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Gender and Attitudes Toward Justice System Bias in Central America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Lee Demetrius Walker
Lee Demetrius Walker*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Abstract

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What interests of Latin American women create distinctive attitudes toward justice system equality that differ from those of Latin American men? Building on recent work on general justice system bias and using 2003 Latinobarómetro data, I test this question in three Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua) using two sets of attitudes toward justice system performance (equal punishment and equal treatment). Women are significantly more likely to believe that the criminal justice system provides unequal treatment before the law than are men, while women and men express the same level of belief that the justice system provides equal punishment. Evidence indicates that women connect unequal treatment to economic factors and follow a conflict model of criminal justice, which posits these attitudinal differences as a function of the group's subordinate position in society.

Resumo

Resumo

¿Cuáles intereses de las mujeres latinoamericanas crean actitudes particulares respecto a la igualdad en el sistema de justicia diferentes de aquellas de los hombres? Con base en trabajos recientes sobre los bieses generales de los sistemas de justicia y utilizando datos de Latinobarómetro de 2003, el artículo enfrenta esta pregunta en tres países centroamericanos (Costa Rica, El Salvador y Nicaragua) usando dos tipos de actitudes hacia el desempeño de sistemas de justicia (igualdad de castigos e igualdad en el trato). Las mujeres son significativamente más propensas que los hombres a creer que el sistema de justicia ofrece tratamiento desigual ante la ley, mientras que mujeres y hombres expresan el mismo nivel de creencia en que la justicia proporciona igualdad en el castigo. La evidencia indica que las mujeres conectan el tratamiento desigual con factores económicos y siguen un modelo de conflicto sobre la justicia criminal, que parte del supuesto de que estas diferencias de actitud son una función de la posición subordinada del grupo.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 80 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This article was written with support from University of Kentucky, University of South Carolina, and a resident fellowship at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. I also wish to thank Leslie Anderson, Jeff Gill, Philip J. Williams, Richard Waterman, Gary King, James L. Gibson, Andrew Martin, Christopher Zorn, the political science departments of the University of Kentucky and University of South Carolina, and LAR's anonymous reviews.

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