4 - Gender and Retaliation (with Christopher Mullins)

Summary

No factor mediates retributive decision-making more powerfully than gender. Street criminals respond to disputes as men and women and not simply as offenders. Men obviously dominate the street criminal underworld, and numerous researchers have drawn on the notion of doing masculinity – the process whereby men frame their actions to fulfill existing gender roles – to explain their behavior (see, for example, Hamm 2001).

Women represent a far smaller proportion of both the offender and victim population, but females deeply embedded in street-based social networks face the same identity, respect, and security concerns as men. Indeed, maintaining a street persona as someone not to be crossed may be even more critical for female street offenders than for their male counterparts because of the devalued status of femininity in this context. Given prevailing attitudes about women on the streets, especially those linked to passivity and physical weakness, females must negotiate unique challenges if they are to use retaliatory tactics successfully. “Doing masculinity” is not an acceptable explanation for female retribution – whether it occurs against men or other women – nor does it seem appropriate to characterize male on female reprisal in this overly broad way, especially given patriarchal proscriptions against harming women.

Because existing norms sometimes define women as inappropriate targets of serious street violence, this may encourage some males to adopt non-violent tactics to retaliate against them.