Does Gender Cause Crime?

The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

presents

Lynn Chancer

Professor of Sociology, Hunter College

Class, Racism – But Does Gender also “Cause” Crime?: High Profile Crime Cases from Glen Ridge to Steubenville

Wednesday, April 17th

4:00-5:30pm

Wildavsky Conference Room

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

UC Berkeley

2538 Channing Way

Sociologists and criminologists have effectively shown how class stratification and racialization influence disproportionate crime rates as well as biases in the criminal justice system. On the other hand the structural effects of gender, and especially of widespread ideologies associated with masculinities, are less widely identified as (insidious) ‘causes’ – or at least influences on – a number of gender-skewed violent crimes. Many scholars have written about gender and crime, and yet gender-based analyses arguably remain marginal to the heart of many criminological investigations – inside academia but, even more strikingly, inside the worldview of criminal justice analysts and practitioners. To develop this argument, I tap previous work of my own on high-profile crime cases while incorporating well-known recent incidents as well.

Lynn S. Chancer is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and a member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has written four books including Sadomasochism in Everyday Life: Dynamics of Power and Powerlessness (Rutgers University Press, 1992), Reconcilable Differences: Confronting Beauty, Pornography and the Future of Feminism (University of California Press, 1998) and High Profile Crimes: When Legal Cases Become Social Causes (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as many articles on gender, crime and culture. She is currently working on a book on contemporary feminist issues and an edited collection on The Psychic Life of Sociology.

This event is free, wheelchair accessible, and open to the public. For wheelchair access please call 642-0813 one day prior to the event. Light refreshments will be served.

For more information, call the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at 510-642-0813 or email isscucb@gmail.com.