Feminist Theory

Posted: September 10th, 2013

Feminist Theory

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Feminist Theory

There has been minimal change in the trend of female criminal rates over a period of 20 years for robbery, homicide, burglary and aggravated assault. The crime patterns for women are quite different from those of men. Significant benefits that come from arresting females are practically useless and limited to minor property crime such as fraud and larceny. Moreover, even among these, the main increase in crime is due to conventional faults like passing fraudulent checks or shoplifting. These changes in crime rates seem to be similar for men and women signifying the importance of legal and social forces that are not exclusive to women. For example, drug-related crimes have increased considerably for both men and women, but the effect has been significant for women. The criminal justice system however deals more leniently with females than males and the mode in which the system handles women offenders forms the major part of the paper.

Summary of the Fort Lauderdale murder

            Narcy Novack and her brother Cristobal Veliz from Florida were both convicted for jointly orchestrating the deadly murder of her husband and her mother-in-law. The two perpetrators were awarded their verdict in a federal court, in New York White Plains district. The planner of the murder, Mrs. Narcy Novack, hired assassins to carry out the assault on her husband, Ben Novack Jr., the son of the engineer who erected the Fontainebleau hotel. The state attorney, Elliott Jacobsen requested Judge Kenneth Karas to enforce a life sentence on the wife. However, she was awarded 27 years, and by the time she would be released, she would be 85 years old.

The judge argued that a shorter sentence would give the woman enough time to rehabilitate and reform her behavior. Narcy Novack admitted that her motive behind the murder was the fear that the pending divorce in her marriage would leave her ineligible to get a part of the multimillion-dollar family property. The vengeance, greed and hatred, fuelled her need to kill her husband in order to gain access to his wealth as the next of kin. Witnesses such as Rebecca Bliss who were on the murder scene claim that the wife tried to bribe her with $10,000. Apart from the murder charges, Narcy Novack was also found guilty of money laundering, stalking, witness tampering and domestic violence.

Applying Feminist Criminology to the Fort Lauderdale murder

            Women in history and presently have been discriminated against in all issues from religion, jobs and education among other sectors. This has been entrenched by the intrinsic male dominance in the society. To deal with this inequity, women have purposed to strengthen their position through feminist plans meant to empower them. Toward this purpose, the feminist discipline of criminology, strives to increase awareness on female discrimination and general ignorance of the women in the conventional studies concerning crime. The assertion was that criminology was a male-dominated sector making the field biased and endocentric in nature. This perspective of the criminology field will be applied in the film, Thelma and Louise, in an attempt to verify the truth in these claims.

Feminist criminology has a range of divisions including socialist, radical and liberal movements. This school of thought is recognized for the analysis of neglected women offenders, and other distorted and stereotyped notions in conventional criminology. The objective of feminism is not to eliminate the contribution of men, but it aims at attracting women into the process. Rita Simon and Freda Adler proposed liberal feminism in the 1960s that argued that women were discriminated upon on based on their gender that denies them the equal opportunities to men (Mertus, 2006). The two questioned the claims by Lombroso criminologists that crime among women was caused mainly by physiological issues (Lombroso et al, 2004). However, Simon and Adler assumed that sociological factors give the best explanation of criminality among women. The liberal feminist investigators thought that the increased frequency of liberated women who were engaged in full time employment makes them more probable to engage in criminal activities similar to those done by male perpetrators.

Herman and Julia Schwendinger proposed the Marxist feminist criminology that discussed the effect of economic constituents on the social relations. They hypothesize that women live in a male-dominated economy, where the gender roles such as division of labor, create a class structure where women are disadvantaged as compared to men. They also assert that although rape is not common in most societies, it is highest in capitalist economies. This is because capitalist economies fashion unfair gender associations that encourage violence against women.

Deep-seated feminism is a line of thought that has dominated feminist views on gender abuse that claimed that feministic views were simplistic in nature. They see male dominance as the main origin of social associations, misdemeanors and disparities in society. Drastic feminists claimed that men continue to victimize women psychologically, sexually and physically to satisfy their craving to implement power over them. James Messerschmidt and Piers Beirne in their works on socialist feminism blended Marxist feminist theories by hypothesizing that sexual categories and class serve equivalent roles in undercutting the requirements of women. In this sense, crime is perceived as the height of patriarchal capitalism.

Between men and women, the women are expected not to have criminal behavior, and if they have any aggressive behavior, they will possibly be portrayed as delusional and not criminal. The insight that women may be insane and not criminal because they had the courage to go against their expected biological prescriptions such as submissiveness, weakness and obedience seems to come from the perspective that women who conform to the social standards such as being obedient and unadulterated benefit the society and their male counterparts. The current data in correction facilities, in the world, indicates that women are incarcerated in prison for the following crimes: drug peddling, violence, theft and robbery.

