Factors Affecting Criminal & Deviant Behaviour: Gender (AQA GCSE Sociology): Exam Questions

Frances Heidensohn examined patterns of crime and deviance among women and was interested in explaining why women are less likely than men to appear in official crime statistics. Writing from a feminist perspective, she focused on how women’s lives are shaped by wider social structures and expectations.

Heidensohn explored how women’s roles in society, relationships and everyday routines may affect their behaviour and opportunities. She suggested that power relationships between men and women play an important role in understanding differences in offending between the sexes.

Source: Adapted from Heidensohn, F. (1985) Women and Crime.

Carlen was interested in explaining female criminality, and conducted ground-breaking research.

She conducted her research using unstructured interviews with 39 women between the ages of 15 and 46, all of whom had been convicted of one or more crimes. According to Carlen, four major reasons were given by the women as to the cause of their criminality: poverty; being in residential care; drug and alcohol addiction; and the quest for excitement.

Although all the women had committed at least one crime for financial gain, most of them agreed that it was one of these four factors which led them to develop criminal careers.

Source: Carlen, P, Women, Crime and Poverty, (1988)

In 2018, the Ministry of Justice published a report entitled ‘Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2017’. This report presented information on offending and victimisation according to gender.

The report used information from a wide range of sources, such as national statistics and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The report stated the following:

• 85% of arrests are men

• 74% of offenders prosecuted were men

• 95% of the prison population was male

• women are more likely to experience domestic abuse than men

• women were most likely to be prosecuted for TV Licence fee evasion, truancy of their children from school, and shoplifting.

Source: Ministry of Justice, 2018

Pat Carlen studied a group of mostly working-class women who had been convicted of one or more crimes. She used control theory to explain their behaviour, arguing that women are encouraged to follow society’s rules through the promise of two types of rewards: a ‘class deal’ and a ‘gender deal’.

Carlen found that many of the women in her study had experienced poverty, family breakdown or abuse, and therefore felt that neither deal had been available to them. As a result, she argued that crime could become a rational alternative when these expected rewards were blocked.

Source: Adapted from Carlen, P. Women, Crime and Poverty, 1988