pro-feminist changes have occurred: Criminology scholarship and university curricula more often include women and girls, and academia is producing more feminist and queer scholars and publishing outlets (such as journals). Moreover, intersectional feminist criminology is more routinely expected in publications. The growth of feminist and intersectional scholarship is evident in every new edition of The Invisible Woman, whereby there is far more research to review on women, girls, and LGBTQI+ as offenders and victims, and within the context of race, class, sexuality, and so on. Unfortunately, a 2015 study found that although women’s representation as authors in criminology journals indicates increases over time, they are still very underrepresented in six mainstream (compared to the two gender-specialized) criminology journals (Eigenberg & Whalley, 2015). Similarly, a study of pictures in “Intro to Criminal Justice” textbooks found there were three times as many depictions of men as women per chapter (Love & Park, 2013). When women did appear, they were most likely victims or peripheral people. Men were five times more often than women to be portrayed as any category of CLS professionals (i.e., police officers, judges and lawyers, and guards) and seven times more than women as police officers (which, we will find in Section III of this book, is the least gender diverse of CLS jobs).
Women and Girls as Offenders
Most criminology theories are concerned with what “causes” crime and thus focus on factors related to offending, primarily male juvenile offending. Until the late 1970s, it was highly unusual for these studies to include girls or women in their samples. Although gender is the strongest factor indicating a person’s likelihood to break the law, these (almost exclusively male) researchers rarely thought it necessary to include women or girls in their samples. The irony is that “sex, the most powerful variable regarding crime has been virtually ignored” (Leonard, 1982, p. xi). Criminology theories were constructed “by men, about men” and explain male behavior rather than human behavior (p. xi). Significantly, studying why women and girls offend less frequently than men and boys “could arguably provide clues for dealing with men’s criminality” and provide more deterrence to offending (A. Morris, 1987, p. 2).
When the researchers included girls in their samples prior to the 1980s (and too often since then), it was typically to see how girls fit into boys’ equations. That is, rather than include in the study a means of assessing how girls’ lives might be different from boys’ lives, girls’ delinquency has typically been viewed as peripheral and unnecessary to understanding juvenile offending and processing. It is not a coincidence that the criminal behavior of women and girls (regardless of race) (Leonard, 1982; A. Morris, 1987) and people of Color (regardless of gender) (A. Morris, 1987; Ross, 1998; Wotherspoon & Hansen, 2019) has historically (and, to some extent, currently) been attributed to biological causes, whereas white boys and men’s crimes are more frequently attributed to economic and social factors such as social class, access to opportunities to learn crime, and area of residence in a city.
Another aspect of the invisibility of female offenders is the “correctional” institutions provided for women and girls. The jails, prisons, and delinquent institutions for women and girls, both historically and presently, vary drastically from those for boys and men, mostly to the disadvantage of girls and women. Moreover, historically, treatment and punishment issues/opportunities differ vastly for women based on race (Butler, 1997; C. F. Collins, 1997; P. H. Collins, 1990; Freedman, 1981; Rafter, 1985; Young, 1994). The excuse for the lack of research on institutions housing women and girl offenders, as well as the lack of training, vocational, educational, and counseling programs available to incarcerated women and girls, is that women and girls make up a small percentage of offenders. This lack of interest in and opportunities for women and girls are particularly disturbing given that since the 1970s, their incarceration rate grew much faster than men’s (Hammett & Drachman-Jones, 2006; Immarigeon & Chesney-Lind, 1992; Kline, 1993; Lo, 2004; Mumola & Beck, 1997; Sokoloff, 2005).
Women and Girls as Victims
Section III of this book focuses on the victimization of women and girls. The most common crimes committed against women and girls—sexual abuse (including rape), intimate partner abuse (domestic violence), and stalking—are not only some of the most invisible and underreported crimes, but they are also some of the most frequent, abusive, fear-inducing, humiliating, and often, violent and dangerous, crimes.
Research on violence against women and girls, also known as gender-based abuse, has also increased exponentially in recent years. This is in part due to the increased number of women and feminists in academia and has been greatly aided by the implementation of the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, the first U.S. federal legislation addressing gender-based abuse (Murshid & Bowen, 2018). VAWA was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, and the Office on Violence Against Women was established in 1995 to implement this act, and it was reauthorized in 2000, 2005, and 2013 (Stuart, 2005; Valente, Hart, Zeya, & Malefyt, 2001; Whittier, 2016). Due to VAWA, research on violence against women (e.g., domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking) has been funded, and programs in a variety of agencies (e.g., police, courts, Native American communities) regarding violence against women have been implemented and funded at unprecedented rates (Stuart, 2005). VAWA 2000 included a substantial expansion of protections for immigrant victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and was passed with the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Murshid & Bowen, 2018). The 2013 reauthorization of VAWA was passed only after being critically threatened by a partisan standstill primarily due to Republicans’ reluctance to expand the program to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans victims and undocumented immigrants and reticence to increase authority to American Indian tribes to address intimate partner abuse in their communities (Deer, 2018; Whittier 2016). The VAWA 2013 debates were fraught with both sexist and racist rhetoric, framing “the racialized ‘criminal alien’ sexually threatening to the ‘vulnerable’ woman” (Mayers, 2019, p. 61). Immigrants were dichotomized into “deserving” and “undeserving” of citizenship, in efforts to enhance border control with Mexico (Mayers, 2019, p. 61).
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