Question:
Why is it so easy for a woman to hide behind the image of "weaker sex" in front of Law and Judge?
Amir
2009-07-01 16:29:51 UTC
Why is it so easy for a woman to hide behind the image of "weaker sex" in front of Law and Judge?
Ten answers:
xoxoxo
2009-07-01 16:42:36 UTC
That's not true. If that were so, then there'd be no women at all in any prison anywhere! Maybe you should get some facts before making such a ridiculous assertion!



Did you know that since 1980 the number of women in prison has grown by over 800% in the past three decades.



Did you know that over 200,000 women are in prison and jail in the United States, and more than one million women are under criminal justice supervision?



and there are MILLIONS more women in jails/prisons around the world? According to a variety of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, many of those women in jails/prisons outside of the US are political prisoners or POWs rather than actual offenders!



The number of women in state and federal prisons has increased eight-fold from 12,300 in 1980 to 107,500 in 2005.



Nearly 2/3 of women in prison are mothers



White women made up the majority of women in custody at 45.5%, black women account for 32.6% of incarcerated women and Hispanic women represent 16% of the prison population.



A number of the women in prison have a history of being abused as children. Some are in jail because they killed spouses in self-defense, this happening after suffering YEARS of abuse at the hands of the husband or intimate partner!



I know personally of a number of women in prison because I used to be involved in a prison ministry at a church!



EDIT



Also a bit of history:



Amongst political prisonsers:



In the 19th and early 20th Century, many of the suffragists both in the US and UK were jailed for their beliefs, and they went through the torture of being force fed with tubes when they tried to do hunger strikes.



Japanese women weren't spared being jailed in interment camps during WWII. Neither were the Jewish women who sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust! Neither were some of the Irish women involved in the IRA during the Troubles! Neither were some of the Iraqi women held by US forces!



During the "Red Scare" of the 40s through the 60s, there were women jailed who were suspected of being communists! There were several US women activists who were jailed in the 1960s, 70s and 80s...amongst them activist Angela Y. Davis.



In terms of women political leaders/influence who were imprisoned:



The late Pakistani PM Benezhir Bhutto served time in jail. So did Indira Ghandi. So did Imelda Marcos. So did Ingrid Betancourt.



There are a number of women who are known to the public specifically because they went to prison for actual offenses.



Women like:



Jean Harris, the murderer of the Scarsdale Diet doctor



Patty Hearst, for her part in a robbery with the Symbionese Liberation Army



Martha Stewart, for insider trading. Being the "Diva of Domesticity" didn't help her case one bit! Interesting thing here? Martha served time, but yet Kenneth Lay who was involved in the far worse Enron scandal never served any time whatsoever. In fact, former Pres. Bush actually attended Lay's funeral!



MOST of the women involved in the slayings dictated by Charles Manson are still in prison. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, one of the Manson followers was released a few years ago after serving more than 30 years in prison for the attempted assassination of Pres. Gerald R Ford.



Sarah Jane Moore, another one who tried to assassinate Pres. Ford



Diane Downs, the Oregon woman who shot two of her children and then claimed someone else did it. She just got turned down for parole last year.



Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who let her car go into a lake with her two children in it because her boyfriend said 'either it's me or the kids.' She claimed a black man carjacked her.



Karla Homolka, the Canadian woman who along with her then-husband John Bernardo, were responsible for raping and killing a number of teenaged girls in Ontario, Canada...their first victim was Homolka's own sister!!!



Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay, two Los Angeles septugenarians were sentenced in 2008 to prison for murder and conspiracy to murder. They had a scam going where they would take in homeless men, feed and shelter them, get them to sign insurance papers and then in two years the men would end up dead in "accidents."



Batting her eyelashing didn't keep alleged Mexican drug lord Sandra Avila Beltran aka The Queen Of The Pacific out of jail. She's imprisoned in Mexico right now, but may be extradited to the US to serve time as well.



and those are just a few of the millions around the world.
cece1012003
2009-07-02 04:50:37 UTC
I didn't hide when I broke a window at a college (long story I'll tell if you ask). I told the judge: my things were in there, I couldn't leave, nobody could unlock the doors.



I didn't say "Oh little ol' me isn't strong enough to break a big, dual-layered glass window", I told him the truth. As a result I was only charged $80, not cost for labor, not cost for court fees, yay for me.



Not everybody tries to hide behind the law and judge nor do they always think that women can hide behind them.
I Am Back
2009-07-02 00:37:07 UTC
Because most judges are men.



Think of the disparity in sentencing teachers who sleep with student. Women get little more than a slap on the wrist. Men get crucified.
bearalice
2009-07-01 23:40:33 UTC
They don't and the law does not adopt that chivalrous stance. It is a myth. Women are punished twice, for behaving in an unfeminine manner,and also for the criminal act.

It is wrong to suggest that women are given more lenient sentences, statistics simply do not bear this out. Also to consider is that women do not offend on the same levels as men in the same numbers.
MT
2009-07-01 23:46:14 UTC
Is it?

Really?

Have you experienced this or something, I mean where is this coming from?

Well, if it is, the Law and Judge are probably old and sexist.

THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS FLAWED! CRAZY, I KNOW!
Maybe so
2009-07-01 23:35:16 UTC
I hate that! A female co-worker was trying to pull some bull***t like that and I told her "Hey! Women worked hard to be considered equal! How dare you!"
joey_streetlight_manifesto
2009-07-01 23:42:15 UTC
because society has made the image of a woman a weak housewife
anonymous
2009-07-01 23:33:15 UTC
It's not.



Hint: Starting with a faulty premise and then demanding reasons to support your faulty premise is an intellectual waste of time.
Voice of Reality
2009-07-01 23:48:08 UTC
Many women have no shame when it comes to such things. The victim card is their favorite, and often only, card.
anonymous
2009-07-01 23:32:47 UTC
because people allow it.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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