From Marx to Bonger: Socialist Writings on Women,Gender, and Crime*

Contemporary socialist criminologists concentrate their analysis of crime on production relations, ignoring the co-determination of reproduction and thus the role gender plays in crime by men and women. The author argues that this omission has occurred by reason of the theoretical work of Marx and Engels, as well as other socialist “criminologists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The importance of the paper lies in its demonstration that the questions raised by these early socialist theoreticians are inadequate for developing a comprehensive theory of crime.     

Educating Women: Gender Inequalities among Canadian University Graduates*

Dans le présent article, les auteurs proposent une analyse comparative des revenus et du chomage dliommes et de femmes diplômés universitaires entre 1978 et 1988. Les résultats montrent que le sexe continue d'exercer une influence importante sur ces données; le rapport global hommes-femmes est en effet passé de 84% a 91%. Seule une petite partie de l'écart des revenus peut s'expliquer par des différences entre les hommes et les femmes au regard du recrutement sur le marché du travail. Les auteurs considèrent ces résultats révélateurs de la ségrégation entre les hommes et les femmes, et que celle-ci mène à des différences dans les cheminements de carrière. De plus, pour l'avenir, ils prévoient que, tandis que l'écart des revenus continuera probablement de diminuer, les formes d'inégalité entre les diplômés seront peut-ôtre de plus en plus marquées, surtout que l'écart des revenus est en déclin parmi les cohortes récentes. This paper compares male versus female income and unemployment for three cohorts of university graduates between 1978 and 1988. Results show that gender became a weaker predictor of these outcomes, with the female-male earning ratio growing from 84% to 91% over this period. Nonetheless, a notable wage gap remained in later cohorts, and for one cohort income disparities widened with time in the labour market. Moreover, only a relatively small portion of the earnings gap could be attributed to male-female differences in market endowments. The authors interpret these results as illustrating gender segregation within occupations that result in disparate earning trajectories. Also, it is suggested that while the wage gap will likely continue to shrink, future patterns of inequality among graduates may become increasingly uneven, especially since real wages are declining among recent cohorts.     

Masculinity,Gender, and Rural Policy*

Abstract This paper explores the operation of gender relations in the context of rural policy. Framed by debates on new rural governance, it considers how both the content and the culture of recent rural regeneration policy reflect highly masculine values and the maintenance of traditional power relations. New forms of decision making in rural areas promote a style of policy making that values and grants priority to male networks in the construction of elite groups and styles of management, and devalues community participation. We use examples from the United Kingdom to demonstrate the implications of shifts in the mechanisms and practice of policy making and implementation for men's and women's differential involvement and experience with rural regeneration. We go on to show how gender relations are also reflected in the content of contemporary rural regeneration policy. Decisions concerning the most appropriate types of initiative are predicated on a male‐oriented view of previous economic activity and local labor markets, and represent a highly masculinist approach to regeneration.     

Organic Farming,Gender, and the Labor Process*

Abstract This paper seeks to explain variations in gender participation in farm production and decision‐making through an analysis of organic farm types, sizes, and orientations. Based on both survey and case study data, the analysis shows that female farmers on vegetable farms and mixed livestock/cash crop farms are more likely to be involved in farm production and management than women on field crop farms, where mechanization and capital intensive production is much higher. The links to ideological orientations and motivations are also examined, suggesting that farmers with more conventional orientations to organic farming are also less likely to support gender equality.     

Gender Convergence and Delinquency*

Theory about the relationship of gender roles to delinquency illustrates the taken-for-granted assumption that as role expectations of people become more alike, their behavior becomes more similar. This paper tests the hypothesis that delinquency of androgynous and undifferentiated males and females is more similar in frequency than that of traditional males and females. Self-reported delinquency and self-ratings on scales of traditionally feminine and traditionally masculine expectations provide the data for this research. The analysis reveals that, as predicted, androgynous and undifferentiated males and females report more similar frequencies of delinquent behavior than do traditionally masculine males and traditionally feminine females. Undifferentiated respondents report the highest levels of delinquency among females, but the reverse pattern tends to hold for males. These patterns are analyzed and their importance for theory of gender and crime is suggested.     

Colonial Oppression, Gender, and Women in the Irish Diaspora

This paper explores the relationship between colonial oppression in pre-famine Ireland and the development of gender patterns that fostered uncommon social and familial roles for women. In post-famine Ireland women's traditional family roles illustrate cultural empowerment that combined with the pull factors of employment opportunities to spawn higher female than male emigration at the same time that patriarchal oppression restricted women's full social participation in Ireland and limited their authority to specific domains of family life. Cultural changes in post-famine Ireland, including increased power for the Catholic Church, mothers' socialization of children to the moral teachings of the Church, delayed marriage, and permanent celibacy among large segments of the population, intersected to produce unique patterns of migration. For women who immigrated to the United States, the cultural background of colonial oppression instilled values that respected independence and employment. In the case of the Irish, colonial oppression initiated gender patterns that pushed women to greater familial power and occupational independence than was typical of other ethnic groups.     

