The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
(WLEH): “Circumstantial evidence seems to indict the women’s movement for contributing to an increase in crime” (McCord & Otten, 1983, p. 3). Naffine (1987) summarized some of the troubling assumptions of WLEH: (1) Feminism brings out women’s competitiveness, (2) the women’s movement has opened up structural opportunities to increase places where women can offend, (3) women have fought and won the battle of equality, (4) feminism makes women want to behave like men, and (5) crime itself is inherently masculine. There are obvious problems with these assumptions. Even the most plausible assumption—that feminism has opened up women’s structural opportunities—loses credibility when faced with statistics showing that women have not achieved equality in high-paying and managerial professions (see Chapters 10–12). These assumptions, and WLEH in general, have been soundly criticized not only for the unfounded stance that increasing gender equality increases girls and women’s offending (in stark contrast to strain theories) but also for misusing and manipulating statistics where they were “confirmed” (see, e.g., Crites, 1976; Feinman, 1986; Leonard, 1982; Allison Morris, 1987; Naffine, 1987; Smart, 1976, 1982; Steffensmeier & Streifel, 1992). Notably, a 1983 study using incarcerated women to test WLEH reported these women to be generally “traditional,” “feminine” (not “feminist”), and “conformist” in terms of sex roles, hardly the hard-core feminists Adler’s (1975) theory predicted (Bunch, Foley, & Urbina, 1983).
Analyses of changes in women and girls’ offending in the 1970s and 1980s reported that females’ violent crime rate remained relatively stable (see Feinman, 1986; Steffensmeier, 1980), whereas research on property crimes, particularly larceny and petty property crimes, indicated women’s rates increased during this time (e.g., Box & Hale, 1983, 1984; Chilton & Datesman, 1987; D. A. Smith & Visher, 1980; Steffensmeier & Streifel, 1992). But the increase in women’s property crime rates corresponded with the feminization of poverty, defined as the growing number of women (with and without dependents) living in poverty, which is a better predictor of women’s criminality—and then, of property crimes—than is the strength or weakness of the feminist movement. In fact, the types of crime for which women were increasingly arrested after the women’s movement of the 1970s—prostitution and offenses against the family (such as desertion, neglect, and nonsupport)—are crimes not “altogether compatible with the view of the emancipated female” (Steffensmeier & Allan, 1988).
In addition to the feminization of poverty, sentencing changes in the 1970s and 1980s to “get tough on crime” have done more than the feminist movement to increase females’ (and males’) official crime rate reported by the police (Box & Hale, 1984). Furthermore, if the women’s movement has had any negative effect on women’s criminality, it is that women appear to have become more likely to have their behaviors defined as criminal or delinquent by judges and police officers (D. A. Curran, 1984; Allison Morris, 1987). Notably, researchers specifically examining the effect of young women’s adherence to feminist ideals in the 1980s (e.g., regarding women and work and gender roles in the family) found that pro-feminist women and girls were no more likely than their more traditional sisters to self-report using aggression and criminal or delinquent behavior (Figueira-McDonough, 1984; McCord & Otten, 1983). Kruttschnitt’s (1996) careful overview of tests of Adler’s and Simon’s hypotheses concluded that economic marginalization, drug use, and changes in formal social control provide better predictors of female offending than do WLEHs or opportunity theories, but “they have yet to be formally integrated into an explanatory model of female offending or of gender differences in offending” (p. 137). As expected, this hypothesis is rarely tested any more (because it has so little credence).
Summary
Historically, most criminology theories have been developed by men and about men and boys’ offending. Even when theories were about “why people obey the law,” the focus was on men and boys. The classical/positivist theories were very biological in nature, fraught with sexism, racism, and classism. The more recent biosocial and evolutionary theories (BSETs) have resumed many of these troubling assumptions and fail to examine structural and societal explanations for criminal behavior. Until the mid-1970s, most theorists made little attempt to account for women and girls’ criminality. Social bond theory (SBT), developed in 1969, once (finally) applied to girls, confirmed social bonds and controls account for some gender differences in offending, indicating that it contributes to understanding girls and women’s offending and to explaining the gender crime gap (addressed more in the next chapter). Power-control theory (PCT), developed in the mid-1980s, was also designed to address gender. It has mixed support and makes some sexist assumptions. More recent research addresses rethinking the (assumed negative) role of single mothers and mothering, but also fathering, and parenting, in general, and through less sexist, racist, and classist lenses (e.g., Schulze & Bryan, 2017). In 1975, for the first time, an approach was developed to explain women’s criminal behavior: women’s emancipation/liberation hypothesis (WLEH) (Adler, 1975; R. J. Simon, 1975). Unfortunately, this hypothesis was based on erroneous and sexist and class assumptions about the feminist movement and statistics, and the interpretations of data were often misleading. Given that studies repeatedly find no support for WLEH, and most of its premises contradict other theories, it is not clear why it is still tested, even if only occasionally. Notably, traditional strain theory never included abuse or other trauma victimizations, and general strain theory (GST) has rarely included these when they would seem to be such clear strains. Similarly, child abuse is rarely included in SBT tests, where parents’ abuse would seemingly be related to children’s attachment to their parents. The next chapter addresses some of the theories that have been explicitly designed to include girls and women and/or trauma and adverse life events, as well as some other theories that are more recent and offer potential for studying girls and women, gender, and the risks of offending.
3 Theories Part II: Critical, Labeling, Cycle of Violence, Life Course, Pathways, and Masculinity Theories
Early scholars focused almost exclusively on men as criminals and as inmates, and it was—and in some cases remains—taken for granted that men and boys were the objects of study in most generalizable criminological research. Yet this empirical pattern alone has rarely been interrogated. Problems of gendered and racialized patterns of criminal offending have been apparent from the start of the discipline but, until the emergence of feminist criminology, were rarely analyzed as conceptual subjects in and of themselves.
—K. J. Cook (2016, p. 336)
The previous chapter was an overview of the classical positivist criminological theories as well as some of the more recent mainstream, and largely sexist and “malestream,” theories. Although social learning theory (SLT), general strain theory (GST), and some of social control theories (SCTs) have made some contributions to a gendered understanding of crime (when including appropriate variables and running models separately by gender), the theories presented in this chapter are more consistent with feminist approaches, even if they have not always been applied so. Except for critical and labeling theories, the theories presented in this chapter are all relatively new, mostly traced back to the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Although research consistent with pathways theory can be seen in research dating back to 1977, this approach was not theorized or labeled as a theory/perspective until the 1992 publication of Daly’s classic article “Women’s Pathways to Felony Court: Feminist Theories of Lawbreaking and Problems of Representation.”
It is vital to notice the overall omitting or avoidance of trauma and abuse variables historically, and to some extent, currently, in criminology theories and theory testing. This might be due to both theorists’ and policy-makers’ hesitancy “to portray male adult offenders as victims during any stage of the life course” (Topitzes, Mersky, & Reynolds, 2011, p. 503), despite Widom’s work dating back to the 1980s documenting the impact of child abuse and neglect on both (traditionally defined) genders’ subsequent offending. This chapter starts with critical theories, followed by labeling, cycle of violence, life course, and pathways theories. Masculinity theory is the final theory presented.