Women in the Kitchen: Motivation, Initiation, and Enactment of Women Methamphetamine Cooks

• In Event: Offenders’ Perspective on Street Crime, Cooking Meth, Drug Market Conflict, and Laughing At It

Abstract

Drug manufacturing, dealing, and trafficking are generally understood to be the domain of men. Women who participate in such activities are thought to encounter gendered barriers to high-level involvement in the drug hierarchy. Yet, as women’s use of methamphetamine has increased, so too has their role in its production (i.e., cooking). To learn more about the motivations, initiation, and enactment of women who cook meth, we rely on interviews with women who are former methamphetamine cooks in the Southern United States. Our findings show that although the number of women meth cooks has increased, this does not mean the gender-stratified environment has changed. Instead, changes in meth manufacturing can be attributed to easier production methods. Some women believed meth cooking was outside their control, a necessity due to influence of others or addiction, while others cooked to gain control, believing that they could earn respect, produce the best meth, and avoid demeaning behavior. Although the women varied in perceptions of their own autonomy, respect, skills, and the degree to which they could overcome barriers related to their femininity, the gendered barriers influenced their pathways into and enactment of meth cooking.

Authors

• Jessica Rae Deitzer, University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Heith Copes, University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Kent R. Kerley, University of Alabama at Birmingham