This research paper addressed the following question: Do select case studies conform to Dr. Freda Adler's theory regarding socio-economic influences on female criminal behavior or dispute her theory? My research involved three female criminals: Karla Faye Tucker, Andrea Yates, and Susan Smith. I addressed Adler's theory in detail, other theories, the makeup of the female criminal and various female crimes. This study provided evidence that all three case studies conform to Adler's theory. nIn accordance with Adler's theory, each of these three females committed crimes of accessibility. None of the three individuals sought to commit a premeditated act or to murder unknown victims. They were motivated by emotions arising at a point in time when access/opportunity presented itself.

This thesis examines the role of psychopathy in violent female offending, and explores DSM-IV personality disorders that may also be a factor. Past research on female offenders and psychopathy suggest that this is a valid construct when looking at female offenders. This study was driven by two questions: which personality disorders are most common in adult female offenders who are psychopathic, and are adult female offenders who are psychopathic more likely to have been convicted of a violent offense than those who are not psychopathic, but have at least one personality disorder. The results indicate that Cluster B personality disorders were the most common, and Cluster C the least common. The results also showed that those women who were psychopathic were no more likely to have been convicted of a violent crime than those who had at least one personality disorder, but were not psychopathic. Treatment implications and the direction of future research are discussed.

Nombreuses sont les écrivaines en Iran et en France qui portent un regard critique sur leur société et profitent de leur statut d’auteure pour exiger l’égalité des droits pour toutes les femmes. Zoyâ Pirzâd et Annie Ernaux ont pour but de présenter les réalités sociales d’une époque, chacune à sa manière et avec un style adapté à des sociétés aussi différentes que la France et l’Iran. En jouant le rôle de témoins du passé et du présent, ces deux écrivaines abordent la réalité quotidienne de la femme dans sa vie intime, de la naissance à l’âge adulte, ainsi que son statut familial et sa vie sociale, et les menaces qui guettent la femme dans la société. À travers leurs œuvres respectives, les deux auteures présentent une émancipation féminine qui ne s’est pas réalisée au même moment ni de la même façon dans ces deux pays ; dans ces deux sociétés, la publication de livres par les femmes a été une entreprise difficile et conflictuelle, surtout par le passé : malgré certains acquis, les femmes iraniennes sont néanmoins encore loin de jouir des mêmes droits que les hommes – la maternité ayant longtemps été vue comme le seul rôle de la femme. Les écrivaines parlent en général des sujets acceptables dans la société où l’œuvre est produite, mais pour des questions controversées comme la sexualité féminine, elles sont obligées de transgresser les normes sociales qui pèsent sur la littérature, au risque des critiques les plus violentes. Certaines théoriciennes, comme Hélène Cixous et Béatrice Didier, affirment la spécificité de l’écriture féminine. Cette distinction de genre peut en effet montrer l’influence d’une tradition machiste ou une culture sexiste sur la littérature. Pourtant, quoique les œuvres d’Annie Ernaux et de Zoyâ Pirzâd ne semblent pas relever exclusivement de l’écriture féminine, cette distinction genrée peut valoriser les écrits des femmes qui ont toujours été marginalisées et minorées. / Many are the female writers, both in Iran and France, who look at society with a critical eye, and capitalize on their status as female authors to demand equality of rights for all women. Zoyâ Pirzâd and Annie Ernaux aim at presenting the social realities of an era, both in a way and in a style that are adapted to societies as different as Iranian and French ones. As witnesses of the past and the present, these two female writers tackle the issues of daily life reality for women, their intimacy, from birth to adult age, as well as their family status and social lives, along with all the threats that surround them in society. Through their respective works, the two authors present a process of feminine emancipation that has not taken place at the same time or in the same way in the two countries; both in France and in Iran, the publication of books by female writers has been a difficult and contentious enterprise, especially in the past. Despite some victories, women in Iran are far from enjoying the same rights as men, since maternity has been, for a long time, considered as the one and only role women can play in society. The two authors deal with subjects that are deemed acceptable in the society in which they write. However, from the moment they choose to handle more controversial issues, like female sexuality, they have to transgress the social norms established in literature, risking harsh criticism doing so. Such female writing theoreticians as Hélène Cixous and Béatrice Didier affirm the idea of the specificity of female writing. This difference in gender can in fact show the influence of a male chauvinist tradition or sexist culture on literature. Yet, for as much as Annie Ernaux’ and Zoyâ Pirzâd’s works do not apparently partake of the school of female writing, this difference in genres may help promoting the writings of those women who have always been marginalized and “minored”.

