Category: Gender

Gender And Crime: Serial Killers

Introduction

Within this end of course assessment, I am going to be talking about Gender and Crime. A brief explanation into the differences in male and female criminals, criminological theories including the chivalry thesis. Crime & media in popular culture also falls into the category for this assessment which talks about cultural criminology and representations. The main body of this assessment will fall around the infamous serial killer Aileen Wuornos and how she was represented by the media, popular culture, and society in her portrayal as a psychotic serial killer who prostituted herself and prayed on wealthy men. This assessment will conclude with female criminality portrayals, the evil woman hypothesis and Summarised accordingly with the findings made within the body of this assessment.

Gender & Crime

In 1997 a study was published by Lisa Broidy and Robert Agnew surrounding the questions generally raised with the link between gender & crime. The study applies GST (Agnew’s general strain theory) to the two most common questions asked about gender and crime:

1. How can we explain the higher rate of crime among males?
2. How can we explain why females engage in crime? (Broidy & Agnew, 1997)

The authors of the publication suggest that gender differences in different sorts of strain and the reaction to strain helps to understand the overall gap within criminal behaviour. Regarding question number 2, there’s arguments that the several types of strain could lead to female crime under proper circumstances. In this area, general strain theory has a lot in common with various accounts that can explain crime in females in terms of oppression. (Broidy & Agnew, 1997)

Criminological theories on gender & crime

Crime, Media, and popular culture

The analysis of crime, media, and popular culture is arguably one of the most important and satisfyingly enlightening areas of criminological inquiry. (Dowler, 2006)

There is not much doubt that the media has become the centre of attention when producing and filtering ideas of crime for national television. The media’s selective nature on produces televised and readable crime, like, emphasising on the violence and sensationalism and also playing to the fears, both fabricated and real life of both viewers and readers, has produced a very distorted picture of crime and criminality that happens in real life. Furthermore, true crime book genres, has seen a mas growth, with hundreds of titles appearing on shelves every year. All of these are a big contribute to the public’s never ending thirst for knowledge on the weird and most violent crimes. Beyond this, crime related news stories tend to be repetitive with its nature, reporters tend to recycle well known stories that can be used in related stories or new developments within the original story itself. (Dowler, 2006)

The Karla Homolka case provides a really good example of what Soothill and colleagues (Soothill, Pearson, Francis, Peelo and Acklerley 2002; Soothill, Francis, Pearson and Peelo 2004) deem as “mega cases,” which is cases that produces relative longevity with the media because they produce an amazingly strong response with the audience the reporter is writing to. Homolka’s case generated over 1,100 stories and reports in the Toronto Star since 1995. This yielded measure of both the simple mindedness of repeating popular and well understood themes and to draw the audience in, this is a common practice in journalism. (Fleming 1983, 1996, 2006)

Gender and serial murder

Serial killers have been deemed as loners who tend to stalk strangers at night to snatch, torture and sexually assault their victims before evidently killing them. They tend to have nicknames like “Jack the Ripper” or “the Yorkshire Ripper”. (Kozlowska, 2019)

Consider Jane Toppan, a young woman who lived in the US working as a nurse, She killed around 31 people, a lot of them were under her care. Her niche was the use of poison and loved watching her victims die, she was even reported to lie down by their sides as they were losing their lives. Toppan’s modus operandi fits the pattern of a typical female serial killer which was identified by researchers in a paper published in 2015. Women tend to kill people they know, are often care givers and well educated. (Kozlowska, 2019)

Marissa Harrison, psychology professor at Penn State Harrisburg, argues that these gender variances can by explained through evolutionary psychology – that human brains are hardwired through how our ancestors lived within the prehistoric era. According to Marissa’s theory, Male serial killers are hunters, they follow their victims like they did with their prey in nomadic communities. However, female serial killers, are gatherers, according to the article published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences. (Kozlowska, 2019)

The paper shows that men and women serial killers do kill differently, it also offers an interesting theory in to why that exactly is. In 2015 a paper published showed that 39% of female serial killers worked in healthcare. They tend to stay in one place and use less violent methods of culling, like poison.

Marissa does state that these are just a generalisation as America’s most famous female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, who was portrayed in the movie ‘Monster’ in 2003, conducted her killings in more of a similar way to that of a male serial killer. (Kozlowska, 2019)

Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos was an American serial killer convicted of murdering around 7 people between 1989 – 1990. Her case drew attention from all around the world to issues relating to gender and violence and the legal treatment of acts of self defense by women. Her life became the subject of two documentaries and a film named ‘Monster’ which came out in 2003.

