Achieving and Regulating Femininity: Gender, Social Control and Deviance Social Control and Deviance

West and Zimmerman (1987: 125) view gender as an

‘achieved status’, established within social interaction and constructed through ‘psychological, cultural and social means’. The social construction of gender is used as a means to classify individuals into ascribed categories and consists of

‘a complex of socially guided, perceptual interactional, and micro political activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘’natures’’’ (ibid.:126).

For example, through language, behaviours and ‘economic and familial roles’ (Kitzinger, 2009; Risman, 2009; 84).

For West and Zimmerman (1987: 126) ‘doing gender’

reinforces social structures within society through mechanisms of social control. Lorber (1994) argues this process is sustained through society’s acceptance of a set of norms and values associated with the social construction of gender, whereby individuals are judged in accordance with their adherence to expectations, determined by their gendered status. Lorber refers to gender as a ‘social institution’, which accounts for the ways in which individuals organise their lives (ibid.: 2). It is the gendered practices individuals adhere to which reproduce expectations associated with masculine and feminine ideals (ibid.). These ideals are determined through social processes of ‘teaching, learning, emulation and enforcement’ (ibid.: 2) embedded

37 within societal structures, institutions and social interaction (Connell, 1987; Risman and Davis, 2013).

Such processes inform the production of a gender identity (Butler, 1990). One’s gender identity operates through various contexts in which an individual must meet demands interchangeably. Such as, parenting, sexuality and motherhood (ibid.). Such demands are inherent within normative expectations associated with an individual’s gender identity and are reinforced through informal sanctions for those who fail to conform to a shared standard of gender appropriate behaviour (Lorber, 1994). The distinctions these expectations produce are salient to the production of gender inequality and social control (Carlen, 2008; Lorber, 1994;

Risman and Davis, 2013; West and Zimmerman, 1987;

Wharton, 2012).

Critical and feminist scholars have established that females occupy a subordinate position in society, which ascribes them into specific gendered roles and it is this inferior position, which accounts for the oppression and social control of females as gendered subjects (see for example, Carlen, 1988;

Carlen and Worrall, 1987; Heidensohn, 1996; Smart and Smart, 1978; Smart, 1989). It is suggested that the social construction of gender accounts for these unequal social structures within society and legitimatises social divisions, which determine women’s and girls’ disadvantaged status (Lorber, 1994). Ideological discourses of ‘domesticity, sexuality and pathology’ inform the construction of gender and dictate normative expectations associated with the ideals of femininity (Carlen and Worrall, 1987: 8). These expectations account for differential experiences of social control between males and females (Carlen, 2008). However, gender is an ongoing process and ‘accountable to current cultural conceptions of conduct’ and thus the ideals of femininity cannot be explicitly characterised (West and Zimmerman, 2009: 114).

38

‘The domestic sphere of the home’, ‘the traditional community’, ‘the world of early modern welfare’ and ‘the world of modern welfare’ can be regarded as the key areas in which women have traditionally been subject to social control (Heidensohn, 1996: 779). The differential forms of social control girls experience are manifested through various contexts. For example, reproduction, ‘a double standard of morality’, ‘a subordinate legal status’, sexuality and parenting (Smart and Smart, 1978: 3). Such forms of social control are enforced both formally and informally through various institutions, such as the family, criminal justice agencies and welfare institutions (Carlen and Worrall, 1987; Heidensohn, 1996; Hutter and Williams, 1981; Lees, 1983). These institutions employ methods of communicating moral and behavioural expectations associated with appropriate female behaviour (Hutter and Williams, 1981). In line with discourses of domesticity, there is an obligation for women to assume a primary role within the family, which holds them responsible for the basic tasks of ‘care, containment and socialisation’

(Heidensohn, 1996: 780), resulting in their presence in the public sphere being hidden from view and simultaneously their

‘rights, duties and crises’ being privatised (Dahl and Snare, 1978: 8).

Sexuality discourses also serve to reinforce conflicting perceptions of female sexuality that subject women and girls to a double standard of behaviour which fortifies sexual promiscuity amongst men and pathologises similar behaviour as immoral and ‘shameful’ amongst women (Smart and Smart, 1978: 4). These discourses produce stereotypical images and ideas associated with femininity and are enforced through social policy and interactions, which regulate behaviour in line with these ideals. Thus, they serve as a mechanism of social control for females (Carlen and Worrall, 1987; Heidensohn, 1996; Hutter and Williams, 1981; Lees, 1983; Schur, 1984; Smart and Smart, 1978). Drawing upon such insights it becomes apparent that ‘the social position of

39 women is reinforced and maintained at one level by the material inequalities and at another . . . level by ideological processes’ (Green et al., 1987: 79).

When theorising the social control of women, it is also important to recognise that men’s violence against women is also used as a gendered mechanism of control. For example, Kelly (1988: 33) contends that ‘social control is men’s purpose when using sexual [and racial] violence against women’. Such forms of violence, Kelly argues, ‘are attempts to maintain, rather than challenge, existing power relations’ (ibid.: 34). In this context, violence against women is only used when other attempts to control them have failed (ibid.). The use of violence, as a form of social control, denies women’s freedom and agency whilst the ways in which patriarchal society functions enables and justifies men’s role in assuming power over women through ‘force, coercion or abuse’ (ibid.: 41).

