bonus

ARTICLES

G E N D E R DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS: A COMPARISON OF MAI,ES' AND

FEMALES' ACCOUNTS*

JODY MILLER** University of Missouri-St. Louis

ROD K. BRUNSON*** University of Illinois-Chicago

Based on interviews with 58 gang members in St. Louis, this paper com- pares males' and females' perspectives on the gender dynamics in street gangs. Feminist scholars have long criticized traditional gang scholarship for its reliance on male gang members to gain information about young wo- men. We suggest that it is useful to revisit what male gang members say about gender dynamics in youth gangs because these accounts provide in- sights into the normative features of these groups. Research has consist- ently shown that gangs are largely male-dominated in structm~e, status hierarchies, and activities. Research in other male-dominated settings--for instance, fraternities, athletics, and the military--has shown the impor- tance of examining peer and organizational dynamics in shaping the treat- ment of women. We argue that insights into young men's accounts of gender provide important information for understanding more clearly the milieu in which young women in gangs must negotiate.

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1998 meetings of the American Society of Criminology, held in Washington DC. Thanks to Norm White for his feedback throughout the writing process, to Elizabeth Deschenes for com- ments on an earlier drafL, to Niquita Vinyard for assistance with data collection, and to the anonymous reviewers at JQ for their comments on an earlier draft. The re- search on which this article is based was funded by National Institute of Justice Grant 95-1642394, the University of Missouri Research Board, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis Research Award program. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

** Jody Miller is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Recently she has published research on wo- men's involvement in street crime in Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Social Problems, and a book on young women and gangs, One of the Guys, published by Oxford University Press. Currently she is completing a study of the commercial sex industry in Sri Lanka, partially funded by a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.

*** Rod K. Brunson received a master's degree in criminology and criminal jus- tice from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1998, and currently is pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His research interests are the intersection of race, class, and gender. He is interested specifically in neigh- borhood processes as they relate to communities' ability to regulate drug activity.

JUSTICE QUARTERLY, Vot. 17 No. 3, September 2000 © 2000 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

420 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Feminist scholars have long criticized traditional gang re- search for its reliance on male gang members to gain information about young women (Campbell, 1984, 1990a, 1990b). As recently as a decade ago, we had only sketchy information about girls' gang in- volvement; only a handful of studies were based on interviews or observations with young women themselves (see Bowker and Klein 1983; Campbell 1984; Giordano 1978; Quicker 1983). This is not the case today: a substantial and growing body of literature on girls in gangs addresses a wide variety of issues (for overviews, see Ches- ney-Lind and Hagedorn 1999; Curry 1998a). These issues include young women's perceptions of how gender shapes their gang in- volvement, particularly with regard to their relationships with other gang members, participation in delinquency, and other gang activities (Curry 1997; Fleisher 1998; Hagedorn and Devitt 1999; Joe and Chesney-Lind 1995; J. Miller 1998a, 2001; Moore 1991; Portillos, Jurik, and Zatz 1996; Swart 1991).

The agenda for studying female gang involvement is in place. We suggest that it is useful, drawing on these recent insights, to revisit male gang members' accounts of gender dynamics in youth gangs. The impetus for our study is twofold. First, although re- searchers have emphasized the gendered nature of girls' gangs, they have hardly examined how gender shapes young men's gang involvement. For instance, young women's gangs are routinely classified according to their gender composition such as autono- mous, mixed-gender, or "auxiliary" (see W. Miller 1975). In con- trast, young men's gangs are defined more broadly in terms of their activities, structures, and criminal endeavors (see Hagedorn and Devitt 1999). This difference reproduces the erroneous notion that gender is relevant only for understanding young women's exper- iences in gangs.

Second, as noted above, recent research has shown that young women emphasize the prominence of gender in their gangs. This is not surprising in view of ample evidence that gender inequality is a salient feature of most delinquent and cr'uninal subcultures (Maher 1997; Maher and Daly 1996; J. Miller 1998c; Steffensmeier 1983; Steffensmeier and Terry 1986), as in American society more broadly (Connell, 1987). Research with young women has shown consistently that youth g a n g s - w i t h the exception of autonomous female gangs--are largely male-dominated in structure, status hi- erarchies, and activities, even while young women are able to carve meaningful niches for themselves (see Fleisher 1998; Hagedorn 1998; J. Miller 1998a, 2001; Moore 1991). Even young women in all-female gangs must operate within male-dominated street net- works (see Lauderback, Hansen, and Waldorf 1992; Taylor 1993).

MILLER AND BRUNSON 421

Thus comparisons of young men's and young women's statements about gender provide important information for understanding more clearly the milieu in which young women in gangs must negotiate.

To address these issues, we draw from in-depth interviews with 31 male gang members and compare their discussions of gender dy- namics in gangs with those of 27 female gang members from the same city. Specifically, we examine how these dynamics are shaped by the gendered structures of gangs: single-sex, mixed-gender, or affiliated male and female groups. 1

Gender As An Organizing Principle of Group Life

Several strands of sociological thought clarify why gang struc- tures and group processes may influence gender dynamics in gangs. Gender is an important organizational feature of groups. In a semi- nal article, Kanter (1977:965) suggests that the "relative numbers of socially and culturally different people in a group a r e . . , critical in shaping interactional dynamics" (author's emphasis). She distin- guishes between skewed groups, in which (for instance) women are "tokens," and tilted or balanced groups, in which women have a larger, sizable representation. Where women are tokens in prima- rily male groups, they at tempt to adopt 'honorary male' status; when they belong to more gender-balanced groups, they have a greater ability to "affect the culture of the group" (Kanter 1977:966). Thus we would expect all-male gangs, and gangs with only a handful of young women, to adopt the most "hypermasculine" cultural norms (also see Martin and Hummer 1989).

Moreover, a number of studies have illustrated the importance of male peer groups in shaping young men's normative beliefs about gender and the t reatment of young women (see Schwartz and DeKeseredy 1997 for an overview). Group processes are important. Young men in fraternities, for instance, behave differently towards women when they are in exploitative normative contexts than in non-exploitative normative contexts (Boswell and Spade 1996). When they are part of a larger peer group in a culture where the exploitation of women is favorable, group norms supersede individ- ual beliefs about right and wrong (Martin and Hummer 1989).

1 Several scholars have pointed out that this tripartite division misses some of the complexity of gang formations (Hagedorn and Dewitt 1999; Nurge 1998). In her research in Boston, Nurge found four distinct types of mixed-gender groups; these were differentiated further by whether the groups were territorial, and by whether they referred to themselves as gangs or as cliques. Nonetheless we maintain our focus on the three-way comparison, paying attention to the gender ratio within these groups but not to other organizational features.

422 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Previous research provides evidence on the significance of group processes in gangs. With regard to delinquency, for example, longitudinal evidence suggests that gang membership facilitates delinquency: that is, youths' participation in delinquency increases dramatically when they join gangs, and it declines significantly once they leave their gangs (Thornberry 1997; Thornberry et al. 1993). Something unique about being in a gang increases the likeli- hood that youths will be involved in crime, such that "the norms and group processes of the g a n g . . , facilitate involvement in delin- quency" (Thornberry 1997:160; also see Battin et al. 1998; Decker 1996; Esbensen and Huizinga 1993). In view of evidence that simi- lar group processes regarding gender dynamics operate in youth groups such as fraternities and sports teams (Boswell and Spade 1996; Lefkowitz 1997; Martin and Hummer 1989; Schwartz and DeKeseredy 1997), it makes sense to conclude that group processes in gangs shape normative constructions of gender and thus influ- ence the gender dynamics of these groups. Moreover, as the re- search on gender and organizations suggests, gender composition and ratios within gangs will influence constructions of gender in these groups.

