Missing Faces: Is Historical Institutionalism the Answer for Conducting Intersectional Research?

• NCJ Number: 204362
• Journal: Women & Criminal Justice Volume: 15 Issue: 2 Dated: 2004 Pages: 81-98
• Author(s): Lori Beth Way
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines intersectional perspectives for the study of female offenders and suggests that the specific empirical method of historical institutionalism would benefit intersectional researchers.

Abstract

According to an intersectional perspective, the combination of race, class, and gender serve to create a more complex reality than any one characteristic on its own. While feminist scholars have shown that female offenders have unique criminal justice needs, the author charges that criminologists and other social scientists have only partially acknowledged that female offenders have unique needs and most fail to note that different women hold different relational positions to criminal justice officials. The tensions in criminology created by issues of gender are reviewed as the author explores calls for intersectional research concerning women offenders. The central tenet of the intersectional perspective is the importance of attending to the relational positions of people and how those positions are in flux depending upon the changing axis of power in any given context. Thus, an intersectional perspective accounts for not only how ideologies impact social phenomenon, but also how political and economic arrangements influence social patterns. The research method of historical institutionalism uses an intersectional perspective to discern the necessary conditions for an event or situation to occur. The author outlines possible research designs that would utilize a historical institutional method to discover how the intersections of race, gender, and class converge to create unique situations for female offenders. This type of approach to the study of female lawbreakers has the potential to lead to progressive changes in criminal justice practice because it reaches beyond a comparison of male and female crimes in order to document the sexism, racism, and classism in the criminal justice system. Notes, references