Gender Norms Hurt Incarcerated Boys, Girls Even More
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“Juvenile justice is a gender-specific system, one that reflects and operates on assumptions about gender and reflects masculine [and feminine] norms.” —Law professor Nancy Dowd
As Nancy Dowd notes, juvenile justice systems tend to be highly gendered and gendering environments, ones that anticipate, reward and even punish specific sorts of masculinity in boys and femininity in girls.
However, because it simply assumes that boys will be manly and girls feminine juvenile justice systems are largely unaware of their own gender assumptions and thus unable to question or change them. Perhaps the main area where juvenile justice does explicitly address gender norms is programming for LGBTQ+ youth (which addresses issues of gender nonconformity). This is not to say that most girls won’t want to be feminine and boys masculine; of course they will. It’s about what kinds of manhood and womanhood we want them learning.
For instance, being manly can mean learning to keep a stiff upper lip, protect the weak and put women and children first. It can also mean getting lots of girls pregnant and beating up queers.
Both of these are definitions of masculinity that circulate in different subcultures in different places.