Gender and Gang Structures

Recent survey research has shown, contrary to law enforce- ment figures (see Curry, Ball, and Fox 1994), that young women are involved in gangs in fairly large numbers. Drawing on a sample of grade 8 pupils in 11 cities, Esbensen and Deschenes (1998) report a 14% prevalence rate of gang membership for boys and an 8% rate for girls (also see Bjerregaard and Smith 1993). Moreover, re- searchers examining the gender ratio of gang members estimate that young women account for approximately 20 to 46% of gang members (Esbensen and Huizinga 1993; Esbensen and Winfree 1998; Winfree et al. 1992). Only a few studies, however, have inves- tigated the gender structure of gangs beyond young women's pro- portion of involvement, and we are aware of no studies that examine the gender structure of young men's gangs.

Walter Miller (1975) classifies female gangs into the three types mentioned above: (1) mixed-gender gangs with both female and male members, (2) female gangs that are affiliated with male gangs, which he calls "auxiliary" gangs, and (3) independent female gangs. Although several case studies of these various gang types exist (see Fleisher 1998; Harris 1988; Lauderback et al. 1992; Quicker 1983), there is little evidence on the prevalence of each. Curry's (1997) study of female gang members in three cities found that only 6.4% of girls reported membership in autonomous female

MILLER AND BRUNSON 423

gangs, while 57.3% described their gangs as mixed-gender, and an- other 36.4% said they were in female gangs affiliated with male gangs. Dana Nurge (1998), though critical of Miller's typology, found that the majority of girls she interviewed in Boston belonged to groups that were in some way mixed-gender rather than female- only. Similarly, Jody Miller's (2001) comparative study of female gang members in St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio found that mixed- gender gangs were predominant (88%). In fact, most young women resisted the label female gang, calling it "stupid," "silly," and "laugh[able]."

Miller's research suggests that both the gender structure of girls' gangs and the gender ratio within mixed-gender gangs (i.e., the number and percentage of female versus male members) shape girls' experiences and perceptions of gender in their gangs. She reports:

Young women who were members of independent female gangs, female gangs that affiliate with male gangs, and mixed-gender gangs with a large portion or substantial number of female members appeared, on the whole, to have more favorable attitudes about girls in general, and described close and supportive relationships among them- selves and their female gang peers. Young women in mixed-gender gangs with a small number or percentage of female members clearly articulated the most misogynist attitudes about other young women, did not describe any "sisterhood" within the gang, and instead preferred the company of young men. (1998b:27)

To date we have little information about the gender structures of young men's gangs. Miller's research, along with some recent work on variations among male gang members (see Hagedorn 1997; Lyn- skey, Esbensen, and Miller 2000), suggests that this topic deserves attention. Before moving on to the current research, we review pre- vious studies about gender dynamics in gangs.

Gender Dynamics in Youth Gangs

As aptly summarized by Campbell (1990a), early discussions of girls' involvement in youth gangs, based on male gang members' accounts, placed young women into one of two roles: the "tomboy" or the "sex object." Campbell notes that the tomboy role appeared to be less accepted by males because it was viewed as outside the realm of appropriate female behavior (also see Swart 1991). On the other hand, young women's "use" as sexual objects was beneficial for male gang members, both because young women were available as sex partners and because they could be used to entrap rival gang males and to conceal weapons and drugs from the police (Campbell 1990a:167-68; also see Fishman 1995). In one of the few studies

424 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

comparing male with female perspectives, Moore suggests that some young men viewed young women as sexual objects or "posses- sions" (1991:53); meanwhile young women, though they recognized gender inequalities in their gangs, on the whole wanted to regard themselves as respected by male members. More recent accounts also emphasize the entrenched gender inequality in many gangs (Fleisher 1998; J. Miller 1998a). On the other hand, recent re- search based on interviews with young women often emphasizes the "sisterhood," support, and companionship that young women find among their female gang peers (Campbell 1990b; Joe and Chesney-Lind 1995; Lauderback et al. 1992). This topic was much neglected in earlier accounts.

As research on young women's gang involvement has in- creased, so has information about two important elements of gang life: the effects of gender on participation in delinquency and on risk of victimization. Recent research on delinquency suggests sev- eral patterns. First, young women in gangs have higher rates of delinquency than their nongang peers, both male and female (Bjer- regaard and Smith 1993; Esbensen and Winfree 1998; Thornberry et aL 1993). Second, despite gang girls' greater involvement in de- linquency, gang boys still are involved more extensively in the most serious of gang crimes (Fagan 1990). In fact, several studies have noted "a bimodal distribution [for girls], with nearly as many multi- ple index offenders as petty delinquents" (Fagan 1990:201; also see J. Miller 2001). Researchers have suggested two reasons for gang girls' lesser involvement in serious gang crime. Bowker, Gross, and Klein (1980:516) found evidence of "the structural exclusion of wo- men from male delinquent activities," whereby male respondents reported that they purposely kept girls from participating in activi- ties such as drive-by shootings and gun assaults on rivals. Miller (1998a) found evidence of this as well, but also suggested that young women themselves often use gender as a means of avoiding involvement in activities they find dangerous or morally troubling.

Gender also shapes the risk of victimization within gangs. Part of this relationship is self-evident. Because of the association be- tween participation in delinquency and victimization risk (Laurit- sen, Sampson, and Laub 1991), girls' lesser involvement in serious gang crimes makes them less likely to encounter the types of retali- atory gang violence that face the young men involved in these crimes. Hagedorn (1998:197), for instance, states that, on average, the female gang members in his sample report having been shot at .33 times, compared with 9.1 for the males. Findings from the St. Louis Homicide Project offer similar documentation: from 1990 to 1996, 229 gang homicides occurred in the project's study area. Only

MILLER AND BRUNSON 425

19 (8%) of these involved female victims; moreover, the great major- ity of the young women killed were not the intended targets (Miller and Decker forthcoming 2001). Miller's (1998a) work, however, suggests that young women a r e at greater risk for particular types of victimization within gangs, particularly sexual abuse and ex- ploitation, routine physical violence at the hands of male peers, and sexual assault (also see Fleisher 1998). In all of the literature cited, certain questions remain unanswered: whether and how these gendered elements of gang life vary across different types of gangs, particularly gangs with different gender structures and ratios. The current study addresses these questions.

METHODS AND SETTING

Our research is based on in-depth interviews with 58 gang members in St. Louis, Missouri. Although St. Louis is typically classified as an emergent gang city (i.e., a city in which gangs have appeared since the 1980s), gangs actually have waxed and waned there for the last century (Decker and Van Winkle 1996). St. Louis gangs appeared most recently in 1985. There is no evidence that these contemporary groups have ties to the gangs that last surfaced there, in the mid-1960s (Maxson, Woods, and Klein 1995). Instead the most recent gang proliferation in the city appears to be linked to recent socioeconomic trends and to urban distress. St. Louis, like many other midwestern cities, has been harmed by considerable deindustrialization and population loss in recent decades; these problems are exacerbated by extreme racial inequality and segrega- tion (Decker and Van Winkle 1996; see Wilson 1996 for an over- view). As a number of researchers have shown, such conditions are ripe for the emergence of street gangs (Hagedorn 1998; Klein 1995).