Aileen’s start in life was not a great one. Her parents separated before she was born and shortly after that, her father spent a lot of time in various mental hospitals for child molestation. At the age of 4, Wuornos and her brother were sent to live with their grandparents. When she was a teenager she spent some time at home for unmarried mothers before dropping out of school and becoming a prostitute.

In 1974 she was sent to prison for driving under the influence and for firing a gun from a moving vehicle. She was arrested and charged various times for crimes including check forgery, armed robbery, and auto theft.

By the end of 1980 she was a drifter and in 1989-1990, whilst posing as a prostitute hitchhiker, she killed 7 middle aged male motorists who had picked her up and left their bodies along the Florida and southern Georgia highways.

Wuornos was arrested in the early months of 1991, she admitted killing the 7 men put protested that she only acted in self defense when the men assaulted her. Wuornos had supporters who viewed the killer as a strong independent woman, they even branded her a heroic figure for being able to defend herself against male aggression.

She was convicted and sentenced to death for one of the murders in 1992 and she later pleaded guilty to 3 more of the murders.

Aileen Wuornos kept herself defense claim, speaking publicly ‘I’m supposed to die because I’m a prostitute? No, I don’t think so. I was out prostituting, and I was dealing with hundreds and hundreds of guys. You got a jerk that’s going to come along and try to rape me? I am going to fight. I believe everybody has a right to self-defend themselves.’ – Aileen Wuornos.

Aileen Wuornos was executed via lethal injection.

Mental health issues

From the contents of Wuornos’ biography, some of her criminal activities conducted and violent behaviours shown in her youth could be contributed by factors like the abuse she was succumbed to in her early childhood, and also the neglect she received from the bad parenting techniques inflicting by her grandfather as a research conducted on Wuornos through an interview found that Aileen’s grandfather was both physically and emotionally abusive towards Wuornos. He often beat her up then called her insulting names like a whore (Myers, Gooch & Meloy, 2005).

In a study carried out by Knutson et al. (2004), it points out that, deficient parenting, more towards neglectful parenting was a major predictor for the growth of anti-social behaviour for children and teenagers/young adults in their later life.

Furthermore, with the combined factor of the abusive parenting mixed with the natural aggressive nature Aileen possesses, it made her even more prone to the growth of exhibiting anti-social behaviour. According to relatives of Wuornos, she has various different behavioural problems going back from as far as childhood, she has a really bad, short temper which caused her to get into fights with people all the time. She also stole from family and friends and exhibited property destruction behaviour when she set her home and the girls toilet in her school on fire. (Myers, Gooch, & Meloy, 2005)

According to studies conducted by Andershed, Narusyte, Lichtenstein, and Neiderhiser (2007); Schaffer, Clark, and Jeglic (2009); Shek and Ma (1997), the use of bad parenting could heighten the growth of anti-social behaviour in children, especially when they exhibit signs of an aggressive nature.

Biological Factors

As mentioned in Wuornos’ biography, her biological father was a psychopath, so there is a possibility that Aileen could of inherited some psychopathic traits of her father, things like lack of remorse and empathy, poor behaviour control, which can be a factor in her causes for committing her more serious crimes, as according to Blonigen, Hicks, Kreuger, and Iacono (2008); Brogaard (2012); Hicks, Veaidyanathan, and Patrick (2010), psychopathic traits can be genetically inherited and predisposed to the child of a psychopath. In the study which was conducted by Gooch, Myers, and Meloy (2005), Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist Revised was employed by the researchers so they could assess Wuornos, the generated results from the PCLR indicated that Wuornos’ tendency of becoming a psychopath was significantly high as she ticked a high amount of numbered criteria within the checklist, like, pathological lying, lack of remorse, conning, need for stimulation, impulsivity, parasitic life and promiscuous sexual behaviour.

Furthermore, in an interview which was performed by Gooch, Myers, and Meloy, the researchers found Wuornos’ mother to be an alcoholic. Hence why there is a possible chance that Wuornos may have suffered from central nervous system damage of dysfunction due to alcohol exposure whilst in the womb, this may have been a contribute to Wuornos’ aggressive nature.

As stated by Pinel (2004), prenatal alcohol exposure can cause neurological damage to a baby once born, and the occurrence of disorders such as difficulty to communicate and/or understand each other as well as lack of impulse control can happen. In summary of this, by looking at the case of Wuornos from a biological perspective, there is a chance that these factors could be a major contribution towards her criminal behaviour.

