Girls and Violence: An Overview (From Youth Violence: Prevention, Intervention, and Social Policy, P 171-199, 1999, Daniel J. Flannery and C. Ronald Huff, eds. -- See NCJ-184963)

• NCJ Number: 184970
• Author(s): Meda Chesney-Lind Ph.D.; Marilyn Brown M.A.
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 29 pages
• Sale Source: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Hardbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter discusses the theory that girls' aggressive behavior can be fully understood only after it has been located "within the interpersonal and institutionalized patterns of patriarchal society."

Abstract

The violence that permeates the social milieu of adolescents has both overlapping and divergent effects on male and female youth. Girls are subject to certain constraints and risk factors that distinguish their experience of violence in important ways from the way boys in the same neighborhoods experience violence. Also, girls of color, especially those born into economically and politically marginalized families, experience violence in ways that are distinct from ways that white girls experience violence. The chapter explores how the etiology and experience of violence are differentially expressed in the lives of adolescent females and argues that factors that place females at risk for those divergent outcomes must be considered in efforts at prevention, intervention, and social policy formation. The article discusses theories of female criminality, trends in girls' violence and aggression, a psychological perspective on aggression and violence, violence and girls' delinquency, aggressive behavior, crime and girls' participation in youth gangs, growing up with violence, and gang membership and risk. Notes, tables, references