On the basis of their response to a survey by the National Youth Gang Center, the St. Louis Police Department reports ap- proximately 75 active street gangs with 1,300 members (Curry 1998b). With regard to young women's gang involvement, their es- timates are not helpful. Law enforcement data is widely known to underreport girls' gang involvement, in part because the data weigh heavily toward older members and members involved in more seri- ous crimes (Curry 1998c). In addition, however, official policies and/or bias exclude young women from consideration (Curry et al., 1994). Although we found it relatively easy to locate young women to participate in our study, the St. Louis Police Department charac- terizes gangs there as 100% male.

Our sample includes 31 young men and 27 young women. The respondents ranged in age from 12 to 20; most (83%) ranged from 14 to 17. The mean age was 16.1 for boys and 15.6 for girls. We

426 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

found more age variation among young women: Nine of the 27 girls were 14 or younger, compared with only one young man. This is not unexpected: girls tend to become involved in gangs at younger ages and to exit earlier (see Esbensen and Huizinga 1993). The great majority of participants were African American (54 of 58, or 93%); four (7%) described themselves as multiracial. The interviews with young women were drawn from a larger comparative study that in- cluded both gang and nongang girls in two cities. As that project produced data about gender dynamics in gangs, the research was supplemented with the inclusion of male gang members.

Interviewing began in St. Louis in spring 1997 and was com- pleted in early 1998. Most of the interviews were conducted by the second author, including all of the interviews with young men and three-quarters of those with young women. We found no discerni- ble differences in the type or quality of information acquired from his interviews and from those conducted by others. The second au- thor is an African-American man who grew up in north St. Louis, in a neighborhood similar to those the respondents called home. Given his familiarity with life in their communities, he had little difficulty establishing rapport with the youths.

Respondents were recruited to participate in the project with the cooperation of several organizations working with at-risk youths. Once we decided to include young men in the sample, they were drawn from the same agencies as the young women. These included a street outreach program, several additional community agencies that provided drop-in programs for youths, and a local public high school serving youths suspended or expelled from other schools. In addition, eight youths (13%) were interviewed at the local detention center. The interviews were voluntary, and respon- dents were promised strict confidentiality. Interviews were con- ducted primarily in private offices, empty classrooms, interview rooms, or secluded spots in visiting rooms. Respondents were paid $10 to $20 for participating, depending on the site.

Because the total population of gang members is unknown, the sampling was purposive; thus the representativeness of our sample is unknown (see Decker and Van Winkle 1996; Glassner and Car- penter 1985). Cooperation by agency personnel generally is useful in providing access to gang members (see Bowker et al. 1980; Fagan 1989). These referrals, however, pose the problem of targeting only officially labeled gang youths. We were able to counteract this problem for the young women in the sample through the compara- tive design of the original research. Though the sample came from agencies working with young women, we did not target agencies

MILLER AND BRUNSON 427

working explicitly with gang members, nor did we a t tempt to gener- ate a pool of "known" gang members. Instead we asked agency workers to refer us both to girls they believed were involved with gangs and to girls living in neighborhoods where they might have contact with gangs. The young men also were not drawn from agencies working with gang members as such, although we asked agency workers to refer us to young men they believed were in- volved with gangs.

All of the respondents were identified as gang members through self-nomination: that is, when they said they were gang members, we classified them as such. An extensive body of evi- dence suggests that self-nomination is a robust measure of gang membership (Bjerregaard and Smith 1993; Esbensen, Huizinga, and Weiher 1993; Esbensen and Huizinga 1993; Thornberry et al. 1993; Winfree et al. 1992). Nonetheless, as with any method, self- nomination is not foolproof. One potential problem is "wannabes" who claim gang membership although they are not actually in- volved. To contend with this possibility, we compared youths' ac- counts and their depth of knowledge with other youths ' descriptions of their gangs and other available information. An additional bene- fit of self-nomination was that it provided a means of applying a limited definitional criterion to capture what may be a varied phe- nomenon (see Horowitz 1990). Ultimately, finding no blatant in- consistencies in the youths ' accounts, we took them at their word.

The youths first were administered a survey, in which they were asked a series of questions about their gang: what the gang was like, how it was structured, what members did (including the kinds of delinquent activities they engaged in), and how and why they became involved. All but two respondents participated in a follow-up interview, which was conducted either jus t after the sur- vey or within a few days.

The in-depth interviews were semistructured with open-ended questions and were audiotaped. They were organized around sev- eral groups of questions and allowed for considerable probing. We discussed the structure of the gang-- i t s history, size, leadership, and organization, and the respondent 's place in the group. We asked the youths general questions about their gang involvement and activities, as well as a series of questions on gender in the gang. For example, we asked whether they believed that females and males got involved for similar or for different reasons and in similar or in different ways, what activities males and females engaged in together and separately, and what kinds of males and females had the most s tatus and the greatest influence in the gang. We also asked about issues of safety and danger in the gang, whether the

428 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

respondents perceived these to be gendered, and (if so) in what ways. We followed this basic guideline for each interview, although when additional topics arose, we often departed from the interview guide to pursue them.

The in-depth interviews in particular allowed us to learn more about gang life from the members' viewpoints (see Glassner and Loughlin 1987; Miller and Glassner 1997). Although out-of-context reports may present a more exaggerated, more glamorous, or smoother picture than is warranted (see Agar 1977), interviews are not inherently less "trustworthy" than data gathered in other con- texts. Instead they reveal particular sorts of information, which was quite useful for our purposes. Gangs have particular stories, which are refined through conversation. These stories are part of the gangs' normative structures, even when they are not enacted consistently in behaviors. The stories told by gang members are shaped both by larger cultural standards and by the normative fea- tures of the gang itself (see Miller and Glassner 1997; Richardson 1990). For instance, Klein (1971:85) observed that violence is a "predominant 'myth system'" within gangs, even though there is often much more talk about violence than actual violent behavior. Viewed in this way, youths' accounts are significant for what they reveal about constructed norms and values in their gangs. Thus they actually provide two sets of findings: evidence on the nature of their gangs and the cultural frames they use to talk about them. Here we are interested in youths' normative statements about gen- der, and how these are used to describe their experiences in gangs.

Perhaps the greatest limitation of our data is that, to ensure the youths' confidentiality, we did not record the names of their gangs. Thus we cannot determine whether girls and boys were re- porting information on the same gangs. Hagedorn and Devitt (1999) suggest that different members of the same gangs sometimes describe their groups differently with regard to composition and ac- tivities. Fortunately we found consistency in the reports of the few youths we could identify as members of the same gangs (youths who revealed their gangs' names without being prompted). On the whole, however, our data cannot address this question.

Nonetheless, throughout the interviews the youths provided overlapping discussions about gender dynamics in their gangs. These issues form the core of the discussion that follows. Though our research is exploratory, it offers insights into variations in young men's and young women's experiences of gang life, and into the ways in which gender inequality shapes these experiences. Throughout we provide discussions of young men's and young wo- men's accounts. Yet because the research on girls has appeared in

MILLER AND BRUNSON 429

other venues (see J. Miller 1998a, 2001), we focus here primarily on the young men to avoid too much overlap, and highlight how their perceptions compare with those of the young women.

