The Societal Normative Context and the Gender Gap in Delinquency: Evidence from a Cross-National Survey

• In Event: 570 - Section on Crime, Law and Deviance Paper Session. Sex, Gender, and Crime, Law, and Deviance

Abstract

Despite the impressive accumulation of studies on the gender gap over the course of the past several decades, a limitation of the research is that much of it has focused on relatively short-run changes in crime within a single nation, most commonly the United States. Elements of social organization typically do not change appreciably over relatively brief periods of time, and in the absence of longitudinal data for extended historical periods, substantial variation in key elements of social organization, such as prevailing understandings of gender, is most likely to be captured by means of a comparison of societies – in a sense, by means of examining ‘history sideways’ (Thornton 2005). The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the debate by examining gender differences in offending using individual-level data from a cross-national survey of juvenile delinquency and contextual (national) data from the World Values Survey (WVS). In so doing, this research expands the literature dominated by aggregate-level studies of crime trends as recorded in official statistics. Moreover, a distinctive feature of this approach is that it focuses on the potential impact of the larger macro-social context, and more specifically, on the prevalence of patriarchal gender norms in society at large. Our overarching research question can be stated quite simply: Is the gender gap in delinquency enhanced within a patriarchal normative context and attenuated within a less patriarchal environment?

Authors

• Jukka Savolainen, University of Nebraska

• Samantha Applin, State University of New York-Albany

• Steven F. Messner, State University of New York

• Lorine Hughes, University of Nebraska-Omaha