Has Criminology Been Gender Blinded Essay - 2257 Words

Criminology has been ‘Gender-blind rather than ‘Gender neutral. Discuss It has been argued that the gaze of criminology has been primarily focused on male offenders, Cain (1989) argues that criminology is in fact incapable of speaking in gender neutral terms (cited in Walklate 2001: 19). A reason for this includes that history has been prepared to offer universal explanations of crime achieved by the study of the male offender. Feminists such as (Naffine 1997: 18) believe that criminology has been ‘dominated by academic men studying criminal men. A major concern for feminist writers on this subject is that for many the world is seen as a masculine one, despite facts clearly proving that it is made up of feminine and masculine†¦show more content†¦Frances Heidensohn (2002: 292) describes these studies as having grave effects on the discipline of criminology, she claims that it was cast into a scenario much like that of ‘sleeping beauty describing how criminology strove forward from the positive approach allowing integration into a number of different sociological theories of crime and deviance but the subject of feminine crime was left behind. Walklate (2004: pp28) appears to agree however notes a shift towards concepts of emotional stability and socialisation to explain criminality, the notion of the sex role socialisation could be argued as a starting point for this, in which Talcott Parsons (1937) directs attention to how children are socialised into society in accordance to their sex. One such study which seams to take this path was performed by Thomas (1907) who is quoted as saying the girl as a child does not know she as any particular value until she learns it from others (www.Kelfawebcomcepts.com/au/ecrgend1.htm) It would appear that women were becoming more apparent at this point with the work of Talcott Parsons however criticisms arose that women were not being reflected in a true form. Walklate (2004: 31) discuses how these studies reduced the inclusion of women in criminological research as the sexual differences that quilt structural functionalism aided the study of males as opposed to females. The Strain theory of anomie by Merton (1949) which was primarily male oriented was onlyShow MoreRelated_x000C_Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis355457 Words   |  1422 Pages and Teri. J. D. ââ€"   About the Authors puter Teacher of the Year award in 1988 and received the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement in mathematics in 1999. Chris is a frequent contributor to the AP Statistics Electronic Discussion Group and has reviewed materials for The Mathematics Teacher, the AP Central web site, The American Statistician, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He currently writes a column for Stats magazine. Chris graduated from Iowa State University