Feminism and Crime
Name:
Course:
Instructor:
Institution:
Date of Submission:
Introduction
Feminism is the belief that men and women are of equal worth and should be treated equally despite the gender. Feminism has evolved from the years. The current generation, Generation Y has a different perspective of females than the former generations. There have been three major waves of feminism evolution. The first wave was in the 1800s, women were not allowed to vote or participate in any public or political opinions. During this time, women demanded their right to vote. The second wave of feminism developed in the 1960s where females of certain marginalized groups (working class women, blacks and prisoners) felt they weren't being treated equally and fairly like men and upper-class women. The civil rights activist fought very much for their rights during this time. However, not a lot resulted during this wave which led to the third wave of feminism evolution. The third wave developed to improve the second wave short comings. This is the new generation of feminists who know their rights and what gender equality is. Society generally favored men hence the need for social movements towards females rights to be heard. Feminism and Criminology Feminist criminology evolved during the time women were being judged on their gender rather than the type they committed. Gender inequality is basically due to men trying to control women and their sexuality. Feminists insist that sexism is the most common form of human oppression (Harrison, Wendy 2006). For many decades, different cultures have categorized women into 'either/or/ roles. In the 1960s women were categorized as either professionals or criminal. When it came to stereotypes, black women became greater victims of the color of their skin. There are those believed to have a bad temper and controlling. Others were known as seductress. They were believed to be morally loose. There is the mammy that is long suffering and asexual. All this stereotyping of women led to the criminal justice system to judge the women victims of crime as well as the offenders differently from the rest of crime victims and offenders. According to UN Office on Drugs and Crime, most of the human trafficking is because of sexual exploitation by the traffickers. This covers 77% of all trafficking while trafficking due to labor exploitation is the remaining 23%. More than 50% of the victims are women and among them 40% are minors. Women who commit crime are judged to be naturally a criminal because committing a criminal offense as a woman is not viewed as 'true' nature of should be biologically. Most of the female crime offenders are mostly victims of crime itself and act in self-defense most of the time. When the female offenders are taken to prison, they are treated differently from their male counterparts. This is a double standard way of treatment. According to Gelstrompe (2002 , p.135) , elements associated with feminism perspective on criminology are focused on sex/gender as the organizing principle of social life , recognizing the importance of power in shaping social relations , political commitments to social change among others . During the 1970s and 1980s, there was an aim at bringing all the girls, women and gender difference into criminology. Main agenda was to find the theories of crime, victimization and justice. There were a lot of protest 'against' violence against women (Kelly 1988, Stanko , 1990) which was historically politicized . Women were generalized and it was shameful for a woman to be a victim of criminal offense especially domestic violence and/or sexual abuse. Let's take an example of 'date rape'. This was not taken seriously and the offenders didn't face the same time as of the ones of actual rape. Date rape is still raping per say and women who went forward with accusations of being date raped was not taken seriously. When it comes to solving cases of women offenders, they become very underrepresented on their cases. During representation of a crime, gender should not be a factor and both men and women should be represented fairly. Both women and men are similar when it comes to offenses they are arrested for mostly petty crimes such as larceny theft. The only difference between men and women offenders is the level of offending. The Africa American woman is however overrepresented compared to their white counterparts. Black men arrests are highest while white women generally rank among the bottom of offenders (Mason, Gail 2002). These forms of statistics make it difficult and challenging for feminist criminology. The crime records become constants which leads to theoretical research on why women are far less likely to offend compared to men. Also, why white women are less offenders than Africa Americans. Some theorists have seen women as aberrant for not committing enough crime instead of seeing them as successful. This has led to feminists seeing this as dangerous moves in society. According to National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) which is carried out yearly, It shows that men are more likely to be victimized by all crimes of violence than women are except on rape and sexual assault. The data also shows that Africa America and Hispanics are more likely to be victims of crime compared to whites. When it comes to rape cases, the male sexual offender always comes up with the excuse for the victim arousing him and lack of self-control. Feminist both in and outside criminology have been quick to deem this fact about sexual offenders. They argue that this notion clearly puts criminology in collusion between sex offenders. There is a fact of young and infant girls being sexually abused which has