CRI491H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Matricide, Essentialism, Social Fact
Document Summary
Gender as one factor multiple dimensions that intersect to understand prison dynamics. To understand intersection btw prisons & gender, have to ask some questions. Gender perspectives challenges legal systems that propose that there is a neutral. Marginalized subject overlooked in theories & legal system. Aim recognize how patriarchal system affects configuration of justice system. Legal systems created w/in & traversed by patriarchal system. Economic, political, cultural factors affect gendered social groups differently. Questioned the little research on crime & women until 1970s used to be biologistic explanations. Criminalized bc of moral sexual issues ex. Idea that these women came with biological defects not nurtured enough to be proper women. Starting to introduce gendered perspectives about these crimes not biological structure of women, but gender & social construction associate women with nurturing. Break away from essentialism & biological to gender perspectives & social constructionism.
