Stereotypes Against Women

The essentialist assumptions concerning women’s gendered position subject them to differential treatment from the criminal justice system (Jewkes, 2004: 111). This is because the law was written for men by men, without recognition that women may have the ‘same criminal potential’ (Short, 1989, cited in Knelman, 1998: 9). The image of violence that is maintained within society is based on male violence, hence, society struggles to conceptualise violence committed by women (Shaw in Dobash et, al., 1995: 122) as it does not coincide with traditional gender expectations. Van Schie (1989) emphasises that criminal activity is stereotypically pronounced as masculine behaviour. In turn, those characteristics typical of masculinity, such as aggression,
Female criminals are considered to be an ‘expression of…the social fabric falling apart’ (Kennedy, cited in Jones and Wardle, 2008: 58) as they are thought to be more threatening to the social structure that is centred on the production and reinforcement of the narrow boundaries surrounding gender. They are continually judged against the ideology of the ‘ideal woman’ which regards nurturing and maternal characteristics as symbiotic of femininity. As children are held to be in need of nurturing and protection (Jewkes, 2004: 58), the assigned gender roles of women place them in a more likely position to be protective rather than abusive towards children. However, when these are defied and woman participate in acts of child abuse, Stevenson (2008, 148) argues that they are socially condemned far more harshly than men who commit the same crime. This resembles what Crew (1991, cited in Collins, 2016: 498) describes as the ‘pedestal effect’, which ensures women are treated more punitively because they have transgressed traditional gender norms and have somehow ‘fallen from grace’. Schissel (2006: 71, cited in Collins, 2016: 297) states that this double standard in the punitive responses awarded to female and male offenders is the result of the ‘feminist push for equality’. However, this appears to be a misconception of the ideals of feminism. Feminism strives for equality amongst men and women, not the apparent inequality that is experienced by female offenders within the criminal justice system for subverting rigid gendered stereotypes. Yet, as violence is deemed as a trait of male criminality the female offenders of the same crime are ultimately treated like men in a sense that they are not