nothing to do with the victims arousing the offender. The first feminist to ever study such cases was Susan Brownmiller (1975) whose major focus was domestic abuse and rape. Kathleen Daly and Lisa Maher (1998) divided feminist criminology into two phases. The first phase was focused on filling in gaps, comparing and critique. The need of them doing this was to inform others on women offenders, victims and people who worked in criminal justice systems. The second phase was about disrupting the works done on criminology which led to growth of a research body and research theories. The research showed that women offenders were also victims when they served time in prison by being abused. Feminist criminology has drawn attention to the fact that men are overrepresented as offenders and victims thus a screaming silence about a connection between male and crime. The argument is that man can result to doing criminal activities if he can’t have another source of finance thus expressing his masculinity by doing this. Some of the challenges facing the feminist criminology activist are the female criminology relationship between the state and them. There are strict rules of gender equality which somehow has disadvantaged women. Women who work in the justice system i.e. police, lawyers and even prison workers know well that having secured that job doesn’t guarantee equality (Creswell and Clark, 2007). Taking a case study of Elizabeth Escalona, a twenty three year old mother of five pled guilty to injuring her child in Dallas, Texas. The case was heard on July 12, 2012. The child in question was her two year old daughter who had not yet learned potty training. Elizabeth got frustrated and kicked and beat up the child badly because she was getting frustrated by the child’s inability to potty train. On September 11, 2011, Elizabeth super glued her daughter to the wall and beat her up repeatedly causing the kid to go in a coma. There was evidence of the beating by the kid’s bruises and cuts all over her body. The child was in a coma for two days before waking up. The prosecutor wanted Elizabeth to be jailed for 45 years but the judge sentenced Elizabeth to 99years in prison with eligible parole after 30years. Elizabeth had been found to have a history of drug abuse and other criminal offenses after investigations. She had been smoking marijuana since she was twelve years old and was involved in a lot of gang crimes. People questioned how a mother can harm her own child the way Elizabeth did hers after her case was heard. Society perceives it a great crime if a mother commits a crime rather than when the father commits it. This is not fair and a crime is a crime whether committed by male or female and it shouldn’t be a greater crime just because a female instead of a male did it. The differences between theoretical and methodological approaches in feminist criminology are apparent. There is interest to create new ideas when it comes to theoretical approach of feminist criminology (Creswell and Clark, 2007). Knowledge is also needed to bring together different theoretical approaches. The methodological assumptions should not be assumed in the process of finding new theoretical ideas. They should not be misused. This usually occurs when the researchers have a large database from which they are picking their work. Another problem is applying quantitative analysis instead of qualitative analysis and understanding. This however does not mean that quantitative analysis is not important when it comes to feminism research. The thing is that quantitative analysis tells little about social processes and how meaningful they are in the process (Jefferson, Tony 2002). Examples of theoretical studies include carrying out statics on whether crime is gendered and how can this be gender neutral. Criminology is however dominated by quantitative and experimental research designs that use large database and many students are encouraged to study and work in this direction (McElrath, 2001). The challenges that feminist pose to criminology is making them give up the notion and belief on popularized understanding of sex/gender which are often considered as the first thing before considering the crime committed by the offender. Conclusion When it comes to crime, the justice system looks at the gender of the offender first before the crime committed. Females are underrepresented as offenders and as well overrepresented as victims of crime. Females are more victims of crime as studies show more than the men. Feminism has however evolved since its inception in 1960s and has played a major role in bringing equality when it comes to criminology. It has also helped in understanding violence against women and ways forward in handling female crime offenders and victims (Daly Kathleen, 1993).

References
Creswell, John W. and Clark, Vicki P. (2007). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. London: Sage
Daly, Kathleen (1993). Class-race-gender: Sloganeering in search of meaning. Social
Justice, 20(1-2), 56-71.
Harrison, Wendy (2006). The shadow and the substance: The sex/gender debate. London
Jefferson, Tony (2002). Subordinating hegemonic masculinity. Theoretical
Criminology, 6(1), 63-88
Mason, Gail (2002). The spectacle of violence: homophobia, gender, and knowledge.
New York: Routledge
Daly, Kathleen and Lisa Maher (1998). Crossroads and Intersections: Building from Feminist Critique. In Criminology at the Crossroads, ed. Kathleen Daly and Lisa Maher New York: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, Liz (1988). Surviving sexual violence. London: Polity Press
Stanko, Elizabeth (1990) Everyday violence: How women and men experience sexual and physical danger. London, Pandora