Systemic error: measuring gender in criminological research

Sexual victimization against transgender women in prison: Consent and coercion in context

“…Consistent with systematic assessments of mixed-methods approaches (Small, 2011), our qualitative and quantitative data are used in tandem. 9 There is value in understanding the "misuse" of the term "transgender" to refer to sexual orientation, as well as other types of systematic error when it comes to measuring gender (Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018; but see also Schilt & Bratter, 2015). In that context, it is perhaps surprising that, in contrast to how academics and activists often conceptualize transgender, almost 20 percent of these prisoners considered transgender to be a sexual orientation (even though it was not presented as a response category).…”

Gendered views on parole: exploring how emotion and emotion management help to explain gender differences in the Australian public’s views on parole

“…The adoption of a normative definition of gender is also widespread in criminological research. As I argue in Chapter 3, many researchers (particularly those who adopt a post-positivist perspective) who publish in criminological journals continue to conflate gender for biological sex (Cohen & Harvey, 2007;Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). By doing so, they miss the opportunity to engage with the view of gender as a type of performance and to examine how socially constructed gender identities may influence a person's context-specific views on issues of crime and punishment (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018).…”

“…This study builds upon previous research in several ways. To begin, as I discuss in Chapter 3, there is a tendency amongst many criminologists to use the concepts of gender and sex interchangeably (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). This approach fails to appreciate the work of social constructionists, who are careful to distinguish 'sex' as a biological category from 'gender' as a performance that is socially created and determined through interaction (Cops & Pleysier, 2011;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018).…”

“…To begin, as I discuss in Chapter 3, there is a tendency amongst many criminologists to use the concepts of gender and sex interchangeably (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). This approach fails to appreciate the work of social constructionists, who are careful to distinguish 'sex' as a biological category from 'gender' as a performance that is socially created and determined through interaction (Cops & Pleysier, 2011;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). In response to calls for more criminological researchers to move beyond a normative view of gender and advance how this concept is measured so that it better aligns with more modern conceptualisations of gender as a non-binary and multifaceted construct (Miller & Carbone-Lopez, 2015;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018), this study adopts a social constructionist view of gender as a type of performance that embodies masculine or feminine ideals, but that may vary across situational contexts and structural positions (West & Zimmerman, 1987).…”

“…This approach fails to appreciate the work of social constructionists, who are careful to distinguish 'sex' as a biological category from 'gender' as a performance that is socially created and determined through interaction (Cops & Pleysier, 2011;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). In response to calls for more criminological researchers to move beyond a normative view of gender and advance how this concept is measured so that it better aligns with more modern conceptualisations of gender as a non-binary and multifaceted construct (Miller & Carbone-Lopez, 2015;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018), this study adopts a social constructionist view of gender as a type of performance that embodies masculine or feminine ideals, but that may vary across situational contexts and structural positions (West & Zimmerman, 1987). This approach advances how gender is treated in criminological research and provides a greater degree of nuance in my research findings by incorporating a finer-grained measure of gender (Bittner & Goodyear-Grant, 2017).…”