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The complexities of why women commit crimes

JANUARY 22ND, 2017 CM GUEST COLUMNIST OPINION 0 COMMENTS

The complexities of why women commit crimes

By Costas H Constantiniou

Most sociologists define deviance as socially-condemned or disapproved behaviour and explanations of

the motivations have taken various forms.

Some observers would blame a personality disorder or social conditions such as poverty or racism, while
others are proponents of the theory that individuals are born deviant. But there is no single factor which
can adequately explain why people commit criminal acts.

The majority of the theories tend to explain male behaviour but female criminal behavior is a growing
issue though in comparison with crimes committed by men, the numbers are still small.

Women are often labelled as aggressive, bitchy, hysterical, or masculine, but can sociological theories
which have been developed to explain male crime and deviance also be applied to women?

For example, the sexually active, assertive male, corresponds to the masculine stereotype whereas a
female engaging in the same behaviours might be labeled deviant by some.

Female drug addicts are seen as more deviant, less responsible, and less treatable than male addicts,
and both men and women often condemn drunkenness in women more than in men.

Concerning crime, regardless of age, race, or social class, men have more consistently been found to be
socially deviant than women. Although males over time and across culture, have consistently been
arrested and convicted more often than females, the disparity between the sexes varies with the kind of
crime, with time, and with different social settings. However, men are not always more murderous than
women.

The stereotypical notions about women depict them as passive dependent, caring, and submissive – the
very antithesis of what we consider criminal. To show specific differences between men and women, and
also to test whether the various male criminology theories apply to women let’s look at some typical
behaviours which are usually associated more with women, for example prostitution and shoplifting.

Prostitution is considered traditionally a “female” crime. Socialisation experiences can reinforce feelings
among young girls that they are sex objects to be valued primarily for their physical attractiveness.
However, it is those very same reinforcements which when displayed openly are labeled as
“prostitution”, and are considered deviant.

Even though prostitution is mostly associated with women, an intriguing phenomenon today is the
increasing number of young male prostitutes in many cities.

Although shoplifting is associated with women, mostly because we expect women to spend more time
shopping and therefore, to be more exposed to opportunities to shoplift, recent statistics suggest that
shoplifting in males has increased drastically.

Women are thought to shoplift as a result of subconscious motivations and depression, or due to low-
income, while males are more likely to shoplift due to peer pressure, or to escape from boredom, or for
thrill-seeking.

Other areas where men and women differ in motivation are drug use, alcohol use and mental health.

Drugs are used medically, socially, or recreationally. Estimating rates of drug abuse are often very difficult
because of errors due to biases in sampling and in self-reporting of usage are abundant. However, in
every comparison, male use exceeds use by females for non-medical social and recreational use of drugs
such as alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin. Women on the other hand exceed men
in the use of medical and legal drugs, such as tranquilisers, barbiturates and antidepressants.
The majority of the literature on women and heroin has focused on neonatal addiction.

However, a father’s addiction is just as crucial as it can be genetically transmitted to the foetus.

Most women addicts feel that they have little control over their lives. They also get very little support.
Women often cannot even seek treatment for fear that their children will be taken away from them once
they admit to an addiction.

Many current reports about the prevalence of alcohol use in women indicate that the rates of increase in
both drinking and problem drinking among women has been bigger than that of men so that the
drinking patterns in men and women are becoming more aligned.

The way in which women first use alcohol is consistent with the nature of their social role. Women begin
using alcohol later than men. Women with a drinking problem also tend to drink less in public. They
drink at home, alone or with a spouse. Women who are the heaviest drinkers are usually married and
employed. Their alcoholism may arise as a result of stress.

Concerning mental health, it is unclear on whether either gender is healthier than the other, although
there are clear differences in specific illnesses. Depression is one illness where women outnumber men.
Effects of social roles and social stresses are important in relation to gender differences in depression,
and in fact higher rates of depression in women may be based on both the long-standing social status
differences and the internalisation of their issues.

Other social factors associated with higher depression in both men and women include low levels of
education, low income, low employment status and physical illness. Depression is less likely to happen
in employed men.

Statistics in Cyprus in terms of rape show that date rape is the most common type of sexual assault in
Cyprus with both men and women experiencing dating violence, which is defined as including non-
consensual sexual activity and rape.

Ditto for domestic violence. In Cyprus studies show that socioeconomic patterns play a big role in
violence against women, specifically domestic violence.
Statistics from the police and the Association of the Prevention and Handling Violence in the Family put
the figure for domestic abuse of women at over 80 per cent but almost 9 per cent of domestic violence
victims are men, with 79 per cent of those involving physical abuse.

The complexity of why women commit crimes is in sharp contrast to the relatively simple and often
single casual explanations that have been offered by experts up until now for explaining women’s
participation in violence and crime and the lack of attention given to this by criminologists in Cyprus has
made research more difficult.

In other countries in recent years there has been something of a buzz around the changes when it comes
to women’s participation in crime and the fact that it seems to be growing faster than that of men, and
rising particularly fast when it comes to the more untypical female offences such as robbery and
violence.

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