Feminism And Criminological Research

Critically examine how contemporary feminist accounts have liberated and enlivened the discipline of criminology.

The dominant feminist view is that society is constructed entirely around the needs of men (Renzetti, 2013, p. 7). When the second wave of feminism emerged in the 1960s female academics investigated this idea by critically examining a multitude of academic disciplines, one of which was criminology (Moore, 2008, p. 48). Their aim was to expose male dominance within the system and make known the invisibility of women as both the subjects and producers of criminological research. Feminists highlighted that while previous critical criminologists had studied the rights of minority groups, the perspective of half the population still

Their theories were heavily influenced by previous research and gave primary importance to the notion that knowledge can be learnt through experience (Moore, 2008, p. 48&49). Feminist empiricism was explored through scientific investigation as their philosophies support the positivist concept that all theories can be objectively proven with evidence (Flavin, 2001). The methodology employed emphasized the role of sensory experience in knowledge through evidence, data, and facts; their approach discounts innate ideas and inborn mental capacities due to the lack of physical proof. Prior to the introduction of feminist empiricism any research carried out was androcentric, therefore the presence of women within this type of research was revolutionary for its time (Hundleby, 2012, p. 38). Despite this, the lack of female representation caused empiricist feminists to simply view females as the absent subjects so their work aimed to insert women into the current practice to create comparable research (Hundleby, 2012, p. 28). Critics such as standpoint feminists therefore argue that adding women to current methodology was a flawed research proposal (Moore, 2008, p. 49). They state that central ideals remain androcentric and claim that feminist empiricism merely compares females to the stereotypical

Their theory placed the female perspective at the center, by creating original academic research based on the stories of females (Moore, 2008, p. 52). The theory emerged from the Marxist argument that people from oppressed classes have special access to knowledge that is not available to those from a privileged class. American feminist theorist Sandra Harding claimed that those at the top of social hierarchies lose sight of real human relations and the true nature of social reality, thus missing critical questions about the social and natural world (Moore, 2008, p. 52). They assume that the perspective of the researcher creates biases and therefore aimed to construct knowledge from the participant’s subjective perspective. (Moore, 2008, p. 53). Resultantly, they intended to create new policies to reform criminological research and find a solution to the repression of women, rather than simply substituting them into mainstream theories (Flavin, 2001). Just like empiricist feminism, standpoint feminism investigates by practicing scientific enquiry through experience (Walklate, 2007); however rather than seeking to identify the reaction women have to patriarchal constructs, they aim to discover their opinions about the repression they experienced (Harding, 1987, p.