ABSTRACT
Bad Victims: An Approach to the Perspectives and Experiences of Criminal Women seeks to know stories of women who define themselves as “criminals” and stress the victimizing construction of femininity. To do this, interviews were conducted with “graduates” from Buenos Aires prisons (Argentina), between 45 and 60 years old, with different criminal trajectories, and their experiences within/outside the criminal environment were analyzed, in terms of gender, understood as a social environment. The results show that these women dispute places of recognition in a masculinized and “stratified” environment according to gender. In turn, being criminals gives them prestige in other social contexts (particularly in prison), and favors their perception as “empowered” women.
Keywords:
crime; woman; agency; violence; sex discrimination