‘The right way to be a woman’: Negotiating femininity in a prison-based drug treatment programme

Published date01 January 2019
Date01 January 2019
DOI10.1177/1462474517749049
Subject MatterArticles
Article
‘The right way to be
a woman’: Negotiating
femininity in a prison-
based drug treatment
programme
Torsten Kolind and Jeanett Bjønness
Aarhus University, Denmark
Abstract
Drawing from an ethnographic study in a drug treatment wing for women in a Danish
prison, the authors explore how femininity is negotiated between prisoners and staff. It
is shown how the staff view the prisoners as both passive and disruptive and how the
treatment aims to teach them what staff consider to be an ‘appropriate’ femininity
characterised by the women being cooperative, feeling a sense of community, and being
less masculine in their appearance. While the prisoners accept the identity construc-
tions imposed upon them by the therapy regime, they also attempt to create alternative
femininities. The article discusses whether gender-sensitive treatment approaches
can work towards better integration of the women’s past experiences with the new
dispositions learned in the treatment programme.
Keywords
femininity, gender-sensitive treatment, prison-based drug treatment, prisoners’ experi-
ence, staff’s experience
Introduction
Incarcerated women, especially those women in prison drug treatment pro-
grammes, are generally more severely affected in a range of areas than are incar-
cerated men. For instance, they often exhibit a higher and more destructive drug
Corresponding author:
Torsten Kolind, Aarhus Universitet, Bartholins Alle
´10, A
˚rhus C 8000, Denmark.
Email: tk.crf@psy.au.dk
Punishment & Society
2019, Vol. 21(1) 107–124
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517749049
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use pattern (Fazel, 2006), are more frequently prescribed medicine for psychiatric
illnesses, are in poorer physical condition, have more often experienced sexual
abuse, and have more social problems (Covington, 2008; Hall et al., 2004;
Langan and Pelissier, 2001). Partly because of such diff‌iculties, the issue has
been raised as to whether imprisonment, including prison drug treatment pro-
grammes, should be gender responsive and hence more effective in dealing with
women-specif‌ic problems (Hannah-Moffat, 2010). Some researchers, however,
have raised concerns that gender-sensitive programmes may (inadvertently)
come to essentialise traditional ideas of appropriate feminine behaviour, in that
gender-responsive treatment typically focuses on women as relational, maternal,
fragile, victimised, emotionally vulnerable, or even immoral (Carlen, 1983;
Hannah-Moffat, 2010; McKim, 2008; Wyse, 2013). Moreover, gender-responsive
approaches may tend to individualise women’s criminality, social problems, and
problematic behaviour, explaining such problems as being the result of the indi-
vidual women’s psychological make-up, and thereby neglecting unequal power
relations and structural inequalities (McCorkel, 2003). In other words, structural
problems (as in the intersection between class, race, and gender) may become
interpreted as individual problems (Bosworth, 1999: 56). This is, for instance,
clear in Wyse’s (2013) study of off‌icers’ gendered rehabilitative strategies which
primarily aim at containing women’s emotions, whereas men are f‌irst encouraged
to take on economic responsibility. As Wyse (2013: 251) concludes: ‘If women have
no source of income and no place to stay (...) self-esteem building alone will
not translate into real independence for women.’ Moreover, gender-specif‌ic
programmes in prisons may not only decontextualise and individualise women’s
problems but also function to assess and govern these women in terms of a nor-
mative femininity (Beck, 2006; Brown and Bloom, 2009). For example, in social-
ising incarcerated women to exhibit ‘appropriate feminine behaviour’ (e.g.
teaching them to cultivate pro-social bonds thereby making them responsible in
different ways than men), signs of masculine behaviour among female prisoners
may often be sanctioned as indications of a problematic self (Rowe, 2011: 572). In
this way, ‘women’s violence and aggression tend to be pathologised, disciplined
and censured even when it is defensive’ (Hannah-Moffat, 2010: 204). For instance,
in a study of a female prison in Sweden, Lindberg (2005) shows how it is the
so-called queens, adhering to a traditional masculine prisoner culture, who are
seen as problematic, but who also survive the best in the tough prisoner culture.
This syndrome has also been seen in welfare institutions more generally, where
women who display an overt masculinity are often sanctioned and disciplined,
although such behaviour may be part of the women’s ‘street capital’
(Sandberg, 2008), necessary in order to survive a tough life outside the institution
(Bjønness, 2015).
On the other hand, studies portraying incarcerated women as victims of gender-
specif‌ic programmes’ paternalistic power may tend to overlook that these women
are in fact active agents capable of constructing competing femininities (Bosworth,
1999; Bosworth and Carrabine, 2001; Rowe, 2015). As shown by Bosworth (1999)
108 Punishment & Society 21(1)

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