SOC219H5 Lecture Notes - Ambivalent Sexism, The Courtroom
Last Class
-Women remain in a token status within the police force
-Despite no real gender differences in performance ability, women in policing remain under-
appreciated and report higher level of job related stress
-Women in policing can see themselves both as POLICEwomen and policeWOMEN depending
on the context (simultaneously reinforcing & rejecting gender stereotypes)
-Black women policing experience the most workplace alienation
-Negative police-citizen interactions lead to legal cynicism
Consequences: Legal Cynicism
-Legal Cynicism - defined
-Consequences?
-Non-representative arrest rates
-Community distrust
-“I don’t do cops”
-Considerations
***arresting statistics, these statistics can be misguided if you don’t take into account what areas
police officer are more focused
-poor relations with police causes neighbourhood to distrust the police
-black women did not seek for help for intimate partner abuse from the police because
they simply “do not do cops”
-
Key Terms
-Legal vs. Extra-legal characteristics
-Legal are factors that relate to criminal charge and background of an individual so
things like charge severity and length of severity. Strength of evidence against a particular
persons case.
-Extra-Legal are things that pertain to the individual to their identity things like race,
ethnicity, gender, class, ability, sexual orientation
*we compare men and women who have similar legal and extra legal characteristics to see if
they really have a disparity
-Gender specific laws vs gender neutral laws
-Gender specific - only 1 law in Canada that is gender specific, which is infanticide which
is killing of a new born baby. Historically many gender specific laws, example rape which has
changed but previously it was only apparently men who could rape and women who could do
prostitution.
-Gender neutral - the way the laws are applied can still be fairly gender specific.
-Benevolent sexism
-women’s experiences are benevolent sexism, benevolent sexism arise on compliments
for women that are based on gender stereotypes. Ex. women are more caring then men, these
compliments don't seem overly harmful cause they are disguised as compliments.
-Hostile sexism is the opposition or women who take on more masculine roles, arises
with the direct insults and negative judgements that base off that women are less men. Ex.
women belong in the kitchen or cleaning is a women's job.