GENDER AND GANG LIFE

The goal of this study is to examine and compare young men's and young women's accounts of gender dynamics in youth gangs. We concentrate on the varied nature of gender hierarchies in gangs to understand more fully the milieu in which female gang members must negotiate, as well as how normative beliefs about gender shape young men's gang involvement. We begin with a discussion of gang structure, comparing how youths describe males' and fe- males' positions in their gangs. Specifically, we examine how young men define their gangs as masculine groups and yet account for the involvement of girls, and how these accounts are shaped by the structures and gender ratios in their gangs. Next we examine gang members' everyday activities and delinquency, focusing on how these are explained in the context of accounts about gender. Fi- nally, we discuss victimization and risk, investigating how youths perceive victimization risk to be shaped by gender.

Gender Structures in Youth Gangs

Recent work suggests that gang structure, including the gen- der ratio in gangs, influences girls' experiences in these groups (J. Miller 2001; Nurge 1998). Here we examine how young men's de- scriptions of their gangs' gender composition compare with those of young women. Table I provides an overview of the gender composi- tion of youths' gangs in St. Louis. As this table shows, the majority of both girls and boys describe their gangs as mixed-gender (41 of 58, or 71%). Young women were more likely to say their gangs had both male and female members (81%), while a substantial minority of young men (39%) described their gangs as all-male. Moreover, among youths in mixed-gender gangs, young men were much more likely to describe their gangs as composed primarily of other males, while young women characterized their gangs as containing a larger percentage of females. 2

What accounts for this difference? As we stated in the discus- sion of methods, it may well be that we simply sampled youths from different gangs, and thus our numbers represent differences across gangs. This is most likely to be the case with youths who describe

2 Because of the small number of girls in all-female gangs, these are not a pr imary focus of the analysis.

430 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Table 1. Gender Composi t ion o f Gangs (N = 58)

Females Males

Gang Type Mixed-gender Male-only Female-only Female/associated with male gang

(n = 27) (n = 31) 22 (81%) 19 (61%)

0 (0%) 12 (39%) 2 (8%) 0 (0%) 3 (11%) 0 (0%)

Gender Ratio, Mixed-Gender Gangs (n = 22) (n = 19) Majority male 14 (64%) 19 (100%) Half or more female 8 (36%) 0 (0%) Females one-fifth or fewer members 7 (32%) 13 (68%) Females one-third or fewer members ~ 11 (50%) 18 (95%)

Cumulative figure; includes youths who report one-fifth Or fewer female members.

the i r gangs as single-sex. Al though this m a y be a par t ia l explana-

tion, it is l ikely t h a t o ther dynamics are p resen t as well. Table 2

provides you ths ' charac te r iza t ions of several organiza t ional fea,

tu res of the i r gangs: notably, girls and boys described these aspects

of the i r gangs in essent ia l ly the same ways. a We call a t t en t ion to

g a n g ini t iat ions: the major i ty of you ths (37 of 58, or 64%) said the i r

gangs use ini t ia t ions to induct new members . The ini t ia t ion is

often an i m p o r t a n t r i te of passage, es tab l i sh ing the ini t ia te as a

"real" m e m b e r in the eyes of the gang. 4

In St. Louis, Decker and Van Winkle (1996) repor t g rea te r lati-

tude in w h a t counts as a gang ini t ia t ion for young women t h a n for

young men. T h o u g h we did not ask young men about the i r own

init iat ions, we found differences in the you ths ' descriptions. Young

men who described thei r in i t ia t ions said t h a t t hey were bea ten into

the g a n g by its members , assau l ted a r ival gang member , and/or

par t ic ipa ted in a drive-by shooting. Eleven girls (41%) repor ted

t h a t they wen t t h r o u g h such an init iat ion, bu t the o ther six girls

a We found few differences here according to gang type. A smaller proportion of young men in all-male gangs (50%, versus 74% in mixed-gender gangs) said their gangs held initiations; they also were less likely to characterize their gangs as hav- ing rules or codes (42% versus 68%), and fewer (83% versus 100%) described their gangs as adopting gang colors, symbols, or signs. Among girls, only the two in an all- female gang described their gang as nonterritorial, although it was neighborhood- based.

4 Gang initiations vary across sites. Ethnographic work in traditional gang cities suggests that males initiate males, while females initiate females. Yet because of the proliferation and diffusion of "gang culture," youths adapt to their own set- tings what they have learned about gangs. Miller's (2001) work suggests that this is the case with regard to initiations as well as other features of gangs. For instance, Columbus gangs are influenced strongly by the traditional Chicago gang style; they attach more importance to initiations than to gangs in St. Louis, which are influ- enced more strongly by Los Angeles gang style. Reports on both places include de- scriptions of males initiating females and females initiating females, but no descriptions of females initiating males. In the current study, though youths were disdainful toward girls who had been "sexed in" (also see J. Miller 1998a, 2001), both males and females nonetheless classified them as members because this was a stan- dard (though gender-specific) initiation practice in some mixed-gender gangs.

M I L L E R A N D B R U N S O N

Table 2. Gang Character i s t i cs (N = 58)

431

Females Males (n = 27) (n = 31)

Initiation Rites or Rituals 17 (63%) Established Leaders 14 (52%) A Territory That It Claims 25 (93%) Specific Rules or Codes 19 (70%) Special Colors, Symbols, Signs, Clothing 27 (100%)

20 (65%) 16 (52%) 30 (97%) 18 (58%) 29 (94%)

(22%) who said their gangs held initiations listed an array of other activities. Vickie 5 was tattooed, committed a carjacking, and punched a girl on the street; Marie said she was "blessed in" the gang (members said a gang "prayer" over her); Sheila received gang tattoos; Dionne received a gang tattoo and "snatch[ed] a lady's purse"; Brenda indicated she was "sexed in" (engaged in sexual in- tercourse with a number of male members); and Wanda said that although her gang typically held initiations, she wasn' t required to go through one.

It could be that young women are more likely than young men to count these alternative activities as "initiations." Several young men reported, for instance, that they knew girls who thought of themselves as members of the boys' gang, although the young men did not classify them as such. Curtis explained:

There ain't no girls in our gang. Like the girls tha t we talk to, they'll try to say they from our 'hood, b u t . . , they ain't from our gang. Some is raised up over there [in the 'hood] but they just , like, hang with us every day. We wouldn't consider them as no members, but they jus t be around sometimes. (our emphasis)

All of the young men in our sample said that girls whom they didn't define as members hung around their gang. Many of these young women probably didn't define themselves as members either, but probably some of them did so. Possible gender differences in definitions of a "member" thus may explain some of the difference in youths ' perceptions of their groups' gender composition.

Accounts of Girls' Place in Gangs

In regard to gender composition and how it shapes young men's perspectives, it is useful to compare the way boys in all-male gangs account for the absence of young women with the way boys in mixed-gender gangs account for their presence. Most of the boys who classified their gangs as all-male were adamant that gangs, by their nature, were masculine groups. Asked why there were no

5 All n a m e s a re f ict i t ious.

432 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

girls in his gang, Frank replied, "What can a female do in gangs? What can a female do? It's just for fellas for real." Carlos agreed: "I like hangin' out with the homeys full-time. Hangin' out with a female and doin' the same thing dudes do, that ain't for me." And Lamont said:

Females, I just don't see it. I couldn't respect a female in a gang. I couldn't respect it . . . . With a female, she plays like a backbone, she supposed to just support the male. I don't think she supposed to be out there on the field with him, [but] just have his back. You ain't supposed to be out there hanging and banging. I don't think so.