Gender Peculiarities And Differences In Serial Killers

Introduction

A serial killer is a person who “kills on at least three occasions, with what can be called an emotional cooling-off period between the incidents” (Alvarez & Bachman, 2017, p129). I have always been interested in criminal justice as a whole from both points of view: the criminal and the system. There are a few specific topics that I am particularly intrigued by and serial killers is one of them. The mind of a serial killer, the motive, the way a serial killer chooses to kill and whatever else comes with a serial killer interests me. As we all know, serial killers kill people, but according to the textbook, it is extremely hard to estimate how many people serial killers in one year due to the fact that serial killers often kill in different geographical locations and it is difficult to connect. The text talks about how, in order to identify a murder as part of a serial case, the murderer would have to leave identifiers such as “signatures”. Signatures could include folding the victim’s clothes or leaving an item at the scene (Alvarez & Bachman, 2017, p130). Another reason it is hard to catch a serial killer is because it is very expensive to conduct long term investigations, especially considering the killings are sometimes in different locations. Some well-known male serial killers we know of are Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, Gary Ridgway, and more. Some well-known female serial killers include Aileen Wuornos, Nannie Doss, Kristen Gilbert, and more. These serial killers had their own ways of killing, and also their own ways of staying out of trouble for as long as they did for the murders. In my research, I will be talking about the different types of serial killers, characteristics of both male and female serial killers and also, the different types of serial killers broken down using many different sources to support.

Serial Killer Typologies

The textbook, “Violence: The Enduring Problem” by Alex Alvarez & Ronet Bachman (2017), talks about serial killers in chapter four and gives the six different typologies of a serial killer based on Holmes’ and Holmes’ classifications. The first typology is the Hedonistic Lust Killer. These killers are “distinguished by their effort to obtain sexual pleasure from killing” (Alvarez & Bachman, 2017, p132) meaning these types of serial killers kill because it satisfies them sexually. Either the killing in itself is enough to satisfy or to actually engage in intercourse with the corpse and cutting off sex organs. The next typology is the thrill killer. This killer kills because it’s fun, in a nutshell. This could include sexual satisfaction, but the victim needs to be alive because this killer wants to torture, humiliate, dominate, and terrorize the victim. Comfort killers are the third typology and they kill because it brings comfort, “such as financial gain” (Alvarez & Bachman, 2017, p132). Power/Control killers murder to dominate and have control over their victims. Sex is also sometimes involved here, but it comes from having complete control. Mission killers make it a mission to eliminate a group of people they feel are unworthy. An example of this type of killer is a killer who hates women and simply feels like they should not have to share the same earth as them. The last type of killer is the visionary killer and this person kills because they suffer from some type of psychosis, however this is a rare type. These killers “perceive noises that command them to kill” (Alvarez & Bachman, 2017, p133). After going over all of those, we can see serial killers kill based off of their own wants and needs most of the time, not because they have a mental problem which would cause them to plead insanity.

Characteristics of Female Serial Killers

I was able to find a peer-reviewed article called “The Personality Characteristics of Female Serial Murderers” by Meagen M. Hildebrand and Scott E. Culhane. In the article, they chose to issue surveys to twenty incarcerated females and four of them declined. By the end of it all, they only ended up with four female serial murderers to answer the questions they asked on the survey. In the survey, they used measures related to demographics, psychopathology, psychopathy, and personality features. The results for inmate A were that she lived a very regular life. She married three times and had children. Her third husband worked the night shift at a hospital, and she got a job there as an LVN with her LVN certificate she got while attending community college. This is when her killing spree began. She started killing at age 34 and killed 20 of the patients under her care from the ages of 15 to 101 years old (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, 37). The way she killed these patients was to use an “intravenous drug used to paralyze the respiratory system in patients” (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p37), but was able to go undetectable by hospital staff because of her great work history. She was caught after trying to kill an elderly man who ended up living and was able to identify her as the nurse who put something in his IV. Her highest scores when it came to personality were in paranoia at 113, schizoid at 83, avoidant at 90, self-defeating at 79, anxiety at 87, and delusional disorder at 83. The 46-year old’s total PPI-R score was 265. Inmate B was 53-years old and caucasian who was serving two 50-year prison sentences. This inmate confessed to killing two elderly patients with potassium overdoses through injection (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p40). At first neither of them were suspected as a homicide because of their age, but this inmate couldn’t keep quiet about what she had done and ended up telling her husband who kept quiet about it for five months then ended up telling their pastor and marriage counselor which caused her arrest (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p40). Inmate B showed elevation for depression at 72 and elevation for social discomfort at 76, repression at 78, overcontrolled hostility at 66. A three-point code of 170 was established based on her elevations (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p40). Inmate C is serving life for killing her husband. This inmate was abandoned by her father soon after birth and her mother committed suicide while she was a baby which caused her to live with her grandmother. From age six on, her uncle sexually abused her and forced her to drink alcohol which caused her to develop alcoholism and was then gang-raped at 14. She dropped out of high school at 15 and began working the streets protituting and stripping to make ends meet (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p41). She had elevated scores on depression at 72, anger at 76, type-a behavior at 77, low self-esteem at 73, social discomfort at 80, family problems at 83, and negative treatment indicators at 79. One of her highest scores was on marital distress scale at 93 which could explain her killing her husband considering he was also someone who was abusive to her. Her highest score overall was avoidant at 99

(Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p41). Lastly, inmate D was a 39-years old, caucasion woman who is serving two consecutive life sentences. She began murdering at 17 with her on and off boyfriend. Her and her boyfriend tempted a store assistant manager to meet them on a road outside of town where her boyfriend ended up shooting him in the back of his head and robbed him of all of the money he had on him (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p42). After this incident, the two decided to rob again and decided to leave the victims alive. They stole two silver dollars from the house and left. The victims reported this and inmate D and her husband were caught quickly after paying for gas with the silver dollars. Her boyfriend confessed to everything and she was sentenced (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p42). She showed elevations on hypochondriasis at 80, psychopathic deviate at 71, paranoia at 70, and schizophrenia at 66. Her highest scores were hypochondriasis and compulsive at 88 (Hildebrand & Culhane, 2015, p42). After looking at all of the inmate facts, I notice that all of the inmates they surveyed were close to the middle of their life during the time of the crime and I also notice all of the women they surveyed were white women. I noticed that the scores that came up the most were for repression, anger, and paranoia.

Characteristics of Male Serial Killers

The article I found on this topic was called “Critical Characteristics of Male Serial Killers” by William B. Arndt, Tammy Hietpas, and Juhu Kim. The purpose of this article was to unfold a male serial killer. Some of the studies they found were that the process begins with “predispositional factors which may be biological” (Arndt et al, 2004, p120). They talk about how in the years before the killings, the killer is traumatized by factorssuch as “physical and sexual abuse, negative parenting, divorce, or the death of a parent… the consequences of these traumas are mistrust of others, feelings of being rejected, worthlessness, and inability to cope with stress.” (Arndt et al, 2004, p120). The article talks about various facilitators such as violent pornography and excessive use of drugs and alcohol which further the deviant process and expedite the urge to kill. The text says that 84% admitted to assaults on adults during adolescence, 62% on destruction of property, and 52% to fire setting. 28% had a history of being treated for mental health problems and 21% were treated for alcohol and drug abuse. They mentioned that the age of onset was from the late 20s to the mid 30s and the median age of the first murder is age 27. Most male serial killers, as stated in the textbook and this article, are white, but African Americans ranked between 13% and 20%, while Hispanics and Asians are very seldom instances (Arndt et al, 2004, p121).

Gender Differences in Serial Murderers

The article I found on the gender differences is called “Gender Differences in Serial Murderers: A Preliminary Analysis” by Belea T. Keeney and Kathleen M. Heide. Their studies found that the female murder rate had increased from “5.1% in 1965 to 9.8% in 1991.” (Kenney et al, 1994, p384). They said that the number of women arrested for homicide in 1991 was 36% greater than the number arrested in 1965. Their studies show that female killers are more likely to kill their family than males are, and they also have a tendency to be older than the males who kill and they usually kill their victims in their own homes (Kenney et al, 1994, p384). Studies show that male serial murderers tend to inflict a lot of victim damage along with causing death and engage in the torture of their victims. Male serial killers have also been known to stalk their victims and commit organized or disorganized murders (Kenney et al, 1994, p386). Males even attend their victims funerals as a way to relive the murder they committed. Males have been proven to be the first-born in their family and also have been victims of childhood abuse or neglect including parents who were alcoholics or drug addicts (Kenney et al, 1994, p386). Female serial killers have been known to have endured much sexual abuse, broken homes, chemical abuse history, and psychiatric diagnosis as children (Kenney et al, 1994, p391). The average age that women committed their murderers was 32.9 years-old. Unlike males, the female serial killers did not show any stalking of their victims and they also left the crime scene. Another thing about the female killers was the fact that most of them had a reason for murdering their victims such as insurance money (Kenney et al, 1994, p390). As we can see, female murderers and male murderers have many differences such as their motives for killing, if they know the victim, and what they do after they killed the victim.

