Auto Theft and Youth Culture: A Nexus of Masculinities, Femininities and Car Culture

Masculinities, Femininities, Behaviour and Health

“…Ideal femininity in Western societies includes characteristics such as being nurturing, dependent, cooperative, weak, passive, submissive, cautious, vulnerable and virtuous. To be considered feminine, women are expected to engage and reproduce these hegemonic feminine ideals (O’Connor & Kelly, 2006). Femininity is a subordinate position to masculinity, but within this position, hegemonic femininity is valued over other femininities because it serves the interests of the gender order.…”

“…However, they simultaneously feminized this behaviour (e.g., drinking wines and cocktails; matching drinks with appearance). Thus, although engaging in traditionally masculine behaviour, they did so in ways that reaffirmed femininity and were in line with other hegemonic feminine ideals (see also Kraack, 1999; O’Connor & Kelly, 2006). Women may gain some credibility by appropriating hegemonic masculinity practices and in this way produce a version of femininity that is complicit with rather than subordinate to men (Kraack, 1999), suggesting some disruption in gender hegemony.…”

“…This is likely to explain the double standards that continue to exist around what, when and how much drinking women should be engaging in (Lyons & Willott, 2008; Montemurro & McClure, 2005). Men and women might engage in the same behaviour for the same reason (e.g., binge drinking), but this plays out in very different ways for masculinities and femininities (see O’Connor & Kelly, 2006) and gender relations. Women's drinking generates concern because it is viewed as leading to problems for children, homes and our traditional moral order (Holmila & Raitasalo, 2005).…”

Why Steal Cars? A Study of Young Offenders Involved in Auto Theft¹

“…Following this study, Project 6116-a group established to promote auto theft prevention-and the AUTO21 Network of Centres of Excellence funded similar research in Montreal (Tremblay and Sauvêtre 2014), Vancouver (Jenion and Brantingham unpublished), Calgary (Drozda 2006;Wilkening 2004), Regina (Pfeifer and Buchanan 2005;Skakun 2005), Windsor (O'Connor and Spencer unpublished), Ottawa (O'Connor and Kelly 2006), and Toronto (Beare and Drury unpublished). We will refer to these studies throughout this article to illustrate some of the similarities and differences between the different cities.…”

“…Even fewer youth lived with both parents in Regina (Pfeifer and Buchanan 2005), Ottawa (O'Connor and Kelly 2006), and Vancouver (Jenion and Brantingham unpublished), where (respectively) 12%, 15%, and 9% lived with both parents.…”