Obviously, one explanation that these young men gave for fe- males' lack of involvement in their gangs was that it was inappro- priate for girls to participate in (and encroach on) "the fellas'" thing: girls shouldn't behave like boys. In addition, several young men suggested that having girls in the gang would pose a risk for mem- bers because girls were less reliable and couldn't be counted on to be "down" when the gang really needed them. Mike explained, "We don't want to take a chance of them getting soft for real." Lamont agreed: "Females really can't handle drama . . . . A female can't fight. I can't say all females can't fight males, but you just don't want to take that chance." He elaborated: "Males, if they have something they living and dying for, I mean they go to the fullest with it. What I've seen with females, I mean they so sometime [about their commitment], they can switch up [change loyalties] at any time."

Doug said that one girl who hung with his group received a lot of respect because "she got a male's mentality. She acts like a male, she just be down for whatever." On the whole, however, he sug- gested that having girls in the gang would obligate boys to watch out for them, distracting them from the business at hand and dam- aging others' perceptions of the strength of their group:

RB: You said before that there aren't any females in your gang. Why is that?

Doug: I don't know. We're not gonna be strong, you know what I'm saying, we don't want no girls. I mean it could be some girls in there, but [we] don't want a lot for real 'cause we're about strictly money and down for ourselves.

RB: And how would girls affect that? Doug: People would look at us . . . . Letting a girl in your

gang is like, well, you would let them get in there but you would have to watch them like if they was your sister.

Young men in mixed-gender gangs also viewed gangs as a pri- marily "male thing," but in doing so, they had to account for the

MILLER AND BRUNSON 433

presence of young women. All of the boys in these gangs said their gangs were mostly males; as shown in Table 1, however, the gender composition varied. At the low end, Robert said his gang included only one female member; at the high end, Eric's gang was nearly gender-balanced, with approximately 20 males and 15 females. De- pending on the number of girls in their gang, young men accounted for female involvement somewhat differently.

Robert's gang, for instance, was essentially all-male. The one young woman in his gang was given "honorary male" status. He explained, "Tia's not a regular girl, she like a boy for real. She act like a boy and work around the boys. Other girls, I don't think they should be in no gang, they soft for real." Asked why there weren't more girls in his gang, Robert replied emphatically, "Because don't nobody let them. 'Cause Tia, she grew up, she like us for real. She just like the dudes for real, that 's why." He said that the only time Tia was excluded from the boys' activities was %vhen we trying to get on other girls, 'cause she'll mess it up sometimes." As an added benefit, however, Tia "bring a lot of new girls to the clique, so we can always have a girl to talk to."

Most young men in gangs with a small number of female mem- bers gave similar accounts. James explained, "Most people look at the girls in our neighborhood [with respect] because they [are] mostly like us. They don't do mostly things that girls do, they do what we do." Kevin agreed: "People know about Terri. They say she ain't no joke. [She] beat up dudes, do everything . . . . She don't really fight girls, she don't like fighting girls 'cause she say they too weak. She fights dudes."

Young men in gangs with a sizable number of girls described their gangs in somewhat different terms. Although they clearly emphasized its masculine endeavors, they also left space for young women's involvement, mostly by highlighting their gangs' social el- ements. Many St. Louis gangs have strong neighborhood ties (also see Decker and Van Winkle 1996; J. Miller 2001). Being from the 'hood and "being down" for the 'hood were important prerequisites for membership. These young men described girls' gang member- ship as occurring in much the same way as young men's: because they grew up in the neighborhood, around the gang, and wanted to be a part of it. Asked how girls got involved, Arthur explained, "The same way males do, they just grow up around there and just join." In addition, these young men said that girls got involved as a result of their ties to male members. For instance, Maurice observed, "They got big cousins, big brothers that showed them a lot of stuff, stuff they can get from being in the gang."

434 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Being from the neighborhood and/or having ties to other mem- bers, girls were an accepted part of these gangs. Nonetheless, these young men described girls as essentially different from, and lesser than, the boys in the gang. For instance, although Reggie said that girls joined his gang "the same way I did, hangin' out with 'em," he also explained that with the possible exception of "a gal that's been raised, they mother been a dope fiend or something, they know all about the ghetto, I wouldn't even, see what I'm saying, consider [girls] as being like me because they ain't been through stuff I've been through." Consequently, as we show below, although males and females in these gang spent much of their social time together, gender segregation increased when it was time to "get down to busi- ness": girls did their own thing, and boys did theirs.

We found similar variation in young women's accounts. Young women in gangs with only a few female members differentiated themselves from other girls, and instead described themselves as one of the guys (see J. Miller 2001). As Toni explained, "I don't re- ally hang out with girls." Her role models in the gang were "dudes • . . [that] got a nice car, money just coming out, and got all gals." She explained, "They just ball like t h a t . . , just have money coming out the b u t t . . , and I'm gonna be up there one day eventually." Of other young women, she commented, "Ain't no girl over there doing it like the dudes."

In contrast, young women in gangs with a sizable number of female members did not characterize girls as lesser members. Yvette explained, "The boys, the girls are no different for real, we all the same." Like the boys, however, they emphasized the social aspects of their time with male and female gang members, and also indicated that there were differences between boys and girls when it came to confrontations with rival gangs and others on the streets (also see J. Miller 1998a, 2001). Pare, a member of a mixed-gender set that was half female, remarked, "Most of the girls for real is family and friends. We went to school together, grew up together." She said her friendships were the most valuable benefits she gained from being in the gang, despite the group members' ongoing in- volvement in drug sales and other criminal endeavors and the eco- nomic benefits she derived from these. In comparison, the two young women in an all-female gang stated their dislike of gender inequality in mixed-gender gangs, and saw it as distinguishing those gangs from their own. They also defined their gang as being more about "friendship" and less about the typical criminal endeav- ors of other St. Louis gangs. As noted, young women in predomi- nantly male gangs did not emphasize these relational elements, but focused instead on status and economic benefits.

MILLER AND BRUNSON 435

Gang Activities, Delinquency and Everyday Life

Although the criminological literature emphasizes gangs' delin- quent activities, much of youths' time with their gangs tends to be relatively mundane. Occasional acts of serious crime become the material for much ongoing conversation and discussion (see Fleisher 1998; Jensen 1995; Klein 1995). Gang members spend much of their time in the same activities as other adolescents-- hanging out, talking and laughing, playing sports or games, listen- ing to music, watching television, and having parties. As discussed above, all of our male respondents indicated that theyspent part of their time hanging out with girls, whether or not the girls were members of the gang. Here we examine gang members' accounts of how gender shapes gang members' activities. These accounts were influenced by the gender composition of the young men's gangs.

Along with their belief that the gangs are "a male thing," young men in all-male gangs were those most likely to describe girls pri- marily as sexual objects or individuals to be exploited. Curtis summed this up succinctly: "Most girls are just for pleasure, fun and pleasure for real. We don't see girls like we see dudes." He said that members of his gang hung out with girls to '~have sex with them and stuff like that." Mike said that girls who hung out with his gang were "freaked on. Just getting touched on everywhere. It gets pretty nasty." Asked why girls would hang out with them, he surmised, "'Cause they like thugs, that's all it is. Being around money." Carlos said that when they hung out with girls, they had "sleepovers and parties, just sex and all that . . . . They ain't . . . hangin' with us, they just there for whoever want to do something with 'em." Similarly, Frank described some of the girls who hung out with his gang as "nothing b u t . . , freaks."

