2003, Number 1
¿Por qué delinquen las mujeres? Parte II. Vertientes analíticas desde una perspectiva de género
Romero MM
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 38
Page: 32-41
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ABSTRACT
The problem of women who break the law, has become each time more evident. However, traditional theories related to the reasons that lead to delinquency have been basically developed, considering mainly male experience. These findings give little consideration to the features of the women’s experience and delinquency.Research done within a gender perspective has made important contributions to the epistemological level of criminology, as far as it has facilitated to redefine concepts while questioning them, and enriching paradigms.
In the 1980’s, a series of works with gender perspective emerged. Gender, according to West and Zimmerman (1987) is “the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category…therefore gender is not a set of traits, or a variable, not a role, but the product of social doing of some sort as constituted through interactions”.
A generic organization is one in which control, identity, meaning of actions, emotions and advantage has patterns that differentiate between man and woman (masculine and feminine).
Inherent to gender are the concepts of sexism and patriarchal power. Patriarchy and its privileges stand as a part of culture, therefore they are present in criminology, criminal and criminalization processes and in the way in which man and women cope with the law.
In this work women criminality is described and analyzed from a gender perspective, taking in consideration four analytical axiss: power, controls, violence and equity.
Power, according to López-Rey (1983) is the capacity, ability, energy or force for doing or not doing, provoke or prevent something that is meant to be beneficial or not. Elements that favor its action are corruption, ideology, insatisfaction over some circumstances or situations that affect some different groups. Power understood in this way can be political, ideological, economical, scientific or of other condition. Power has control over more than half of the population: women, children and elder people.
Power is executed through the second axis, that is social control with two modalities: informal controls (persuasive-educative) and formal (repressive). Among them, the informal ones are more significative for women because they are severe and effective in conytollig reputation, body, space and activities' restriction, in order to define women as either good or bad.
Women who disobey, run away from home, are sexually active or have become pregnant against their father or husband’s desires, and also “inadequate” mothers, are more vulnerable to the formal controls that the State executes through punishment or psychiatric labelling. This means that imprisonement or segregation are formally controlled.
One way to control women’s lives is through fear, by means of violence. This procedure becomes the third axis. Women who have suffered violence no matter if this experience was in the childhood or in their adult life, have more risks of suffering from depression, anxiety, stress, pain, phobias, substance abuse and negative behavior in relation with their health (Campbell, Kub y Rose, 1996; Galbraith y Rubinstein 1996; Romero y cols, 2001; Staton, Leukefely y Logan, 2001).
Sexual and physical abuse increase for women the risk of being arrested for violent behaviors as well as some other “deviation” mechanisms like run away from home, cognitive ability deficit, involving with delinquent partners and failure in learning psychological abilities to attain a successful adult development (Widom, 2000).
Finally, from a gender perspective, anything within the social and economical system that systematically doesn’t allow or delays the access of men or women to universal rights, constitutes a gender inequity. Delinquent women not only do not exercise activities or profit from goods that they deserve, but are also excluded from most possibilities of attaining them, that is to say, they live in social exclusion.
Therefore, if the social unequal conditions that prevail for women who break the law, are not taken into consideration by the law, at the end, a partial justice will be imposed. While equal sanctions be applied to conditions that are not the same, the result will be a real and deep inequality.
In order to attain an adequate prevention of feminine delinquency, it is necessary to consider, from a gender perspective: 1) Physical security and healthy development oriented towards diminishing poverty, violence, inadequate health care and substance abuse; 2) validation of affections, respect and a healthy emotional environment, in order to avoid imposed transgressions; 3) development of diverse feminine role models in order to avoid racism and sexism; 4) sexual and reproductive health freedom for women, in order to avoid sexual abuse, exploitation and images or feminine values imposed through “reputation” and body control and 5) possibility of exercising the right to work, to have an adequate life level, to enjoy social security, good health, household, education and culture in order to prevent exclusion.
REFERENCES
BAVESTRELLO Y, CORTES P: Mujeres en conflicto con el sistema penal. El caso de Chile. En: Del Olmo R (ed.). Criminalidad y Criminalización de la Mujer en la Región Andina. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo PNUD. Comisión Andina de Juristas. Fundación José Félix Ribas. Ed. Nueva Sociedad, p.231, Venezuela, 1998.
WIDOM C: Childhood victimization and the derailment of girls and women to the criminal justice system. Research on women and girls in the Justice System: plenary papers on the 1999 conference on Criminal Justice Research and evaluation- Enhancing policy and practice through research, National Institute of Justice, 3:27-36, 2000.