Introduction to Special 10th Anniversary Issue of Feminist Criminology

Titled “Is Criminology Still Male Dominated?” this year’s 10th anniversary special issue of Feminist Criminology (FC) emerged from a 2014 American Society of Criminology (ASC) panel of the same name. Both the panel and the special issue that now ensues were inspired by an impulse to step back—approximately one half-century after second-wave feminism burst onto the scene in the 1960s and 1970s, leading thereafter, to the evolution of diverse and important feminism(s)—so as to evaluate where, within the academic discipline of criminology, the gender revolution has led . For, as Hillary Clinton campaigns to become the first President in American history who is a woman, it is easy to be struck by both progress and blatant sexism mixed in with reactions to her candidacy.

But where is criminology in terms of sexism, 50 years post-American second-wave feminism? It is a key question at multiple levels. For, without the rise of feminisms, scholarly concerns with issues like rape, domestic assault, and sex work—let alone recent emphases on intersectionality and overlapping biases of race, class, sexualities, and gender—would arguably never have happened. Yet, as Meda Chesney-Lind and Nicholas Chagnon write after systematically researching and documenting the actions of the ASC over time for their article in this issue, the picture is troubling in terms of who have received awards, nominations, and other honors within the field. With notable exceptions (like women recently elected ASC presidents for several consecutive years), these disappointing outcomes are even more striking when co-considering gender and racial/ethnic diversity of scholars. “Mainstream” criminology continues to disproportionately reward, and award, men and Caucasians, despite outstanding work by a much more diverse pool of ASC members who remain relatively under-recognized. Chesney-Lind’s and Chagnon’s article is thus a noteworthy contribution, reminding us that although a great deal has been accomplished by the Division of Women and Crime in overcoming historical legacies of sexism and racism, much remains to be done within criminology.

As the issue shows more specifically, problems are also quite apparent when we hone in on particular types of criminology, including sub-fields that appear (and are in many ways) friendly to gender and sexuality-related concerns. For instance, Laura Naegler and Sara Salman emphasize in a fascinating and thorough evaluation of cultural criminology that even though, in theory, scholars doing cultural criminology are sympathetic to feminist insights, in practice, this perspective has only inadequately and often superficially incorporated gender and sex into its analyses and interpretations. Naegler and Salman highlight three themes—that is, overlooking the “causal” role of ideologies of masculinity, the role of sex and sexual attraction, and intersectional biases—which cultural criminologists, despite other considerable strengths and innovations in their work, tend consistently to overlook. Furthermore, they contend that it is not only cultural criminology but criminological research as a whole that would gain from deeper integration of feminist ideas: gender-based analyses, including the themes Naegler and Salman develop, should figure much more routinely into the discipline’s overall theories and methods.

This is a line of argumentation also beautifully developed in Kimberly Cook’s exploration of gender and criminology, past and present. Cook’s fine article for the anniversary issue takes us on a journey back to Edwin Sutherland, proceeding thereafter to Albert Cohen and Robert Sampson and taking on control theories along the way, to chronicle a sequence of “missed opportunities” when gender might have been taken seriously but was not. Her historical account includes remarkable-to-recall moments when these influential scholars acknowledged gender’s salience as perhaps the most predictive social variable of all; they then went on to highlight racial and class factors (of course, importantly so) much more prominently than gender-based causes of crime. Cook’s article is nicely nuanced, moving from classic onto contemporary “mainstream” criminology on through critical criminology; theorists of the latter have brilliantly condemned class inequalities but, rather frustratingly, also fell/fall short when it comes to giving gender theorizing its due. She ends by acknowledging the contributions of feminist criminologists from Chesney-Lind through Flavin and Potter, among others, without whom “feminist criminology” itself might not have come into existence.

Cook calls for “both/and” analyses, a feminist intellectual/political insistence that also distinguishes Albert De La Tierra’s interesting and original analysis for the special issue. Rather than plumbing a perspective with a gendered lens (as Naegler and Salman do for cultural criminology), De La Tierra highlights methods: he uses discourse analysis to examine three major contemporary ethnographies about crime, that is, well-known works by Randol Contreras, Alice Goffman, and Victor Rios, respectively. How, he asks, have these qualitative researchers incorporated, or not, the pressures and prerogatives of masculinity (and masculinities) into their accounts? Provocatively, De La Tierra contends that many sociologists and criminologists do in fact take gender into account but that they do so in ways ostensibly “short-sighted” and unwittingly reproductive—rather than challenging—of extant power relations concerning gender, race, and class. He also introduces the innovative concept of “perilous masculinity,” by which De La Tierra suggests that ethnographers of crime often present limited and conventional, rather than more wide-ranging and visionary, depictions of men’s actual attitudes and practices. It is a hopeful article with which to conclude the special issue. De La Tierra offers a sense of potentialities and possibilities. Men across social milieux vary even as these ethnographers tend to present “perilous masculinity” stereotypically and although (as De La Tierra acknowledges) sexist and sometimes violent practices also too often persist. Yet, he posits, not all men in marginalized communities are as sexist as researchers show; moreover possibilities of change, and of a less sexist future, are there to be tapped and developed from already existing characteristics of generosity and familial affection, among other important traits.

Indeed, a common thread across the four articles of this 10th-year celebration of FC is a sense of critique toward the past and of potentiality pointing forward. To turn things around, as do Naegler/Salman as well as De La Tierra by having feminists gaze at masculine not just “feminine” behaviors and scholarship, is to recognize—profoundly—that gender-based transformation necessitates that both men and women change, evolve, and grow. Moreover, reflected in different ways across all four articles—Chesney-Lind and Chagnon’s, Kimberly Cook’s, Naegler and Salman’s, and De La Tierra’s writings—is the clear understanding that not just gender but race, class, and sexualities matter greatly in their intricate interconnections with each other. The special issue thus manifests trends and critiques long developing in the Division and expressed in many prior issues of FC. Let us hope, then, that the next 10 years of the journal are as academically and creatively rich as those in the decade before it. Along the way, criminology may well become less male-dominated and influenced by feminist theories, ideas, and methods, just as feminists have long been affected themselves/ourselves by the lessons of criminology.