Women,work, and transformations in agricultural production*

Dans cet article l'auteur clarifie la différence entre deux élements clés qui ont marqué le développement de la production agricole au Québec et au Canada au cours des quatre dernières décennies, à savoir la modernisation de l'agriculture et son insertion dans le modèle capitaliste. Elle examine comment chacun de ces facteurs respectifs affecte la participation des femmes à l'agriculture. Les données proviennent d'une petite paroisse du Québec: il s'agit d'entrevues semi-dirigées, realisées auprès des membres adultes de 63 families agricoles choisies au hasard. L'analyse indique que ni le développement de l'agriculture capitaliste, ni l'adoption de techniques modernes n'ont un effet independant (net) sur la participation des femmes. L'effet d'interaction entre ces deux facteurs est ce qui produit la plus forte variation quant au type et à la charge du travail que les femmes consacrent à l'agriculture. In this article, the author differentiates between two key elements in the development of agricultural production in Québec and Canada in the last four decades (the modernization of agriculture and the penetration of capitalist relations of production) and then tests the relative strength of each for producing change in women's participation level. Data were collected during a year of field work in a small Québec parish and consist of semi-structured interviews with the adult members of 63 randomly selected farm families. The findings indicate that neither the development of capitalist agriculture nor the adoption of modern methods have an independent effect on women's contribution. It is the interaction effect between the two that produces the greatest variation in the type and amount of work women devote to farming.     

Gender,Social Bond,and Academic Cheating in Japan*

There is evidence that females are less likely to cheat than males on college campuses. A frequently offered but still untested explanation is that females, with a stronger sense of responsibility for the maintenance of social relationships, tend to develop a stronger bond to a conventional society—a key explanatory concept in Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory. With academic cheating as the dependent variable, we test the hypotheses that the four elements of social bond are the intervening variables linking gender to such dishonesty among Japanese students who, due to their stronger orientation toward masculinity on Hofstede’s (1980) scale of gender role separation, are subject to more gender distinct socialization, leading to greater gender differences in the strength of social bond than those previously reported in the United States. The analysis provides rather limited support for the theory, most of which is due to the stronger belief in the legitimacy of societal rules among the females.     

Gender Orientations and Family Strategies*

Des interviews qualitatives de 95 femmes mariées ayant entre 18 et 45 ans ont été menées afin d'étudier les points de vue de ces dernières sur le mariage, les enfants, le travail et les politiques familiales. Nous avons comparé les opinions des femmes plus traditionnelles avec celles des femmes favorisant l'égalité des sexes, et nous avons pu constater que plusieurs idées étaient partagées, notamment sur le mariage et les enfants. Étaient à l'origine de divergences les stratégies familiales régissant l'opportunité du mariage et des naissances ainsi que la priorité accordée aux questions familiales par rapport aux autres aspects de la vie. Ceci nous porte à croire qu'il faut considérer deux éléments lorsqu'il s'agit de mieux comprendre le mariage et la procreation, soit la hiérarchie sexuelle et les points de vue des particuliers sur le roLle des hommes et des femmes dans notre société. Based on open-ended interviews with 95 married women aged 18 to 45, the authors explore basic orientations toward marriage, children, work and family policy. While women with more traditional gender role orientations are contrasted with those who hold more egalitarian views, there are striking similarities among the women in the sample. In particular, marriage and children are clearly preferred. The differences relate to the family strategies associated with the timing of marriage and births and the priority given to family questions in comparison to other aspects of life. This leads the authors to conclude that both gender structures in society and gender role orientations of individuals are important in understanding marriage and childbearing.     

Women and War: Militarism, Bodies, and the Practice of Gender

Women around the world, in various geographic spaces, social and cultural contexts, as partners, wives, sisters, daughters, mothers, mourners, and victims experience war. Women's experience of war and their participation in it, either as actors or resistors, victims or perpetrators ( Moser and Clark 2001 ), cheerleaders or critics, are always influenced by the construction of gender operating in and around their lives. While constructions of masculinity and femininity are always circulating in and around militarism and war, women's bodies are sometimes primary considerations for military and state leaders; this creates a visibility/invisibility/hyper-visibility problem for women in wartime. In this essay, women's participation in war as soldiers, refugees, prisoners, jailers, activists, and suicide bombers and the accompanying shift in the practice of femininity and masculinity is explored.     