Introduction: Provoked vestibulodynia is a common life impacting disease. Research hasshown higher pain intensity and anxiety levels in primary (pain present since first penetrativeattempt) provoked vestibulodynia (PVD1) compared to secondary provoked vestibulodynia(PVD2) and mixed results regarding age and female sexual functioning when comparing thegroups.Aim: The aim of this study was to further investigate the differences between PVD1 andPVD2 regarding pain intensity, sexual functioning, age and anxiety levels. The secondary aimwas to analyze how PVD group, age, anxiety and pain intensity associates with sexualfunctioning.Method: A total of 57 women from the Netherlands and Sweden were recruited via socialmedia, advertisement and regional caregivers. This study was part of a larger study oncognitive behavioral group therapy for women with provoked vestibulodynia. Data wasextracted from a survey assessing intensity of pain, sexual functioning, age and anxiety levels.A t-test was used to compare the PVD1 and PVD2 groups and a multivariate regressionanalysis was used to analyze the variables association with sexual functioning.Results: No statistically significant differences were found regarding pain intensity, sexualfunctioning, age and anxiety levels between PVD1 and PVD2. Decreased sexual functioningwas significantly related to higher age and pain intensity.Conclusion: We found no significant differences between PVD1 and PVD2. Increased ageand higher pain intensity seems to associate with lower sexual functioning. Longitudinalstudies with a greater sample size are needed for further investigation.

This thesis addresses the gender-race intersectional inequality in Canadian conservatory piano syllabi revealing that women make up less than 14% of piano music in 20th and 21st Century piano repertoire in Canadian conservatories. By drawing on feminist musicology, critical race, and intersectionality studies, the thesis addresses elements of patriarchy and white supremacy found within specific conservatory repertoire examples. Using the SongData methodology, Adams presents 50 years of data points of gender-race representation in the Royal Conservatory of Music and Conservatory Canada piano syllabi, reporting that white women make up 13.1% of 20th and 21st-century music and Black, Indigenous, and Women of Colour make up less than 0.6%. Piano music by BIPOC women is then leveled and broken down according to conservatory standards and compared to repertoire within existing syllabi. Also included is an original graded syllabus of over 3,000 pieces by women and additional curricular resources for the piano studio.

The historic portrayal of the teenage girl in cinema as a mythical, sexual, hyper feminine and contemporary creature makes way for a specific but fairly common trope. Namely a trope where the teenage girl is used to elicit nostalgia and romance for the male protagonist, specifically because of her trauma and pain. The connection between the youth, femininity, pain and her status as contemporary is what makes the teenage girl an especially nostalgic object. Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides is a film that perfectly highlights and exaggerates this trope. By analyzing this film as well as comparing it to earlier examples, this essay will problematize this portrayal and locate its roots. This essay will analyze these examples and compare them to the general portrayal of the teenage girl in cinema during the twentieth century. By looking at The Virgin Suicides through the theory of the male gaze and the female spectacle, Coppola’s highlighting of this trope becomes clear. This essay concludes that it is unclear if Coppola subverts or simply leans into this trope, but it becomes evident that it is a trope built on the fact that pain and deadness is the height of perfect femininity. Perfect femininity in turn can only be achieved during adolescence, and therefore, the trauma of female adolescence becomes nostalgic.