RB: What makes a girl that hangs out with the gang a freak? Frank: Everybody done had her, everybody done been with her. Tricking her, giving up [her] money, and stuff like that.

On the whole, these young men suggested that girls had no place in their gangs except to provide sex. In fact, Lamont said that other than being available for sex, girls caused problems for the gang;

Girls tend to just bring a lot of bad, bad vibes. I mean be- cause they be with us one day, they be with the next gang the next day, this gang, that gang, and when they with our gang, they tell us about a different gang, so when they with a different gang they telling about us. So we hit 'em [have sex with them] or you got to go. We don't really kick it with women.

436 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Young men in these gangs engaged in a variety of criminal ac- tivities, mostly centered around drug sales and disputes with rival gangs. The young women who hung around them were not included in these activities. Frank said the girls could "come and buy what they want [drugs] and leave, that's it." Doug said, "We bang with other s e t s . . , whoever's tripping with us. [But] they don't do that." Several young men in all-male gangs observed, however, that one benefit of having girls around was that they tempered young men's actions, particularly with regard to violence. Carlos explained, "[Girls] keep people from doin' things, 'cause when a girl ain't around they just get crazy." Jon agreed: "Dudes would go places and be the ones that usually f i g h t . . , and sometimes girls usually break it up. If it wasn't for them, we would have gotten in a whole lot of trouble." Mike described one such incident: "I had this one little girl that I used to talk to, and my partner Walter got shot by some dudes and we was gonna go and get 'em. She hid my gun from me and I couldn't even go do it." Young women's presence gave these young men an excuse for avoiding violence, even though they depicted girls as good only for sex.

Because of the composition of their groups, young men in mixed-gender gangs spent more time with young women, particu- larly the girls in their gangs. Not surprisingly, the young men with only one or a few "honorary males" in their gangs described these young women as active participants in many of their criminal en- deavors. Recall that Robert's gang had one female member, Tia. Robert said, "[We] go to parties and drink together, sling [sell drugs] together, all that." Tia was an integral part of her gang's drug selling: Robert commented, "Nobody gonna mess with her for real." The only difference Robert noted was that "drive-bys, shoot- ings, and stuff--Tia don't too much get into that." In fact, this was the general pattern across all of the mixed-gender gangs: young women hung out and partied with the young men in the gang, and like the young men they were routinely involved in street-level drug sales, but they tended not to be involved in the most serious forms of gang crime, such as confrontations with rivals that entailed shooting. Instead, girls' confrontations were usually fights with other girls, which typically involved fists or, less frequently, knives (also see J. Miller 1998a, 2001).

For instance, although James said that males and females in his gang "do a lot of things together" socially, they typically did not get involved in each other's fights. In fact, he said that when "guns and stuff' were involved, young men excluded the girls from their activities "'cause we didn't want nobody to blame us because some- thing happen to them, if something would have happened to them."

MILLER AND BRUNSON 437

Other young men told much the same story. Dwayne explained, "Robbery and stuff like that, we don't want no girls with us doing stuff like that . . . . We don't want no girls with us, period, when we got to go to work." Ray said, "Girls, they usually do all the drug selling and all that. We do more than all the girls do, but we just give them what they can do. They don't do no hard, you know, shooting nobody or drive-bys." Jermaine commented, "Girls ain't no punks. They ain't gonna kill nobody though."

Differences in the use of violence also appeared in the survey portion of the interviews. When asked whether and how the gang provided protection for its members, the majority of both males and females said that a primary means was providing members with guns. All but one of the girls simply said "Guns"; in contrast, many of the boys described particular types of guns: 9mms, AK-47s, Mac l l s , Tech 9s, 44 mags, rifles, gauges. In addition, the young women emphasized that guns were primarily the boys' domain. Explaining why girls used fists and knives rather than guns, Pam suggested that it was because "we ladies, we not dudes for real." In fact, when the young women were asked whether they carried weapons, 19 (70%) said they carried knives or similar instruments, while only seven (26%) reported carrying guns. Of these, only four carried guns as their weapon of choice. 6

Most of the youths in mixed-gender gangs, male and female, also said that members sometimes had casual sexual relationships or dated one another. Shawn characterized these simply as "get- ting high and having sex." Debra explained that girls in her gang went with boys in the same gang "all the time," but she said they "don't write about i t"-- that is, they don't "tell everybody in the 'hood." Several young men, however, said that they chose to avoid dating within the gang. Kenny said, "We strictly sisters and broth- ers." And James explained that he didn't date girls in his gang be- cause ~I can't have a girl that 's the same way as me. I want to find me a young lady, not a tomboy." Others pointed to conflicts that arose when gang relationships were mixed up with romantic rela- tionships. Kevin said that it was the source of fights between males and females: "Crazy stuff, sleeping with each other and stuff, tell- ing people [about it]." Several young women also described fights that arose between girls over their relationships with particular boys, or between boys and girls.

6 Unfortunately, because the scope of the interviews wi th young men was nar- rower, we did not ask about the i r weapon-carrying practices. Even so, when the young men were asked about fights with rivals and/or the gang's protective func- tions, 26 (84%) described the i r gangs as us ing guns.

438 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

In contrast to the young men in all-male gangs, even when young men in mixed-gender gangs spoke about dating or sexual re- lationships, very few described gang girls exclusively in these terms. (With the exception of serious girlfriends, however, they de- scribed nongang girls who hung with the gang in primarily sexual terms.) Instead they also related to gang girls in nonsexual ways. Nonetheless, their descriptions of this aspect of their relationships were quite similar to those of boys in all-male gangs, as il lustrated in the following conversation with Jamal:

Jamal: I don't really date none of the girls from the 'hood. I done hit 'em but we ain't never, say, went with them. That would cause some problems.

RB: So explain what hitt ing is. Jamah Have sex with them. RB: You don't th ink that causes any problems, so if you

actually had a relationship with them you think tha t would cause a problem?

Jamal: Yeah, 'cause we out there chilling, getting high, trying to get up on some more babes, they be like, "£ou got me bumped [disrespected me]," wanna fight, wanna argue.

RB: So do they go for that? You just hit t ing it every now and then, do they go for that?

Jamal: It d e p e n d s . . , how your game is, you got to have a game.

Dwayne said that although males in his gang don't "go out with" or date girls in the gang, they will "just talk to them, hit 'em, this and that, like female dogs . . . just fuck 'em." Asked how the girls react to this t reatment , he continued, "Some of them out for what we out f o r . . , jus t to fuck or get they stuff or whatever."

For some girls, this might be true: they might take the same att i tude about their relationships with boys as the boys take toward them. Many young women, however, complained about young men's att i tudes about sex and what they saw as young men "run- ning games" on girls. Moreover, for some girls these experiences are clearly exploitative, and set the stage for fur ther exploitation (also see J. Miller 1998a).

The clearest illustration is the practice of "sexing" girls into the gang. Describing this initiation, Jermaine explained tha t the girl has to have sex with "anybody that wants to." The conversation continued:

RB: Suppose everybody wants to? Jermaine: She ain't gonna let everybody do it. Half prob-

ably get in it, though.

Once these girls have gone through a sexual initiation, they axe denigrated by other members of the gang, male and female, and are

MILLER AND BRUNSON 439

widely viewed by the males as sexually available. As Jermaine con- tinued, "If they get sexed in, they don't really get no respect."

