The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
thrill-seeking (e.g., Cutler, 2016; Li et al., 2001), and relative to boys and men, girls and women are more likely to both begin and continue the use of drugs to self-medicate against depression and anger (Erickson et al., 2000; R. D. Evans et al., 2002; Inciardi et al., 1993; Mason et al., 2007). Notably, a study of woman crack users found that half started using in response to a traumatic experience or series of traumatic experiences (e.g., death in the family, losing a child, rape) (Erickson et al. 2000).
Third is girls’ disproportionate likelihood (relative to boys) of helping their mothers (and sometimes fathers) around the home and with younger siblings (Bottcher, 2001; Carbone-Lopez & Miller, 2012; Lopez, 2017). Specifically, adultification is the process by which girls “prematurely assume adult responsibilities in families.” Given that most delinquent girls grow up in single-mother homes, with “sporadic contact with biological fathers,” they are primarily helping their already over-taxed mothers (Lopez, 2017, p. 47). Lopez’s (2017) powerful book Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice, poignantly and carefully documents both the agency and the struggles of girls involved in the juvenile system, with adultification as a central theme: “Adultified children have few support systems,” so they are playing adult roles, often with younger siblings, with few to no resources (p. 49). Simultaneously, many of these girls (understandably) feel “rejected, abandoned, and unloved” by their fathers, placing them in precarious roles with mythologizing their fathers to explain their abandonment (p. 62). Similarly, Paula Smith’s (2019) study of delinquent girls in Utah found a significant amount of abandonment by both fathers and mothers, parents who died, and a girl whose mother sold her into prostitution. This is not to say that these girls’ parents were all terrible. Lopez (2017) is careful to identify the ways that they were good parents in many difficult circumstances (e.g., extreme poverty, fathers being deported to Mexico), but she does so without excusing some of the parenting. The disadvantages linked with adultification place these girls at significant risk of “looking for love in the wrong places” and involvement in drugs. Girls with histories of drug-addicted mothers are at risk of disrupted relationships with their mothers, running away, becoming involved with much older boys and men, and alcohol/drug use and drug-selling (Carbone-Lopez & Miller, 2012; Lopez, 2017; Ryder & Brisgone, 2013).
Table 5.1
1Strategies are listed in order of their frequency reported by the girls. Girls could report more than one strategy, so this adds up to more than 18.
Source: Lopez, V., Jurik, N., & Gilliard-Matthews, S. (2009). Gender, sexuality, power and drug acquisition strategies among adolescent girls who use meth. Feminist Criminology, 4(3), 226–251.
Fourth, research reports that boys and men’s alcohol and drug use are often motivated by means of “doing masculinity” (e.g., Cutler, 2016; R. D. Evans et al., 2002). Similarly, girls and women’s SUAS may also be a form of resistance; some girls and women report using drugs to “act out” against their parents, teachers, and sexist societal roles (Friedman & Alicea, 1995; Sterk, 1999). Similarly, Lopez (2009, p. 226) and her colleagues identified six “meth” procurement strategies, among 14- to 17-year-old girls, in “crafting their own version of femininity” to obtain meth on the streets (reported in Table 5.1). Perusing them, the social construction of gender is evident, but also the complicated manners in which the girls are resilient and find agency while they are simultaneously highly marginalized. Similarly, despite the horrific lives many researchers describe of crack-addicted women, some also find empowering aspects, including Maher (1997): “As it turns out, the women I studied were remarkable in many ways, but perhaps most of all for their resilience, their capacity for the hardest of labors, and the sheer tenacity of the struggles to survive” (p. x).
Type of Substance Abused
This section covers some but not all drugs, primarily the ones with more research and more consistent gender findings. Notably, most chemical dependency experts consider alcohol as a drug, and it is treated as such in this book.
Alcohol.
Among both adolescents and adults, alcohol use is a male-gender-related behavior (Bègue & Roché, 2009; C. A. Green et al., 2001; Hussong, 2000; Kaufman, 2009; Luthar & D’Avanzo, 1999; D. E. Olson, Lurigio, & Seng, 2000; Van Gundy, Schieman, Kelley, & Rebellon, 2005), although among college students, women are more likely than men to binge drink (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019). Girls are more likely than boys to report their first experience with alcohol and their first experience with drugs as coinciding with the first time they had sex, while boys are more likely than girls to report they had sex before the first time they used alcohol or drugs (Li et al., 2001). Among youth, research indicates that African American girls and boys drink less alcohol than white youth (Bilchik, 1999; Luthar & D’Avanzo, 1999) and Latinx youth (Bilchick 1999). One of the few studies of women’s alcohol use during pregnancy found a strong relationship between risky drinking during pregnancy and marital separation, major financial difficulties, and serious arguments with family members (Esper & Furtado, 2019).
Marijuana/Cannabis.
“Cannabis is the most widely used illicit substance worldwide” (Lev-Ran et al., 2012, p. 190) Legalization of medical and recreational use of marijuana growing in the United States has made it more accessible and having more legitimately “perceived benefits, such as relaxation and stress relief” (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019, p. 703). A study based on Uniform Crime Report (UCR), self-report, and census data found no gender difference in the self-reported likelihood of whether individuals used marijuana; however, men and boys who used it smoked it more days per week than did women and girls who used it (H. Nguyen & Reuter, 2012). A recent review of this research stated that men “use cannabis more frequently and more excessively than women” (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019, p. 703). Notably, there is very limited research on the effect of marijuana use during pregnancy (p. 704).
Methamphetamine.
Methamphetamine, or “meth,” gained popularity in the 1990s. Women methamphetamine users are predominantly white, are unmarried, started using in their late teens, and typically used alcohol and marijuana prior to using methamphetamine (Carbone-Lopez & Miller, 2012; Cutler, 2016; Strauss & Falkin, 2001). The three most common reasons women and girls give for using meth are (1) because close friends or partners did (28%), (2) to “party” (27%), and (3) to “get high” (Strauss & Falkin, 2001). Notably, though, 13% started using it to lose weight, 9% to get things done, and 6% to “feel better”; and 70% of the women had been involved in selling, manufacturing, and/or distributing methamphetamine (Strauss & Falkin, 2001).
Nonmedical Prescription Drugs (NMPDs).
Notably, nonmedical prescription drug (NMPD) use is a crime with little or no gender gap, and even some indication that it is female-crime related (Cutler, 2016; Lopez et al., 2009). This might be because women and girls disproportionately visit doctors (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019; Cutler, 2016) and are disproportionately diagnosed with certain conditions (e.g., anxiety, sleep, and depressive disorders) compared with men and boys (Cutler, 2016, p. 1135). Women’s increase in opioid overdose deaths has been at a far steeper slope than men’s since 1999, and at least in part, this may be due to women being more likely to have chronic pain and therefore “are prescribed opioids at higher doses and longer-term use compared to men” (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019, p. 701). In Cutler’s (2016) qualitative study of white college students’ NMPD use, three fifths (60.5%) were men, two fifths (41%) were in the Greek system, and almost a third (30%) lived on campus. Cutler found gender similarities regarding the most frequently misused NMPDs (i.e., Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Vyvanse, promethazine, and codeine). Among both females and males, friends were the primary source of acquiring and learning how and why to use NMPDs, and the primary incentive was to improve academically. In turn, because NMPDs were normalized across many campus students and students were using them for “betterment” goals, the NMPD users saw their use as legitimate/nondeviant and safe.