Mental health professionals may lack the necessary knowledge and competency to work with female sexual offenders. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine whether gender influences attitudes toward sexual offenders and their treatment outcomes among psychology and mental health graduate students. This study was grounded in a dual form of deductive theory; alpha and beta bias was the primary theory and constructivism was the secondary theory. Data were collected from 186 graduate students in mental health programs from multiple universities. The Community Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders and the Attitude Towards the Treatment of Sexual Offender assessments were used to measure attitudes toward sexual offenders and attitudes toward sexual offender treatment. Factorial ANOVAs revealed a main effect for offender gender, with more negative attitudes toward female sexual offenders and the treatment of female sexual offenders. A significant interaction effect was found between gender of participant and gender of offender. Attitudes toward female treatment were more negative, particularly with male participants. Considering that most sexual offender treatment programs and awareness programs are geared toward male offenders, findings may be used to develop more effective policy and treatment for female sexual offenders.

If correctional institutions are to function according to established criteria, that is, to “correct” the deviant behavior of juvenile delinquents, then one obvious requirement is to have continuous contact with that individual over a period of time. This research project is one attempt to study runaways from the juvenile delinquent girls institution. This study specifically focuses on what factors influence a girl to run away and what factors encourage her to stay at Villa St. Rose. Both researchers discovered in working at Villa St. Rose that one the biggest obstacles for the treatment program was the number of runaways that occurred. As a treatment facility having female adolescents in their care, runaways were demoralizing to the staff and debilitating to treatment.

No description available.

Female sexual offenders have recently become the subject of increased medical, legal and public attention. However, the medical and legal systems insist that female sex crimes are rare regardless of the fact that when sexual victimization experiences are surveyed, the incidence of female perpetrated sex crimes is often higher than expected. Additionally, lay discourses concerning female sexual perpetration remain charged with expressions of disbelief and the vast majority of attention on sexual crimes therefore remains focused on male offenders. As a result, female sexual offenders are understood and treated differently to their male counterparts in the media and medico-legal contexts. In light of the continued denial of female sexual perpetration, this research explored how such beliefs around female sexuality shape the self-knowledge of female sexual offenders. By doing so, this investigation aimed to illuminate how disciplinary power acts to produce self-knowledge that, in turn, leads to the discursive coordinates by which female sexual offenders come to define themselves. This was achieved by interviewing female sexual perpetrators and thereafter drawing on critical discourse analysis in order to interpret the transcriptions of these interviews. The results demonstrated that the participants’ subjective experiences as agents and non-agents in the perpetration of sex crimes relied on social constructions of men, women, motherhood, sexuality and religion. All of the offenders constructed themselves as characteristically female- maternal, passive, vulnerable, victimised and innately virtuous. Their responses drew discernibly on rationalising discourse, gendered discourse, inversions of their femaleness, perceptions of the legal and correctional systems, institutionalised discourse, discourse on rehabilitation and expressions of morality and docility. Most of these discursive patterns, as both instruments and effects of power, simultaneously replicate and reproduce broader social discursive practices that imply that women are harmless, nurturing and incapable of female sexual perpetration. The availability of medical, academic and legal discourse on gender and sexuality allowed the participants to draw on victim discourse, histories of abuse and claims of psychological ailments to justify their crimes. These rationalisations also worked in conjunction with gendered discursive strategies that implied that men are aggressive perpetrators whilst women are harmless victims. As such, the perceived responsibility for the participants’ crimes was most often displaced onto their male accomplices. In this way, the participants upheld their subjective innocence as well as assisted in the maintenance of the construction of the female sexual perpetrator as an unfathomable and impossible construct. This was further emphasised by the fact that not a single participant believed she was guilty of a crime. Such a belief is in line with gendered constructions of criminality as a predominantly male activity. As such, the participants’ reproductions of traditional sexual scripts foreclosed alternative understandings of female sexual perpetration. While dominant patriarchal structures utilise discourse as a means to transmit, produce and reinforce power, this study drew on discourse as a means to resist traditional gendered understandings of sexual offending and to create new configurations of knowledge power by offering counter-knowledge of sex crimes. In doing so, academics, policy makers and the general public have access to a different and novel understanding of female sexuality in light of sexual offending. This has practical implications for the acknowledgement and awareness of female sexual perpetration as well as for future preventative efforts.