Young men in mixed-gender gangs remained wedded to narrow accounts of gender and sexuality, and this attitude shaped their re- lationships with young women in their gangs. As a result, young women acknowledged that male-female relationships were often a source of strife between and among gang members. Nonetheless, belonging to a mixed-gender gang, as opposed to hanging out with members of male gangs (or with members of mixed-gender gangs), appears to offer young women more room to negotiate interactions with other gang members, which extend beyond the sexual. On the whole, young men in these gangs described the girls in their gangs in ways that were less single-minded and less disparaging than in the accounts given by young men in all-male gangs. In fact, girls received status and protection in the gang as well; these benefits may be regarded as worth such a trade-off (see J. Miller 1998a, 2001).

Victimization and Risk in Gangs

Despite the differences we reported above when comparing the accounts of young men in all-male and mixed-gender gangs, we found consistency in their perceptions of victimization risk and how it was shaped by gender. Three themes emerged in young men's interviews; these were equally likely to be articulated by young men in all-male and in mixed-gender gangs. First, they argued that young men faced dangers that young women did not, both because rival male gang members were more likely to target males than fe- males, and because young men placed themselves at greater risk through their own behaviors. Second, they argued that young wo- men faced dangers because they were weaker than young men and less capable of handling themselves. Finally, a number of young men suggested that young women were at risk of being kidnapped and sexually assaulted by rival gang members who wished to send a message or retaliate against the gang.

With regard to the dangers faced by young men, Dwayne ex- plained that rival gang members targeted males rather than fe- males: "If the enemy over there, unless you got a crowd over here and a crowd over here with girls and us, they'll shoot at us first. They'll just ride through and see the girls there, probably keep on rolling, but if they see one of the dudes, they'll shoot." James agreed: "Most of the time they be trying to get on us before they try to get on the girls." Carlos said that "a man's gonna take it hard on another man," but he'll "take it more easy" on a female. Several young men noted that girls often simply were unnoticed by rivals.

440 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Maurice explained, "[Girls] ain't got to worry about no nigger com- ing up to them 'cause the nigger don't always see them in the hood, they always seeing us." And Mark noted, "If you look at a girl, you won't be thinking about is she in a gang. But if you look at a dude, he could just have on a wrong color and you will label him as a gang member."

Overall, young men felt that males faced greater limitations on their movement and activities because of the constant threat that they would be recognized by a rival and attacked. Rick stated, "Girls, they can wear any color they want to without another girl worried about them being in a gang. Dudes can't wear any color they want to." Wayne said, 'You got to constantly keep your head up looking over your shoulder, worried about what t ime you got to be h e r e , . . , worried about who trying to set you up." In fact, some of the young men felt tha t they were trapped in gang life because their enemies would always remember them, even after they quit their gang involvement. Will explained, "Being in a gang ain't a life. It's not like getting in no bathtub. You can't get in and get out so easy. Once you a member, you stuck being a gang member, and you got these enemies knowing tha t you a gang member. I mean, you a gang member forever to them." Travis agreed: "It ain't gonna be like, you out of the gang. It be like, he was in it then, he still in it."

Although they sometimes felt "stuck," young men said that they often brought the risk on themselves because of their actions toward other gangs. As Je rmaine explained, "The men, they always the ones that get shot at, and star t trouble and stuff. The girls don't too much star t it unless it's with another female." Curtis sim- ilarly observed,

The dudes . . . they get into static with other dudes, but girls, they'll get into static, they'll fight, and then it'll be over with. B u t . . . dudes, when you in a gang, you get into a fight. After you done beat them up with your hands, then it's t ime for them to go get they guns 'cause they got to win.

Although they believed tha t males were more likely than fe- males to be targeted most of the time, young men believed that girls were also at risk, as Lamont explained, because "females are more weaker." Ray agreed: "Girls don't really have [as] much power as dudes have except for the real big ones." Ronald said, "Man got courage but a woman don't." And James noted, "It's dangerous [for girls] because they ain't as strong as we is and most of the time they can't take the things we can take." Wayne argued that men not only had greater physical s trength but also more street smarts. He explained, "It's more dangerous for women, 'cause it ain't a spot for

MILLER AND BRUNSON 441

them. Because I think, to me, I think a man thinks more than a woman. Some things a woman think, a man done already thought of." Similarly, Reggie noted that "men can handle theyself more than women." And Travis said:

It's more easier to get the girls 'cause they be showing they face more than we do. If we know we got enemies, we gonna stay where we at in our territory. They be going outside to other people's territory. That 's what 's getting them caught up, what 's getting them whipped and stuff. So if you know you got some enemies over there, you can't go over there. That 's dumb.

Because females were described as easier targets than males, a number of young men stated that rival gangs sometimes targeted females, not by simply shooting at them, as they did with males, but by kidnapping, beating, and sexually assault ing them. Lamont explained, "Say my homeboys, when we need to, gang members will kidnap women who you associate with to get information or even to send a message. They won't kidnap no male, they'll kidnap a fe- male to send a message, beat her up, rape her, do whatever to send a message." Travis described the same scenario: "If she in a gang and I know her, say I'm in this one gang and I'm on her, I'll proba- bly know her brother and I'll know she in a gang. Like if I can't get to him and you in a gang, the same gang, I'm gonna get to you first. You more easier to get to, you a female." Will described the emo- tional turmoil such a retaliation might entail:

I f it's a girl Blood right here and a boy Blood right here, if the boy Crip think that the boy Blood more tougher than the girl, he might go off on the girl jus t to hur t the other gang member . . . . It be the same way if somebody catch your cousin. It's gonna hur t you more than killing y o u - - that 's your cousin. You gonna have the same feelings.

We found little evidence that such incidents occur routinely. These events are atypical, but nonetheless they occur. 7 Regardless of how widespread such practices are, they feature prominently in young men's accounts and il lustrate how girls in gangs are viewed in re- gard to sexuality and sexual vulnerability.

When young women spoke about victimization risk, they de- scribed many of the same issues raised by young men, with one im- portant exception. Young women agreed that the threats they faced were different than those faced by young men. In contrast with the

7 In St. Louis, one recent case received a great deal of press coverage. A wo- man was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and tor tured by a group of male and female gang members for he r perceived t ransgress ions agains t the group (Bryan 1998). In Miller 's (2001) study, th ree young women reported t h a t they had been gang-raped by gang members. Another young woman described he r part icipation in the kidnap- ping and beat ing of a rival gang girl, and then her role as a witness while he r fellow gang members gang-raped the girl.

442 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

boys, however, the young women did not regard themselves as par- ticularly vulnerable because they were weak or not strong enough to take care of themselves. Instead they noted the danger of being targeted by male gang members because they were viewed as easy targets. Marie said she knew of young men "taking a female just because it's a female, he think she can't do nothing because she's a female."

Although the girls generally believed that gangs were danger- ous, they did not view themselves as facing the same threats as young men, partly because some girls chose not to be involved in particularly risky endeavors. Brittany explained that she didn't worry much about violence "because when they do stuff I scatter, I ain't nowhere around. When they do their little dirt, Brittany is at home." Thus, while boys described themselves as excluding girls from dangerous activities, many girls said they excluded them- selves (also see J. Miller 1998a).