Other minor crimes perpetrated by women include fraud, burglary and motoring crimes. The crime rate among women also rose by about 60,000 over the period between 2008 and 1998 reaching a zenith of 100,000. Errant social behavior such as sexual promiscuity has been treated differently among the gender with promiscuity among women being treated as irregular behavior while the same behavior among men is treated as natural and encouraged. According to Gelsthorpe, nearly all equity studies were biased toward girls and women candidly referring to them as “others” while using men as the benchmarks to measure the treatment and actions of human beings (Gelsthorpe, 2010).

It is evident that women commit crimes that are very different from those done by men. Women criminals are much more unusual when compared to male criminals and as was mentioned above, most women criminals were arrested and convicted for drug crimes followed by crimes related to violence. Studies by Ferrero and Lombroso argued that the different offenses perpetrated by males and females occur due to their physical disparities (Lombroso et al, 2004). This methodology has been applied by different scholars to clarify why the vast numbers of women do not engage in criminal activity and equally why only a small number do. It begins from the conviction that women are naturally unlike men and that they have an innate longing to be thoughtful and nurturing. These two elements are values that do not support crime or criminal activities. Regular women are therefore less probable to engage in criminal activity. Researchers on feminine criminology postulate that menstrual aspects can affect this small number of women to engage in crime in certain situations.

Freda Adler also did a lot of study on female criminology and she argued that the 1970 Wave of Feminism was marked with a corresponding increase in crime among women. She argued most liberated women tried to fight for their rights in  legitimate sectors, a large number of strong-minded women forced their way into the networks of serious crime for example robbery, white collar crime and murder. These aggressive women lawbreakers represented a new generation whose activities were evidenced by the changing nature of female participation in extensive criminal activity. The emergence of female criminals created new waves of predatory crimes of corporate fraud and violence that has predominantly been a man’s world. Adler proposed that when women start climbing the corporate ladder, they make use of their occupational freedom to pursue livelihood in white-collar crime.

FitzGerald (2012) argued that is an increase in risk-taking behavior among females as well as an acceptance of conventionally male approaches. This has led to a new culture that has the significant increase in errant behavior that leads women to be arrested. Other studies on women and criminal activity done by Cerkovich and Giordano involved women between the ages of 18 and 30. Their results proposed that liberated women had less delinquent behavior as compared to less liberated women. For example, they discovered that women who believed in liberal ideas such as woman empowerment were the least delinquent. Women prisoners who were incarcerated came chiefly from uneducated and impoverished settings. These findings were contrasting with Adler’s theory of emancipation.

Crimes among women occur largely in the petty crimes category such as small property crimes. Conventionally, these are considered female crimes as they are attached to the female domestic life and common activities done by women. These crimes are easily done by women as they fit in with the regular habitual activities that women conventionally engage in. When women go out to buy groceries, they may be enticed to shoplift. When women criminals face charges of embezzlement or fraud, it is normally for minute amounts and the lawbreaker is normally in a position where they handle money and other resources such as secretaries and cashiers. Both these and most of the other jobs are traditionally occupied by females. A contemporary example is found in bank jobs where the majorities of women are tellers or clerks, and they misappropriate little amounts of money. Promotion to higher positions such as being a manager or higher is easier for men than it is for women. Since women occupy low-level jobs, companies trust them less and they are subjected to more supervision by the management.

Conclusion

            The war against drugs and drug abuse has come up as a new phenomenon that has amplified women’s roles in the criminal world. Women have become valuable for carrying out successful criminal activities as they have clean records, they are less suspicious and they can easily conceal drugs and other contraband. Early on the war against women criminal activity, women in crime were regularly used as fronts by crime lords as they were less conspicuous. The same gender limitations that are present in the normal world also exist for female participation in criminal activity. Strong sexual bias and expectations exist for female criminals. Among the top leadership in criminal gangs, very few women are found. Women also have an issue with handling the criminal life. Most women fall to reckless living, dangerous escapades and drug dependency when they live a criminal life for many years. Many criminologists think that women have little opportunity to be involved in corporate crime and women have more responsibilities than men that limit the chance for any types of criminal behavior.

References

FitzGerald J. (2012) Fla. woman convicted in killings of husband, mom-in-law, hoping for sentence less than life. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved from http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/woman+convicted+killings+husband+mominlaw+hoping+sentence/7707875/story.html

Gelsthorpe, L. (2010). Women, crime and control. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 10, 4, 375-386.

Lombroso, C., Ferrero, G., Rafter, N. H., & Gibson, M. (2004). Criminal woman, the prostitute, and the normal woman. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mertus, J. (2006). Liberal Feminism: Local Narratives in a Gendered Context. Making Sense of International Relations Theory, 252-267.