REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1990.tb02838.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1990 |
| Date | 01 July 1990 |
REVIEWS
Loraine Gelsthorpe,
Sexism
and the
Female
Offender,
Cambridge Studies in Criminology,
London: Gower,
1989, 194
pp, hb
€27.50.
Loraine Gelsthorpe’s book on
Sexism and the Female Offender
aims to reveal how
practitioners working in the criminal justice system view female offenders and how their
treatment of offenders is coloured not merely by sexist ideologies which are privately
held but by ideologies which are interwoven within the administrative and organisational
context of the occupation and professional structure (p x). Gelsthorpe is both particularly
critical of other researchers writing on female offenders and crime and is eager to distinguish
her approach from what she considers is theirs. Critical of other writing and research
on women and crime, she argues that such work denies by exclusion the important element
of organisational complexion (p
28).
My
own findings and
my
analysis of sexism in practice add impetus to the
need
for criminological
writers to move on from sweeping generalisations about
the
treatment of female offenders
. .
.
writers in this sphere would do
well
to
learn from feminists looking at other areas of social
practice and from sociologists and educationalists who have made important advances
in
promoting
analysis in which macro and micro worlds are drawn together. Unless this can be achieved there
is a danger of perpetuating myopic claims and approaches which do research
in
criminology
a
disservice
(p
156).
Yet, first, it is never explained which writing(s) in particular fall under her blanket of
criticism. Secondly, she underestimates the structural nature and the specific analyses of
the juxtaposition of sexist ideologies and institutional practices examined by feminist
criminologists for over a decade. Much of the work on women and crime in the last decade
has focussed both on the structural linkages and anchoring of sexist ideologies and on
how practitioners translate these ideas within and through the organisation of their work.
Carol Smart’s earlier work on women and family law and women and crime looked at
what practitioners had to say on women offenders. Here, Smart focussed on magistrates’
perceptions and constructions of women as prostitutes. Edwards has examined probation
officers’ perceptions of women offenders and, with Armstrong, police officers’ perceptions
of prostitute women and male kerb crawlers. Carlen has looked at the experiences of women
in prison and the perceptions held of female offenders within the prison regime. Eaton
has explored the way in which magistrates viewed the female offender, while Allen has
examined judicial decision-making
.
Hardiker and Webb have investigated the images of
offending and the perceptions of motives held by probation officers. And, more recently,
work on women and crime and women and victimisation has focussed on police culture
and organisation rather than on the perceptions of crime and criminals held by individual
male or female officers (see, eg Edwards,
Policing Domestic Violence,
1989;
Dunhill (ed)
The
Boys in Blue: Women’s Challenge to the Police,
1989).
All these writers place emphasis not
so
much on sexist ideologies
as
such, as Gelsthorpe
seems
to
suppose, but
on
sexist ideologies held and operated within institutional structures.
According to Gelsthorpe her ‘essential argument is that concentration on the concept
of sexism may obscure any understanding
of
the criminal process and dealings with girls’
(p
112).
Her view is that the differences in treatment between males and females have
been distorted and exaggerated through sexism, which she describes as ‘an unalloyed
expression of beliefs about females’ (p
136).
Yet the conclusions she reaches, derived
from her research in two residential care settings and a police station, are similar to those
of
other writers on women and crime. ‘Girls’ behaviour was clearly examined in a way
that boys’ was not’ (p
112).
Typically, girls were encouraged to become gentle and the ideal girl was ‘passive, caring,
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