Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 90

Property offenses of a minor nature have often been attributed as female-gender-related, with stereotypes linking women and girls with shopping and portraying them as being tempted by clothes, jewelry, and makeup. A closer examination suggests that shoplifting may be gender-neutral or even male-gender-related. Studies published in the 1980s identified larceny and thefts, such as forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement, as constituting considerable numbers of females’ arrests and convictions but still identified these offenses as male-gender-related (Eaton, 1986; Leonard, 1982). Some studies on shoplifting have found no gender differences (Hudson, 1989; Smart, 1976), but far more have found that shoplifting is male-gender-related (Buckle & Farrington, 1984; Hirtenlehner & Treiber, 2017; Mawby, 1980; N. L. Piquero, Gover, MacDonald, & Piquero, 2005), and that men and boys steal more items and items of greater value than the food and clothing typically shoplifted by females (Buckle & Farrington, 1984; Gibbens & Prince, 1962; Hoffman-Bustamante, 1973). Similarly, the 2018 UCR arrest rates reported in Table 4.1 in the previous chapter indicated embezzlement as the only gender-neutral offense and larceny-theft as approaching male-gender-related for youth but solidly male-gender-related for combined ages. Research since the 1970s suggests that larceny and theft rates show more gender convergence than any other crimes (e.g., Chilton & Datesman, 1987; Kline, 1993). Notably, a study on arrests found women’s arrest rate growth was particularly evident among African American women, coinciding with the feminization of poverty (Chilton & Datesman 1987), and a study of habitual/career criminals, found women were significantly more likely than men to be arrested for forgery and fraud (Delisi, 2002). J. J. Roth and King’s (2019) aggregate-level study of larceny arrests found that unemployment, income, and drug arrest rates significantly impacted women and men, but women more so. They concluded that across gender, “larceny is more likely to occur (or be detected by law enforcement or witnesses) in areas with lower unemployment and incomes” (p. 123).