We examined cross‐national variation in the gender differential in offending, which is often referred to as the gender gap in crime. Analyses were directed toward two empirical questions: 1) Is the gender gap narrower in less patriarchal sociocultural settings, and if so, 2) is this outcome a result of higher levels of offending on the part of girls, lower levels of offending on the part of boys, or some combination thereof? To address these questions, we compiled a multilevel, cross‐national data set combining information on self‐reported offending from the second International Self Report Delinquency Survey (ISRD‐2) with normative and structural indicators of societal levels of patriarchy. The results from regression equations showed the gender gap in delinquency to be narrower at reduced national levels of patriarchy. The predicted probabilities calculated from regression coefficients suggested that this narrowing is a result of increased offending among girls and, to some extent, of decreased offending among boys in less patriarchal nations. Sensitivity checks with alternative model specifications confirmed these patterns but also identified a potential outlier. We discuss the implications of these descriptive findings for etiological research and theory.
The relationship between violence and patriarchal gender systems is structural and coconstitutive; yet structural analyses that account for gender in explanations and conceptualizations of violence are often absent from violence scholarship. Additionally, there are numerous underassessed areas in more gender-nuanced, “gender-based” violence paradigms. We address the shortcomings of both types of research and propose a cohesive theoretical framework that captures the ways in which violence is patriarchy-enhancing and patriarchy-facilitated. Violence shapes and influences gender performances and structures and, concomitantly, the gender order shapes and influences violence in given contexts.
The purpose of this article is to present a gender-sensitized approach to Institutional-Anomie Theory (IAT) that recognizes the pervasiveness and import of gender at the institutional and cultural levels. Drawing on feminist literature, we discuss the gendering of the family and the economy, and the implications of such gendering for understanding the social organization of American society and the "institutional balance of power," as explicated by Messner and Rosenfeld in Crime and the American Dream. At a cultural level, we propose that the tendency to conceive of men as normative helps reconcile two seemingly incompatible premises in IAT: the claim that there is a dominant form of social organization that characterizes American society and the empirical observation that cultural orientations and institutional involvement actually differ dramatically for males and females. From a social structural perspective, we describe the varying ways that institutions are by their very nature gendered and how the gendering of institutions can promote and sustain economic dominance-a particularly criminogenic institutional order. Based on these insights, we conclude by proposing some testable hypotheses about the interconnections among gender stratification, institutional structure, and societal levels of crime.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.