Too Feminine for Execution?: Gender Stereotypes and the Media’s Portrayal of Women Sentenced to Death

• In Event: Media Depictions of Crime Perpetration: Bias, Stereotypes, and Trends

Abstract

Traditional gender norms prescribing women as more nurturing and less aggressive than men have led to both the reluctance to view women as capable of violence as well as to a greater willingness to execute men than women in the United States. Scholars have found that demonizing and dehumanizing those executed is a necessity to the implementation of capital punishment, both in cases of male and female defendants. To better understand how newspapers have framed the gender and racial discourses around women who have been sentenced to death, this study examined newspaper articles written about women sentenced to death in the United States since 1976. Using both inductive and deductive approaches, this study employed a qualitative content analysis to examine news articles about women sentenced to death in the United States since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976. The findings revealed four themes: (1) victim as offender, (2) good woman pushed, (3) violating sexual norms, and (4) villainous. These findings reveal that newspapers perpetuate racialized and gendered expectations of women through implicit and explicit use of stereotypes and controlling images when describing women sentenced to death.

Author

• Kelsey Westbury, University of South Carolina