The 1AC perpetuates “gendered victimization” where women are obscured as the victims of market-violence

The reasons why material possessions are stolen is explained by need, necessity or greed. We can recognize these explanations of criminality as core to theoretical criminology, especially critical, left realist, cultural and postmodern criminological enterprises. A critical review of how economic crime and economic criminality have been variously defined and explored confirms that gender has for the most part been ignored. How women may contribute as perpetrators or victims of economic crime remains underexplored. Quotation three above neatly summarizes how women and girls are represented within the context of economic criminality and this too is problematic. These points are examined in greater detail in subsequent sections of this article. The above brings us only slightly closer to a clear and useful definition of what constitutes ‘economic crimes’ and what particular crimes for economic gain may be included in this generic category. Taking account of the prevailing definitions in the literature is clearly imperative for future research pertaining to economic crimes and crime for economic gain but such research will also need to take into account the limitations and contradictions incumbent in the dominant definitions and classifications. This article goes some way towards developing a feminist critique of them. At best, the above discussion leads to a definition of economic crimes that includes most varieties of property crimes, in particular thefts such as shoplifting and pilfering, frauds and forgery, burglary, robbery, some forms of car and drug-related offences as well as prostitution and other crimes that come under the general heading of white-collar crimes. These examples can clearly be labelled acquisitive crimes or ‘instrumental’ crimes, as opposed to crimes that may be committed due to reasons of boredom, and to some extent, for the excitement. Criminology has a strong tradition of being sensitive to ‘the economic’, as identified in the argument above on economic criminality. Nevertheless, the foregoing demands a theoretical feminist critique. Economic crimes and women If finding a common and consistent definition or classification of ‘economic crimes’ is difficult, finding a definition or classification of ‘economic crimes’ as they apply to female offenders is doubly problematic. Attempts to elaborate upon what may properly constitute economic crimes, as reviewed above, are inherently problematic in themselves and unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly, they are flawed from a feminist perspective. Two fundamental problems are evident. First, women as victims remain largely invisible in dominant definitions/classifications of white-collar (Croall, 2001), corporate (Snider, 288 Feminist Theory 4(3) 1996) and other (Gelsthorpe and Morris, 1988) varieties of economic crimes, thereby obscuring the gendered nature of victimization. Women as victims of certain corporate and business crimes remain doubly susceptible to invisibility. Crimes and criminality remain the primary concern of mainstream criminology and victims tend to be identified only as a result of crimes being proven and perpetrators being caught (Davies et al., 1996; Mawby and Walklate, 1994). Victim accreditation and status depends upon this process being completed and until then sufferers remain alleged victims. Economic corporate and business crimes tend to be in the main invisible, under-policed, under-controlled and the offenders under-prosecuted and under-punished, at least in the public domain. If such harmful and criminal economic activities and practices are invisible so too are the women victims of such activities, behaviour and crimes. Women are emerging as the victims of pharmaceutical companies, the fashion and beauty industry. In effect women are victims of what Hall (1997) describes as the globalizing neo-capitalist marketplace, based on circulation, consumption and social administration: they are victims of a consumer society. Women and their children have been victimized by suffering personal abuses, including the deforming of their bodies. It is rare that this is documented but one collection of articles edited by Elizabeth Szockyi and James Fox, entitled Corporate Victimization of Women (1996) focuses on such issues. In that volume, Loreen Snider discusses the gender-blindness of the corporate crime literature more generally. Despite the gender-neutral character of the term ‘economic crime’, women are often disproportionately the victims of the less visible, yet very physically, emotionally and financially harmful, forms of economic crime. Moreover the impact of such forms of victimization and the recovery period is likely to be greater for these female victims. The acceptance of gender-free and gender-neutral terms has blinded us, thereby rendering the gender patterning of victimization invisible.