In contemporary society, the function of violence, as a form of social control against women, has expanded due to the developments of technology in the digital age (Powell and Henry, 2017). Advances in technology have facilitated the emergence of new forms of violence against women, which can be conceptualised beyond physical acts, for example:

online sexual harassment, threats, coercion, revenge pornography and digital abuse (ibid.). All of which constitute

‘individualised and collective harms of technology-facilitated sexual violence’ as they function to reinforce discourses of femininity and structural inequalities between men and women (ibid.: 65). It is, therefore, contended that the various forms of technology-facilitated sexual violence constitutes ‘a form of social control and regulation . . . which in turn serves to reinforce heterosexual and patriarchal norms’ (ibid.: 155).

When considering the experiences of women and the application of criminal justice, existing research has predominantly focused on the governance of women and girls

40 through penal institutions and their differential treatment by criminal justice agencies (Burman and Gelsthorpe, 2017).

Whilst feminist contributions in criminology have successfully constructed debates concerning women, crime and control within ‘mainstream criminology’, ‘substantive boundaries [still exist] within feminist criminology’ (Hannah-Moffat, 2011: 443-444). This is because there is, within feminist criminology, a lack of engagement with feminist or critical scholars beyond the discipline of criminology, whilst other tenants of critical criminology are suggested to have ‘limited interaction with feminist scholars’ (ibid.: 444). It is, therefore, suggested that such ‘narrower focuses’, concerned with women’s experiences in the CJS, restrict the production of knowledge and connection to ‘other institutional forms and theorizations about the regulations of gender, sexuality, race and marginality’ (ibid.: 444). In addition, it has also been argued that feminist criminology needs to expand its research agendas to account for the ‘distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the globe’

and beyond the domestic issues of criminal justice within the Global North (Carrington, 2015: 7). Barberet and Carrington (2018) advocate for a perspective of southern criminology in order to address such limitations of feminist criminology and recognise the distinguished forms of violence, crime and control women, across the globe, are subject to.

As feminist perspectives within the social sciences have developed, concern with regards to how the social construction of gender intersects with other social divisions and inequalities, such as class, race and sexuality, to contribute to the oppression of women and girls has also become prevalent (Renzetti, 2018: 75). These intersectional perspectives have become prominent within criminological and social science research more broadly (Burgess-Proctor, 2006). Intersectionality has provided a framework in which feminist perspectives can assert that gender, and other inequalities, are not exclusive categories and that such forms

41 of oppression intersect with offending, victimisation and treatment by criminal justice agencies (Cooper, 2015).

Intersectional analysis recognises that these ‘systems of power . . . do not act alone to shape our experiences but rather are multiplicative, inextricably linked, and simultaneously experienced’ (Burgess-Proctor, 2006: 31). The ways in which individual experiences are shaped by relational inequalities reveal ‘how these inequalities put some societal members at risk to be rendered deviant or to engage in law-breaking and . . . how law and state institutions both challenge and produce these inequalities’ (Daly and Stephens, 1995: cited in Burgess-Proctor, 2006: 3).

Goffman (1977: 307) states that the ‘interesting’ thing about those who occupy a place within a ‘disadvantaged category’

of people is not ‘the painfulness of the disadvantaged, but the bearing of the social structure on its generation and stability’.

Unlike other ‘disadvantaged categories’ women are segregated from each other by ‘the stake they acquire in the very organisation which divides them’ (ibid.: 308). Women are bound to males ‘through fundamental social bonds’ (ibid.:

308). These relationships require both men and women to participate in ‘social situations’, comprising ‘two perfectly divided halves of society’: the advantaged and the disadvantaged (ibid.: 308). Goffman argues that this social organisation is what makes the ‘world considerably like the most patriarchal you can imagine’ (ibid.: 308). One’s ‘gender status’, therefore, determines differential experiences in relation to ‘opportunity, expectations and esteem’ (Laws, 1979: 2). As such, it can be argued that ‘being a female conditions all social interactions; whether or not the individual is conscious of her femaleness, others are’ (ibid. 2).

Drawing upon such insights, it becomes apparent that gender is a construction which is pervasive in its ability to shape individual identity and perception of self. This is because it is a ‘socially significant’ trait, which is ‘visible and consequential

42 in institutional realms’ (Laws, 1979: 1). Whilst the arrangement of gender contributes to the construction of one’s identity, the inequalities inherent within this arrangement are evidently harmful (ibid.). Thus, gender is situated as

‘complicated . . . difficult [and] inherently political’ (Connell and Pearse, 2015: 8). However, as discussed, masculinity and femininity are ‘not fixed by nature’ (ibid.: 6). They are discursive in nature. Gender is imposed, not only on a structural level, through social, political, cultural and institutional arrangements but through the ways in which

‘people construct themselves as masculine and feminine’, effectively positioning themselves within the gender order of society (ibid.: 6). In this sense, gender becomes the determining feature of social life and adopts a status, which takes precedent over all other statuses.

2.4 The Social Construction of Identity: The