Conclusion

The different types of serial killers were a very interesting topic. Most people expect serial killing to be a male hobby, but specific females do it, too. We have looked at the different characteristics of both male and female serial killers and also, some of the gender differences between the two and found things that were very surprising. The differences of male and female serial killers were significant which is probably due to the fact that women have more emotion than men do at times and that could explain why women usually know their victims while men usually do not, but just simply kill to kill. The results from the test with the women surprised me knowing that many different things can affect one’s mindset and also change the way they think. As we saw, inmate D had no reason to kill her victim, but because her boyfriend was with her while inmate C killed her husband because of how abusive he was to her while they were married, along with the abuse of all kinds that she endured as a child. Inmates A and B killed elderly patients with no real intent which almost confuses me on how women usually have a reason for killing, according to Heide Kenney in 1994, but this could be because this research was done before the research for female serial killers that I included. Studying this was very interesting because I am very interested in the study of serial killers and why they do what they do and this research helped to put it in perspective, especially after seeing statistics.

Bibliography

1. Alvarez, A. and Bachman, R. (2017). Violence: The Enduring Problem. (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC.
2. Arndt, W. B., Hietpas, T., & Kim, J. (2004). Critical characteristics of male serial murderers. American Journal of Criminal Justice : AJCJ, 29(1), 117-IV. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.uccs.edu/10.1007/BF02885707
3. Hildebrand, M. M., & Culhane, S. E. (2015). Personality characteristics of the female serial murderer. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 5(1), 34-50. Retrieved from https://libproxy.uccs.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.uccs.edu/docview/1648514193?accountid=25388

Who Is the Best Leader Man or Woman: Essay

The discrimination against ladies has been exceeded via specific generations, gender inequality in this evaluation main to insufficient representation of women in leadership positions. The fact that guys occupy the majority of senior positions is a substitute for women. Leadership is an integral count in advertising management. It is the principal thing how nicely the agency runs and how easily the facts will be delivered to the consumers.

The idea of gender inequality is inextricably linked to the thought of leadership, simply as the concept of marketing is inextricably linked to that stereotype. Gender stereotypes mold society’s perceptions and beliefs about the concept of a girl in a position of leadership. And who is one of the major disseminators of these stereotypes? The advertising business is dominated by the heads of marketing who use advertising for their product to be known and inform the consumers.

Advertising creates a big effect on society, such as psychology, sociology, and philosophy. The majority of marketing has historically portrayed human beings primarily based on the ways of gender stereotypes. A cultural concept focused on stereotypes, it is generalized and ordinary with the aid of society, based on gender or sex. Due to beliefs created through the gender stereotype, ladies have concerns about rejection, situation in enterprise or job, and mental and emotional distress.

Women are commonly represented as incapable, weak, inclined, and handy to manipulate (Plakoyiannaki et al., 2008) stereotype set the variations in society’s point of view and faith between guys and women, which put ladies at a dis gain rather than guys in the workplace. Thus, understanding the obstacles and impediments of women can change the perspective of society towards girls that they are incapable of being a leader.

Gender stereotypes portrayed females in a common role, ladies greater possibly to be unemployed (for example, housewives and caretakers of their children). Thus, an organization that tolerates gender stereotypes finds inequality less offensive and has a greater fine effect than acquiring ladies than can show that they are certified and has the capacity and functionality to help in the enhancement of the company. Gender stereotypes create gender inequality and discrimination against women’s skills and capabilities. Assuming they are more in a position than what we assume they are, women are less likely to practice for jobs until they are assured that they meet most of the listed qualifications. Gender stereotype divides gender or intercourse into dominators and subordinates. It isn`t only in everyday existence or in the administrative center that woman figure struggles with the bias inherent in society. Gender stereotypes impact the choice and competency of girls whether they permit the common role or believe in their competencies and skills that they can be equal with males and be a leader.

Leadership refers to the person’s capacity to affect others closer to the fulfillment of some goal. Leader leads, motivate guide, aggregates people, recommendation, and ideas. The foremost impediment to lady management is precipitated by using stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Women are constantly seen as inferior beings (Davidson and Burke, 2011).

The women wreck expectation and the gender stereotypes about them can create reactions and modifications to society’s perspective and beliefs, due to stereotypical look at them that they ought to stay in their common position the work of a lady figure. As a result, the ideas of the creator focuses on gender stereotype towards leadership. In this analysis, it concluded that both women and guys are equally advantageous as a leader, each has unique methods of being a leader in their very own way.