A gendered approach is crucial if we are to solve female gang membership
In 2017, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched
the #LondonNeedsYouAlive to fight rising
knife crime. The
campaign released videos and posters urging young Londoners
not to carry knives. While the visuals mostly
represented – and were targeted at – young men and boys, a few girls were
included, highlighting a reality: that women and girls are importantly involved
in urban violence. Why then is their participation to criminal and gang-related
activities so underrepresented and understudied? Why is so little done to
communicate with them and provide them with adequate support and alternatives?
Girls in gang are almost invisible and rarely spoken of, a silence that
reflects the subaltern status of females in organised crime as well as in the
licit world.
Source: https://the-dots.com/projects/london-needs-you-alive-205958
We are reluctant to depict females as violent
criminals. Socially learnt gender expectations construct women as calm,
obedient, caring. The violence of gangsterism clashes with these feminine
characteristics and confers female gang-members with a frightening ambiguous
duality[i]. A violent woman is not just
dangerous, she is taboo. This mis-conceptualisation of women in gangs stigmatises
them and makes them less likely to request and receive appropriate counselling
and help to escape gang violence.
But women in gangs, violent or not, are often victims.
Because females
are less likely to be stopped and searched than males,
they are very commonly pressured to hide weapons, money, or drugs. Often, this
provides girls with a feeling of importance and is perceived as a sign of trust
from the friend or boyfriend they are helping. A relationship with an existing
male member and the search for what feels like safety are the most common of many
factors that may motivate females to enrol in organised crime.
This relationship can often become terribly abusive and lead to physical and
sexual violence. Girls in gangs are overwhelmingly victims of assault or exploitation
from their male counterparts. They are also vulnerable to attacks from other
gangs, who use them as proxy to humiliate or retaliate against their boyfriends
or brothers in the gang.
Sexual violence comes hand in hand with isolation.
Victims are ostracised by other girls who fear being targeted or associated
with them. The abusive nature of the relationships women in gangs are entangled
in, as well as mistrust of the police pushes them not to report those crimes,
which go unpunished, normalising abuse. Women are also discouraged from
testifying against a gang member or from leaving the gang in fear of what would
happen to them or their family if they did.
Women’s status in criminal organisations reflects their
decreased socio-economic opportunities in everyday life. When they join gangs,
they are assigned subaltern positions and receive no opportunity to improve
their situation. Women
involved with drug cartels in Latin America, especially
those from ethnic minorities, are delegated low-ranking, low-paying, high-risk responsibilities
like drug mules. Women are almost always excluded from leadership positions and
are mostly active on the peripheries of gangs.
When they
engage more actively with their gang’s activities, the tasks they are assigned
can remain somewhat gendered: they are often asked
to fight other girls for the gang, and are otherwise expected to avoid
very violent settings, and to stick to dealing drugs. Some gang exclude women
from fights[ii] – except sometimes to
break them up – and male members of the gang will step up to defend a girl’s
reputation if she was harassed or assaulted by another man, reinforcing gender
roles and the girls’ dependence on their male counterparts.
Nevertheless, active female members distinguish
themselves from the ‘girlfriends’ by their involvement in violent crimes and
their de-feminised behaviour. Adopting a male persona is a crucial step in a brutalisation
pathway that takes them from a position of victim to one of
power. Opting for masculine clothes, jewellery, and tattoos, as well as
behaviours that reproduce masculine strength such as carrying weapons and partaking
in violent attacks constitute elements of performed masculinity that are
crucial to the recognition of manhood[iii]. By making themselves
unfeminine, they de-sexualise themselves, which legitimises their claim for
higher-ranking membership while protecting them from sexual violence.
If we want to help girls and women involved with gang,
we must first wonder why it is that their only solution to obtain respect and
safety is to turn themselves into men. It is necessary to formulate a
gender-specific response to female gang membership. This starts with better
studies to fight the invisibility of females in organised criminality and
recognise the first signs of involvement, as well as those
that show that a woman is psychologically ready to be helped
escape gangsterism.
Beyond this, we must formulate a long-term solution
that works to bring about deep structural changes to do away with the
conditions that drive women to enrol into gangsterism. This includes promoting
better police and hospital response to disclosure of abuse as well as deconstructing
the pre-conception female gang members have that the system has abandoned them.
Prevention campaigns must stop treating women in gangs as an epiphenomenon, and
specifically engage with them, as did the Hide
his Gun campaign.
Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/police-target-teen-girlfriends-who-hide-guns-for-gangsters-6718823.html
This also means introducing
drug treatment facilities in sensitive areas, promoting healthy community environment,
and supporting programmes against domestic violence. Women in gangs are not
assigned subaltern positions by accidents. It is the reflection of greater
structural dynamics that victimises women and girls, and only a gender-specific
approach will keep them away from gang violence.
[i] Douglas, M. 1966. Purity
and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
[ii] Hunt, G., Joe-Laidler, K. 2001. “Situations of Violence in the Lives of
Gang Members”. Health Care for Women International. Vol. 2, Issue 4.
363-384.
[iii] Gilmore, D. 1943. Manhood in the
Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. New Haven; London: Yale
University Press.
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