Progression 2

Brennan Doyle

Professor Bieber

English 115 Honors

29 September 2015

Article Summary: The Year of Domesticity

In the article “The Year of Domesticity,” David Brooks, a conservative journalist for the New York Times, rebuts author and lawyer Linda Hirshman’s claims that women should never chose to be a stay-at-home mom. Brooks argues that mothers who stay home should not feel disempowered because they have the very important responsibility of raising their child(ren). Brooks points out that research from the commentary “The Inequality Taboo” by Charles Murray has shown that “men are more interested in things and abstract rules while women are more interested in people,” and so he believes that men are more fitted to having a full-time job, while women would be more accustomed to taking care of children.

Brennan Doyle

Stacey Bieber

English 115 Honors

1 October 2015

Article Summary: If Women Were More Like Men

In the article, “If Women Were More Like Men, Why Females Earn Less,” John Cloud, a senior writer at Time magazine and recipient of both the National Press Club prize and the GLAAD award, addresses a study done by Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall, an economist at New York University that shows that there is major discrimination in the workplace for transgender people. In fact, Cloud states that men who transition to female (MTFs) receive far more discrimination than females who transition to men (FTMs). Cloud reports that “FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more” than MTFs. Cloud argues that one factor of this is because most MTFs are less convincing than FTMs because of their large hands and frames, and therefore are not taken as seriously by their employers.

Cloud, John. "If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less."Time. Time Inc., 03 Oct. 2008. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

Brennan Doyle

Stacey Bieber

English 115 Honors

1 October 2015

Article Summary: The Gender Gap at School

In the article, “The Gender Gap at School,” David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times, claims that, statistically, most boys do worse in school because they do not like reading as much as girls do. Brooks believes that gender is not at all a social construct, but rather a physiological barrier, because male and female minds work in different ways. For example, Brooks points out that “the part of the brain where men experience negative emotion, the amygdala, is not well connected to the part of the brain where verbal processing happens, whereas the part of the brain where women experience negative emotion, the cerebral cortex, is well connected.”

Brooks, David. "The Gender Gap at School." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 June 2006. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

Brennan Doyle

Professor Bieber

English 115 Honors

13 October 2015

Essay 2 Outline

Specific Purpose Statement: To inform the reader about the inequality between males and females in criminal law.

Audience: Reasonable, educated readers

Working Thesis Statement: Although some may argue that men commit more crimes than women, I believe there is a great disparity between the way criminals of either gender are treated because fewer women get arrested than men, and males tend to serve more time in prison than women for the same crime.

INTRODUCTION:

I. Many people today would agree that gender equality is a big issue today, and while they concur that neither men or women should get special treatment, some do not consider that they should also be penalized equally.

II. The criminal justice system in the U.S. often treats women more favorably than men.

III. Although some may argue that men commit more crimes than women, I believe there is a great disparity between the way criminals of either gender are treated because fewer women get arrested than men, and females tend to serve far less time in prison than males for the same crime.

Brennan Doyle

Professor Bieber

English 115 Honors

20 October 2015

The Scales of Justice are Not Even

Many people today would agree that gender equality is a big issue, and while they concur that neither men nor women should receive special treatment, some do not consider that they should also be equally penalized. In the U.S., there are nine times as many men in prison than women. Although some may argue that men commit more crimes than women, I believe that there is a great disparity between the way criminals of either sex are treated, because adult women tend to serve far less time in prison than men for the same crimes, and juvenile females are sentenced for more time in prison than juvenile males. This kind of discrepancy causes a gender bias in which people think young women are reckless and irresponsible, but when they are adults they should not be punished because they are natural caregivers and need to be protected.

When it comes to the criminal justice system, judges tend to be more forgiving to women than men when sentencing them for the same crime. In the article “Race and Gender as Explicit Sentencing Factors,” Carissa Byrne Hessick, a criminal law professor and the Associate Dean of Faculty Research and Development at the University of Utah, states that “individual judges would sometimes sentence women more leniently than similarly situated men because women had child care responsibilities, were seen as less dangerous or, in some cases, less blameworthy”(8). Hessick shows an example from the 1974 case United States v. Maples, in which the judge gives the female defendant a lighter sentence than her male co-defendant, both of whom were guilty of bank robbery. The judge directly told the woman in question that he believed “the man takes the lead and persuades the woman,” and because of “the fact that you are a woman, the Court will not incarcerate you for quite as long as I did your co-defendant”(8-9). In another article, “Women Receive Disproportionately Lighter Sentences than Men in Domestic Violence Cases,” Cathy Young, a feminist journalist, refers to a 1997 case in which the defendant, Brenda Lee Working, tried to kill her husband by shooting at him numerous times and beating his face with the gun. Brenda’s sentence for attempted murder was all but one day in prison. Because she was using a gun, however, the judge had to add five years to her sentence, but he wanted it to be as short as possible because he had sympathy for Brenda. Imagining all women as soft, innocent people is obviously not a safe or accurate way of thinking, especially if it is your job to give criminals the proper amount of punishment they deserve. The sentence for any crime should be the same regardless of one’s gender, and should only be less than such if the defendant has a good lawyer. I would agree that men and women do have different physical and psychological characteristics, but it should not be enough to make one gender receive such unreasonable protection from the law.

Although it is apparent that women are receiving special treatment from the judiciary system, this is really only true for adults. In fact, the opposite is true for juvenile female offenders. In the article, “Juvenile Justice and the Double Standard,” George M. Anderson, Senior Research Scientist in the Child Study Center and Director of the Laboratory of Developmental Neurochemistry at Yale University, claims that people often think that young women should be protected and steered away from trouble, especially when it involves sexual behavior, but boys are just naturally promiscuous and should not be held to such high standards. As a result, more females are considered “delinquents” and are put in juvenile detention for longer sentences than males. A lot of the crimes that girls are getting arrested for are not even illegal; they are guilty of status offenses, rather than criminal offenses. Such offenses include running away from home, truancy to class, and a general lack of improvement in behavior. Anderson recalls a hearing for a teenage girl in New York named Man, who was sexually abused by her stepfather and then again by another man when she moved into a foster home. She lived on the streets in Time Square, and was arrested for committing thefts to avoid becoming a prostitute. Instead of imprisoning the men that harmed her all throughout her childhood, she was punished for constantly running away from home. Anderson argues that penalizing these girls for these status offenses and treating them like criminals is both costly to detention centers and damaging to the girls’ mental states. The constant expectations we have for young girls is often far too much for them to handle, and they can end up in a spiral of disappointment and punishment that is completely pointless and only reinforces one’s detached behavior instead of fixing it.

The criminal justice system in the U.S. is cruel to women of youth, yet overly kind to females in adulthood. Meanwhile, the treatment of male criminals has stayed relatively the same for centuries. They say that Lady Justice is blind, but how can she be if there is this imbalance and bias toward either gender in both adolescents and adults? People who believe in gender equality preach for ending discrimination in the workplace and the home, but I believe that there are not nearly enough people who would rally for equal justice for all criminals.

Works Cited

Anderson, George M. "Juvenile Justice and the Double Standard." America1 Jan. 1994: 13. General OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

Hessick, Carissa Byrne. "Race and Gender as Explicit Sentencing Factors."Social Science Research Network. Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, Vol. 13, 2010, 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

Young, Cathy. "Women Receive Disproportionately Lighter Sentences than Men in Domestic Violence Cases." Domestic Violence. Ed. Mike Wilson. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2009. N. pag. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.