HOW USEFUL IS A HUMAM RIGHTS DISCOURSE TO THE STUDY OF GENDER AND Essay

HOW USEFUL IS A HUMAM RIGHTS DISCOURSE TO THE STUDY OF GENDER AND CRIMEDRAW ON EXAMPLES TO SUPPORT YOUR AGUMENT - Essay Example person is always seen to be more aggressive than his female counterpart (Bess, 2005), and thus according to a stereotyped mindset, it is very natural to associate violent crimes exclusively with male criminals. Criminologists from times immemorial have been dealing the issue of crimes without keeping the gender perspective in focus. There is no doubt that there have always been women who committed crimes, but no importance was relegated to them, marking them as just as an aberration. The general feeling was what Wootton more than 50 years earlier, had expressed, â€Å"If men behaved like women, the courts would be idle and the prisons empty† (1959, 32). However, in modern times, specially starting from the 1990s, perspectives have changed and many recent studies pertaining to crime have been made, keeping the gender differences in mind. More than thirty years ago Carol Smart had published her book Women, Crime and Criminology, where she had mentioned that criminology is Ã¢â‚¬Ë œgender blind’, and therefore as a subject, the study of criminology remained incomplete and unconsummated (Smart, 1976). In fact, before the second wave of feminism came in around 1960, the argument put forward by the poststructuralists that the sociology study till then had been predisposed to generalise the male forbearance, is correct to some extent. A look at the past legal records will reveal that the number of women who came to the court as a defendant, or a witness, or an overseer, is surprisingly ambiguous (Beattie, 1974-5), the exception being for cases that were looked upon as typical feminine ones. Such a mindset arose mainly from the cultural and social stereotypes that were prevalent during the nineteenth, and a greater part of the twentieth century, which led to the court records being interpreted and maintained according to these pre conceived assumptions. This article will take a look at this topic of the deviances in gender crimes and their varying patterns, and will explore