Stigma, Stereotypes, and Gender Entrapment: Violence Against Women and Poverty

• NCJ Number: 167061
• Journal: Georgetown Journal on Fighting Poverty Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1995) Pages: 35-38
• Author(s): B E Richie
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 4 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented at "A Leadership Summit: The Link Between Violence and Poverty in the Lives of Women and Their Children," held April 28, 1995, at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.

Annotation

This article develops the concept of "gender entrapment" to explain the dynamic of how women of color are enslaved by the conditions of abuse and poverty, which may in turn lead to crime and imprisonment.

Abstract

Many women participate in illegal activities in response to violence, the threat of violence, or coercion by their male partners, by the stigma of racism that leaves many women of color unable or unwilling to access the traditional response to domestic violence (criminal justice processing), as well as by the socially stigmatized status as a poor woman. The result is that they are labeled criminals rather than victims of a crime or citizens entitled to public support. The concept of "gender entrapment" suggests how many women's daily efforts to survive are discounted, invisible, and increasingly criminalized in contemporary society. Policymakers and advocates for abused women need to consider all the ways that low-income, battered women are scapegoats. They are scapegoated as minimum wage earners, uninsured workers, and frightened and thus seemingly willing sexual partners. In some ways, most women are prisoners set up to fail and then blamed for failing. Unfortunately, this hostile social world for women works well for people who are in power. Activism should focus on dismantling the incentives for those in power to construct and perpetuate gender entrapment.