Gender,Race, Social Class,and Self-Evaluations among College Students*

The purpose of this study was to modify Heiss and Owens's (1972) formulation on trait differences in the self-evaluations of blacks and whites and integrate it with the literature on sex role socialization, thereby elaborating the instrumental-expressive dichotomy they proposed so as to generate and test hypotheses regarding race, gender, and SES differences in self-evaluations. University students rated themselves on a fifteen-item semantic differential scale. A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotations yielded five factors, three of the factors were seen as private-domain, one as public-domain, and one as mixed. A series of 2X2X2 ANOVAS indicated that (1) on the public-domain factor, black females rated themselves more positively than did the white females, while black males and white males did not differ; (2) blacks rated themselves more positively than did whites on two private-domain factors; (3) white females rated themselves more positively than did males on the private-domain factor indicative of a feminine stereotype; and (4) SES differences appeared on the private-domain factors in particular.     

Empowered Women,Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties

Notions of “empowered women,” promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of “failed patriarchs.” However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the “reverse gender order.” A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly “disadvantaged.” Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large‐scale incorporation of poor and working‐class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor “cheap” and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working‐class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.     

Gender,Working Conditions and the Job Satisfaction of Women in a Non-Traditional Occupation: Female Correctional Officers in Men's Prisons*

Despite the recent interest in women working in nontraditional occupations, few analyses have systematically compared the work-related attitudes of such women with those of men holding the same positions. This article presents an exploratory analysis, drawing hypotheses from the “gender” and “job” models described by Feldberg and Glenn (1979), to compare work-related attitudes among male and female correctional officers. Data drawn from a survey of male and female correctional officers working at the same prison facility (three male and one female units) are utilized to contrast the importance of gender, with experiences on the job as determinants of job satisfaction. The results support the job model, which suggests that the attitudes of working women are a function of their position in the organizational structure and immediate working conditions.     

How Women Engineers Do and Undo Gender: Consequences for Gender Equality

The image of engineering as a masculine profession has reproduced the perception that engineering is unsuitable for women. While various strategies have been used to try to increase the number of women entering engineering education and employment, their success has been limited. At the same time it has been argued that the way gender is ‘done’ in work can help diminish or increase inequality between the sexes. Using empirical research exploring women engineering students’ workplace experiences, this article considers how gender performance explains their behaviour and attitudes. Butler implied that doing gender can result in our being ‘undone’. This was specifically found to be the case for the women students in this study, who performed their gender in a particular way in order to gain male acceptance. In doing this they utilized certain coping strategies: acting like one of the boys, accepting gender discrimination, achieving a reputation, seeing the advantages over the disadvantages and adopting an ‘anti‐woman’ approach. These strategies are part of women's enculturation and professionalization in engineering, yet they also fail to value femaleness. In ‘doing’ engineering, women often ‘undo’ their gender. Such gender performance does nothing to challenge the gendered culture of engineering, and in many ways contributes to maintaining an environment that is hostile to women.     

Respectable Women and the Law*

A defendant's prior criminal record is usually conceived of as a ubiquitous indicator of severity of sanction. Utilizing Black's (1976) conception of prior criminality— respectability—we argue that other, nonlegal indicators of respectability will also affect the sanctions female criminal defendants incur. In addition to prior criminal record, indicators of respectability include prior psychiatric care, previous drug or alcohol abuse, employer censorship, and peer deviance. Estimating a set of multivariate equations for a sample of 1,034 female defendants, we find support for Black's proposition: (1) regardless of the offense, the lower a woman's respectability, the greater the likelihood that she will receive a more severe sentence; and (2) respectability has similar effects on sentencing regardless of whether the indicators are internal or external to the criminal justice system. The degree to which these findings can be construed as sex specific is discussed.     

Gender Trouble in Town: Educated Women Eluding Male Domination,Gender Violence and Marriage in PNG

Following Zimmer-Tamakoshi's observations about educated Pacific women not wanting to marry their countrymen, I examine educated Papua New Guinean women's perspectives on marrying Papua New Guinean men. Women in this group avoid marriage because they fear such relationships will destroy their career prospects, compromise their economic and decision-making independence and force them to grapple with male jealousy and violence in the domestic realm. In short, educated Papua New Guinean women perceive partnerships with their countrymen as being more troublesome than they are worth. The women's attitudes and actions suggest an emerging trend with important implications for understanding (both) the relationship between gender and education and intimate relationships in Papua New Guinea.