Hello, and welcome to the winter 2011 edition of the Member Profiles section of the SARAH newsletter!
In this edition, we introduce you to Frances Heidensohn, a Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics, and Jessica Hodge, an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
We choose people to profile using a random number generator (really!), but if you have suggestions for DWC members or significant contributors to the field of women and crime that you would like to see profiled, please contact Venezia Michalsen at michalsenv@mail.montclair.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Alana Van Gundy at yoderal@muohio.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We would enjoy hearing from you!
Until next edition,
Alana and Venezia
Frances Heidensohn
How did you become interested in the field of women and/or gender and crime?
As a sociology student at the London School of Economics in the 1960s,I was part of a generation who challenged received wisdom about our subject, as well as in politics and culture. We were greatly drawn to American theories of deviance & I joined the group who developed these ideas into ‘New Deviancy ‘ at a series of conferences in the late 60s & early 1970s.My my main interest, however, was from the start in understanding why women appeared so much less likely to commit crime and even less to be imprisoned and also why such questions, seemingly so central to criminology, had received little attention. Where they had been addressed, e.g., by Lombroso or Pollak, the explanations offered were stereotyped, biological or physiological & did not fit known features. Newer approaches were just as limited, so I found myself without a language which I could apply to my research findings on young female delinquents.
I set out my concerns in my first published paper in 1968, which covers the key issues which later became the agenda for feminist criminology, in its pioneering days these were :
*the need for the discipline to be transformed
* greater awareness among scholars & policy makers
* large scale & rapid research on women & crime
It has taken a long time for these ideas to come to fruition, but they all, to some extent, have done so, even if there have been unintended consequences too.
How do you define yourself as a scholar/activist/educator?
Mainly as a scholar and educator, after a forty plus year career, mostly spent in university posts. As to activism, I learned early on, after joining a group which challenged the rebuilding plans for Holloway, the women’s prison in London, that the processes of government in the UK are complex & opaque. Since then, I have had a spell as a senior civil servant in the 1970s and taken a series of part time public policy posts where I have, I hope, been able to influence & shape out comes e.g., in health care in the east End of London and through the auditing of judicial appointments & the drafting of sentencing guidelines. You could, I suppose, call this being a public sociologist.
What are your current projects or interests?
In 2004 I returned to the LSE where I am a Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department and the General Editor of the British Journal of Sociology. I am working, with Jenny Brown on a study of the media representation of women in policing & also have ongoing projects on the impact of feminism in criminology and its future.
Who is your favorite person (or animal!) to spend time with, and what are your favorite things to do when you are with them?
My family-children and grandchildren, having a big family meal for a special celebration or just a pleasant evening
How do you wind down after a stressful day?
We take great delight in the pleasures London has to offer-the opera, theatre, and great galleries and museums.
What obstacles do you feel you have overcome to be where you are today?
Quite a few, it was much more difficult for women to establish themselves 40 + years ago. Mostly it was prejudice and stereotyped assumptions and the power of male models. To give one example, when I got my chair in 1994, about 4% of university chairs in Britain were held by women. (EDITOR’S NOTE: WOW!)
What would you like to be remembered for?
Contributing to the foundation of feminist criminology.
What is one of your lifelong goals?
Aside from being more than five feet tall, seeing the Grand Canyon. Most of the others, I’ve accomplished.
Is there a website where we can send people for more information about you?
go to www.lse.ac.uk then put Mannheim Centre into the search box, you’ll find my page under the staff list there.
Jessica P Hodge
How did you become interested in the field of women and/or gender and crime?
My interest in criminal justice issues started during the second year of my undergraduate program when I fortuitously took an Introduction to Criminal Justice course. I quickly discovered that I had a real passion for studying the criminal justice system. Even still, my particular interest for gender and crime issues was not fully realized until the first year of my doctoral program at the University of Delaware. Prior to this, my interests primarily involved delinquency prevention and minority overrepresentation within the juvenile justice system. However, during my first semester at UD, I enrolled in Dr. Ben Fleury-Steiner’s Race & Crime course in which I was introduced to the topic of hate crimes. I found myself particularly interested in the gender category of hate crime law and the discussion surrounding how violence against women fit into the hate crime framework. Fortunately, I had the chance to enroll in Dr. Susan Miller’s Gender & Crime course the following semester, which provided me with an opportunity to further pursue this line of research.
How do you define yourself as a scholar/activist/educator?
This is an interesting question, and truthfully, not one that I had fully considered until completing this profile. After much thought, I realized that I am still figuring out how to define myself as a scholar/activist/educator. What do I know today? I am a feminist. I am active within the community. I challenge my students to evolve as individuals through service-learning projects. How does this define me? I’m not sure yet…
What are your current projects or interests?
I recently published a book on the subject of gender-motivated violence, Gendered Hate: Exploring Gender in Hate Crime Law. The book was published with Northeastern University Press and was based upon a case study of New Jersey’s bias crime statute. Through interviews with county prosecutors, investigators, legislative actors and advocacy group members, and through an analysis of media reports and legislative records, I examined the developmental process of the gender category and how the category has been implemented since its inclusion within the state’s hate crime law. Now that I have finished this project, I plan to continue this line of research but take it in a slightly new direction. While the literature on hate crimes has expanded over the past two decades, scant research concentrates on the experiences of hate crime victims. Specifically, hate crime research often focuses on one social identity (e.g., one’s race or sexual orientation), but fails to recognize the intersectionality of these identities. My hope is that this new project will not only inform the literature, but more importantly, assist advocacy groups with developing effective ways to support victims of bias crimes.
Who is your favorite person (or animal!) to spend time with, and what are your favorite things to do when you are with them?
Two of my favorite people to spend time with are my nephews, but because they live in Minnesota, I am unable to see them as often as I would like. When we do have the opportunity to hang out together, I like to have them show me what their favorite things to do are and this changes all of the time.
How do you wind down after a stressful day?
A recent discovery for me is how creating in the kitchen helps me wind down after a stressful day. Whether it’s playing around with the different spices and ingredients, or drinking the wine that accompanies the process, I have found that making dinner surprisingly provides much needed relief after a long day.
What would you like to be remembered for?
I hope students remember me as someone who not only challenged them academically, but also inspired them to make a difference within their communities.
What is one of your lifelong goals?
One of the biggest regrets I have is not studying abroad during college. While I have traveled over the past several years, I still yearn to live in a foreign country at some point in my life. As a result, one of my lifelong goals is to immerse myself in another culture by living with and learning from the locals. What country this will be, or whether this will happen in the context of my career, is still to be determined.
Is there a website where we can send people for more information about you?
You can find more information about me on my department’s website: http://cas.umkc.edu/CJC/. You can also find more information about my book, Gendered Hate, on the publisher’s website: http://www.upne.com/1-55553-751-0.html.