Gender Stereotypes Affecting African American Women On Death Row

In America, there is a constant debate on race and the death row. Questions about either African American are sentenced and executed more than a white man. But what most people don’t think about is gender and the death row. That is because women are very rarely sentenced to death and even fewer women actual put to death, Women accounted for only 1.4% of the 2,890 persons under sentences of death in 1994. And the numbers have not changed much. As if October 1, 2014 there were only fifty- seven women on death row (Strieb, 2006). But as we know any race or gender can commit a crime that can land them on death row, so why are women not sentence to death as much as men. The main reason is sexual bias, which is simply that women are not only not

Money is one of the main motivators for murder. When money is a factor, men usually kill someone in a robbery gone badly. Women however usually think more long term, they will take an insurance policy out on their husbands, children, and other family members and then kill them. These women are usually called black widows, named after the spiders that eat the male spiders after they have engaged in sex. Two of the women that have been executed since 1976 have been described as black widows, even though money was the motive for more than two of those women. But the reason Betty Lou Beets and Judy Buenoano are described as black widows is because of the number of victims and the number of years the killed. Betty Lou Beets murdered her fifth husband, was charged with killing her fourth, and shooting her second husband. After the discovery of her fifth and fourth husbands murders police went looking for her two others, they found them buried under her mobile home. Judy Buenoano was described as a black widow after she killed her veteran husband with arsenic, drowned her paralyzed son, and attempted to kill her fiancé with a firebomb. She collected more than 250,000 for her crimes. Now if those two black widows had not been female than most likely there victim count would be lower. Police might have taken the fact family members had not seen Betty Lou’s husbands. But the Chivalry effect often makes male police officers not even think that the sweet lady could kill her husbands. Know if Betty Lou had only killed her fifth husbands than there was a chance she could have received a lighter sentence. Betty Lou claimed that he beat her, but since she killed four out of her five, not for lack of trying to make it five out of five, she received the death