Addressing a Divide in the Conceptualization of the Gender-Crime Relationship: A Comparative Test of Gender and Sex Using General Strain Theory

Male Sexual Victimization: Examining Variation in the Probability of Weapon Use and Victim Injury

“…This process, which frequently manifests during childhood, lends itself to sustained criminal pathways into adulthood (Agnew, 1992(Agnew, , 2006Agnew, Rebellon, & Thaxton, 2000;Bender, 2010;Ford, 2002;Thaxton & Agnew, 2018). In the years following its original formulation, GST has undergone extensions that enhance its ability to explain criminal deviance as a direct and indirect consequence of strains related to race, biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation (Broidy & Santoro, 2018;Button & Worthen, 2014;Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Moon & Morash, 2017;Thaxton & Agnew, 2018). Although it has benefited from considerably less testing (e.g., Dierenfeldt, Brown, & Roles, 2017), Agnew's (1999) contention that community-level strains may influence criminal deviance is of particular interest to the present study.…”

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

“…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). There are many benefits to a social constructionist view of gender, including that it offers a "more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the creation and development of gender identity and gender roles in society" (Cops & Pleysier, 2011, p. 63).…”

“…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).…”

“…From a research perspective, this misunderstanding may be due, in part, to the trend in some criminological theory and research to ignore the efforts of researchers from other disciplines to advance our understanding of gender by continuing to conflate gender with biological sex (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). Many criminological studies that explore the gender gap in criminal justice attitudes adopt binarism, or the view that gender is a fixed biological characteristic that is represented by the categories of 'male' and 'female' (e.g., Applegate et al, 2002;Hurwitz & Smithey, 1998;Whitehead & Blankenship, 2000); categories that are often understood as operating in opposition to one another (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018). Other more recent criminological research has also conceptualised gender in this way (e.g., Fanghanel, 2014;Walklate, McCulloch, Fitz-Gibbon, & Maher, 2019).…”

“…Crucially, though, I argue that the key constructs of gender and emotion ought to be conceptualised from a social constructivist perspective; a perspective that is not often adopted in criminological theory and research (Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018). As several recent studies have demonstrated, there is a trend in criminological research, particularly that which uses a quantitative methodology, to explore gender differences in criminal justice attitudes using the view of gender as a fixed biological characteristic that is represented by the binary categories of 'male' and 'female' (Cohen & Harvey, 2007;Dolliver & Rocker, 2018;Valcore & Pfeffer, 2018).…”