Women and White-Collar Crime

Abstract

The inclusion of gender in the field of white-collar crime represents a relatively new and challenging area of study and research. The existing information on this topic is scarce, though research is emerging at a steady pace on women who commit offenses and on victimology. Several reasons explain the lack of attention on women who commit white-collar crime and patterns of victimization. First, historical research on people who commit offenses focused on men because they committed the highest number of crimes. Illegal activities committed by women were viewed as aberrations that rarely occurred. Initial empirical studies and theories in criminology were developed based on young male delinquents who were engaged in the majority of offenses and white-collar crimes remained anonymous deeds that, historically, received little recognition. The trend to study males holds true, despite the rising number of females who have become involved in the criminal justice system. Young boys and men continue to outpace women on almost all criminal offenses. Second, women were engaged in domestic duties that hindered their participation in the workforce. As a consequence of their status as wives, mothers, and homemakers the crimes women committed were related to prostitution, shoplifting, welfare fraud, and embezzlement. Women had few opportunities to commit corporate or occupational white-collar crime. Though women fought to gain equal rights, particularly in the workplace, high-level positions in corporations were rare and the glass ceiling prevented advancement in many companies. Third, until the mid-1970s few feminist scholars were active in the fields of criminology and criminal justice, which stunted growth in the area. Finally, the debates over definitional issues and lack of access to large data sources on white-collar crime stymied research efforts. The problematic nature of deciding what actions constitute white-collar crime emerged almost immediately after Edwin Sutherland’s 1939 presidential address at the American Society of Sociology (later renamed the American Sociological Association). Sutherland argued that a huge portion of crime committed by respectable businessmen in positions of power was being ignored, despite the serious harm caused by their actions. The myopic attention on street-level crime resulted in societal, scholarly, and journalistic failures to acknowledge suite-level offenses and victims. While scholarly efforts to explore white-collar crime grew, the idea that women might be involved failed to emerge until 1975. Incidents of women committing white-collar crime were so rare that fraudulent schemes were the exception to the rule. Scholars noted that low-level white-collar offenses by women, such as embezzlement, may be worth investigating, though many people believed these actions represented pink-collar crimes. The lack of opportunity in male dominated corporate and professional realms resulted in few women who participated in, for example, insider trading, Ponzi schemes, or price-fixing. A few female scholars, however, recognized that the issue was not about gender and the ability to commit white-collar crime, but instead depended on opportunity.