Potential Essay Question What contributions have feminist criminologies made? PDF

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Potential Essay Question: What contributions have feminist criminologies made? Feminist criminologies emerged in the 1970s alongside the rise of the feminist movement. The emergence was in response to the criminological focus on male offending. At the time, criminologists were predominantly male which meant there was an institutional machismo tradition, male criminologists tended to focus on the male experience as assuming it as the standard. Mainstream criminology took the view that the criminological concerns were easier to manage if female offending was ignored. The failure to theorise and examine female offending meant there was an over-concentration on male offenders. In response to this, developing feminist criminologists argued that women should be at the centre of intellectual inquiry as they would be better able to steer the production of knowledge towards including the female experience of the criminal justice system. They brought to light the fact that masculinity and femininity were not equally valued in society and due to the fact that gender and gender relations order social life, this skew in value lead to a general male dominance. This view was supported by Marxist feminists who believed that individuals who work outside of the home were more valuable and the fact that women tend to work inside the household means that they are considered to be less valuable. Feminist criminologists put forward the argument that gender is not a natural fact, instead it is a social construct that impacts the pattern of offending and in order to understand this, the female experience of the criminal justice system needs to be examined. By exploring the different types of feminist criminologies, this essay will outline the vital contributions to criminology that were made by the emergence of feminist criminologies. The emancipation thesis stated that women’s societal roles were changing and women were adopting cultural views that were typically associated with masculine aggression and criminality (Adler 1975). This thesis implied that the changes in sex-roles were creating an increase in female offending due to the new opportunities that came with the new female roles within society. Furthermore, societal changes were causing a break down in static gender roles which could lead to greater female participation in traditionally male crimes. This thesis supports the view that gender is a social construct that affects the pattern of offending which was an important addition to criminological understanding of the origins of criminality. Liberal feminism made contributions to mainstream criminology during the 1970s. Liberal feminists were interested in the female experience of the criminal justice system. They argued that it was bad scientific practice to solely focus on the male experience and proposed that female researchers were needed in order to include women in the data set and to better understand the female experience. Liberal feminism had a strong focus on discrimination within the criminal justice system. For example, the Chivalry thesis stated that women going through the criminal justice system were treated more leniently due to the view that they were less culpable by virtue of being a women. However, if women did not conform to female stereotypes, they were doubly damned. The liberal difference approach argued that equality is based on a male standard and so is oppressive to the female experience. To address this, the liberal sameness approach to law proposed that inequality within the criminal justice system could be combatted by new gender neutral laws in order to include the experience and needs of women (Burgess-Proctor 2006). Liberal feminism brought to light the gendered nature of the criminal justice system and reinforced the idea that your experience is majorly impacted by your biological sex. The liberal feminists also put

forward the importance of gendering the study of crime in order to get a holistic understanding of how the criminal justice system works and the separate factors that have an impact on individual experiences of it. Radical feminism also made vital contributions to mainstream criminology. Radical feminists were concerned with the operations of patriarchy and the dominance of male power. There was a strong focus on the male oppression of women based on the idea that masculinity was more valued in society than femininity. Radical feminists believe that society is organised based on the ideas of men and how men want to govern the world and so the radical dominance approach to law stated that by nature, laws are patriarchal as they are made by men and are thus oppressive. The work of radical feminists led to victim studies being used in mainstream criminological investigations. For example, the study of sexual assault was a marginal area of crime but due to the influence of radical feminism’s victim studies, it is now much more widely researched. Moreover, cases of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse are all more represented within criminological reports today. The inclusion of victim studies highlighted the significance secondary victimisation within the system and highlighted the idea that sexual violence is an issue of patriarchal power. The concept of blurred boundaries of victimisation and criminalisation suggested that female offending is often preceded by victimisation (Burgess-Proctor 2017). Radical feminism also proposed the idea that the home was a dangerous place which was a critical contribution as it placed the problem of male violence on the criminological agenda and shifted the focus of criminology away from street crime in order to make hidden victimisation more visible. However, radical feminism could be viewed as being essentialist and viewing patriarchal power as being uniform. Socialist Feminism added that the structure of power is complex and that there are a multitude of factors that affect power status that intersect. For example, gender, race and class. These factors are difficult to separate and they work together to impact the life of the individual and their experience of the criminal justice system. Individuals are impacted by intersecting factors of their identity which all effect each other and contribute to the oppression of the individual. In conclusion, feminist criminologies made some critical contributions to criminology as we know it. Liberal feminism emphasised the lack of equality between men and women in society due to the imbalance of social status and power afforded to male and female social roles (Burgess-Proctor) and the fact that the male life experience in considered to be the standard. They also argued that women offended less as they had less opportunities to do so and so changes within society impacted the prevalence of female offending. Radical feminism argued that society was shaped by male power and male privilege and so women experience discrimination (Burgess-Proctor). Feminist criminologies had a great impact on the understanding of women both as perpetrators, and victims of crime....