Most girls didn't say they were afraid of being shot by rival gang members. Instead they focused on the threat of being jumped and beaten up. Because they did not perceive themselves as facing life-threatening situations, they were more likely to emphasize the strength of their fighting skills to get them out of risky situations. When young women mentioned the danger of being shot, they de- scribed their fear of being in a group situation when someone opened fire--being in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than being a specific target. Girls were more likely to describe the devastating effects when young men they cared about were killed in gang violence. Marie recalled, "My partner, my best friend, he got shot, was sixteen years old. He was a Blood. He shouldn't have gone out like that."

In combination, girls' and boys' accounts suggest that both groups face a series of gender-specific victimization risks, shaped as well by variations in gang type. Young women face risks tied to their perceived sexual vulnerability; young men are at greater risk for lethal violence. Again, Miller and Decker's (forthcoming, 2001) analysis of gang homicides in St. Louis bear out these youths' de- scriptions. One-quarter of St. Louis homicides in the 1990s were gang-related; only 8% of those involved female victims, who almost always were not the intended targets. Moreover, Decker's (1999) follow-up of the gang members in Decker and Van Winkle's (1996) research on gangs in St. Louis supports that young men's descrip- tions of the dangers they face are not mere "bravado." Of the 99 youths in their study, 19--nearly one-fifthware now dead. This is a conservative estimate: Decker has succeeded in tracking only

MILLER AND BRUNSON 443

about half of the original sample. These findings highlight the im- portance of victimization risk among young men in gangs. Our re- search suggests that the normative features of gang masculinity are important in shaping that risk.

DISCUSSION

The goal of this paper has been to compare young men's and young women's perspectives on gender dynamics in youth gangs, with an eye toward variations that result from differences in the gender composition of these groups. Our findings are exploratory, but they raise important issues for future research. To more clearly understand gender dynamics in youth gangs, we must examine both young women's and young men's perspectives, and we must recognize that gender is as relevant for young men as for young women. Research with young women has shown us that the di- chotomous tomboy/sex object categories are insufficient to account for girls' gang involvement. Although these characterizations are present in young men's discussions of girls' roles in gangs, they are also inadequate for capturing the range of young men's accounts. Young men's depictions of girls appear to be shaped by the types of gangs to which young men belong, and by the number of females in their groups.

Young men who characterize their gangs as all-male hold the most stereotypical and most derogatory views of girls, while young men in mixed-gender gangs apparently have a wider variety of in- teractions with girls and a broader conceptualization of girls' place in gangs. In many ways, girls' and boys' accounts of young women's place in mixed-gender gangs are quite similar, with a notable ex- ception: young men often hold exploitative views of their sexual in- teractions with girls in their gangs. It is evident, however, that girls in mixed-gender gangs are not treated only as "sex objects," and that in certain circumstances girls whom the young men view as "tomboys" are accepted as one of the boys. This is not the case with young men in all-male gangs; they state clearly that young women don't belong in gangs, and that the young men do not want girls around doing the things that "the fellas" do.

These findings suggest that it is important to be attentive to variations in gangs because these shape the contexts in which young women in and around gangs must negotiate. For instance, it is likely that young women who hang around all-male gangs are at greatest risk for ongoing sexual mistreatment. On the other hand, young women who are one of only a few females in primarily male gangs may be at the greatest risk for participation in serious delin- quency, and thus may face greater physical dangers at the hands of

444 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

rival gangs. Finally, young women in gangs with a substantial number of female members have more supportive relationships with other young women and with young men, and are better able to moderate their participation in risky activities. Even these young women, however, are likely to vary in the nature of their gang involvement and the extent to which young men view them as hard-core gang members or as sexually available (see J. Miller 1998a).

Our research cannot address why youths join one type of gang rather than another. For instance, do young men choose all-male or mixed-gender gangs in part on the basis of their attitudes about girls? Recall that Carlos said, "Hangin' out with a female and doin' the same things dudes do, that ain't for me" (our emphasis). We don't know how strongly this belief influenced Carlos to join an all- male gang, or whether he adopted the attitudes of the other young men around him as a result of his involvement in such a gang. The same question applies to young women. Do girls who perceive themselves as different from other females, as more like "one of the dudes," choose gangs that fit their beliefs, or does involvement in particular types of gangs facilitate the construction of this belief?. Some of this variation may not be a matter of substantial choice: because gangs tend to be neighborhood-based, especially in St. Louis (see Decker and Van Winkle 1996), it may depend partly on the gangs available to youths. At this point, this question remains unanswered.

Moreover, we cannot say how fully the youths' accounts about gender are the result of attitudes they acquire while in the gang or how much they are due to attitudes they bring to the gang. We know that the larger community and societal beliefs about gender teach young women and young men how to think and act in norma- tively scripted ways (see West and Zimmerman 1987). Consider Lefkowitz's (1997) sophisticated analysis of a gang rape by a group of high school athletes in suburban New Jersey. He deftly shows how community attitudes, shaped by traditional family values and by the valorization of high school athletics, created a social context in which this group of privileged boys gained a sense of entitlement and acquired attitudes about women that allowed the gang rape to occur. Larger community norms also taught girls to fit themselves into scripted roles as "mothers" or as "sex objects." Within gangs as well, these larger community and societal contexts must be ex- amined and considered (see Pyke 1996).

Nonetheless, abundant evidence points to the importance of the organizational features of groups and indicates the strength of male peer dynamics in maintaining gender hierarchies and supporting

MILLER AND BRUNSON 445

the exploitation of young women (Kanter 1977; Lefkowitz 1997; Martin and Hummer 1989; Schwartz and DeKeseredy 1997). In ad- dition, research suggests that less exploitative norms regarding girls, such as those we found in mixed-gender gangs, exist in some groups (Boswell and Spade 1996; Kanter 1977). All of this work, however, points to the importance of group processes, which we know are evident in other features of gang norms and activities (Decker 1996; Klein 1995).

Finally, our research has focused primarily on youths' accounts of young women's place in gangs. Future research also must be more attentive to male gang members' constructions of masculini- ties in their interactions with one another, and with the police and others in their communities (see Anderson 1990). Several studies have at tempted this (Jankowski 1991; Messerschmidt 1993; Portil- los, et al. 1996); however, we need more nuanced accounts that ex- amine variations in young men's masculine identities in gangs (see Connell 1995; Hagedorn 1997). This is particularly important for understanding the interlocking relationship between gang crime and the risk of gang-related victimization among young men (also see J. Miller 1998a).

In addition, future research on youth gangs must focus on other aspects of gangs that may shape gender relations. We concentrated here on gender structures and ratios in gangs, but other important factors exist as well. Nurge's (1998) research on gangs and cliques in Boston, for instance, raises other significant issues that shape girls' gang involvement, including leadership, duration, territorial- ity, and the primary activities and goals of these groups. By teasing out these complexities, we can achieve a full, rich account of con- temporary youth gangs.

REFERENCES

Agar, M.H. 1977. "Ethnography in the Streets and in the Joint: A Comparison." Pp. 143-56 in Street Ethnography: Selected Studies of Crime and Drug Use in Natu- ral Settings, edited by R.S. Weppner. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Anderson, E. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Battin, S.R., K.G. Hill, R.D, Abbott, R.F. Catalano, and J.D. Hawkins. 1998. "The Contribution of Gang Membership to Delinquency Beyond Delinquent Friends." Criminology 36:93-115.

Bjerregaard, B. and C. Smith. 1993. "Gender Differences in Gang Participation, De- linquency, and Substance Use." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 4:329-55.

Boswell, A.A. and J.Z. Spade. 1996. "Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?" Gender & Society 10:133-47.

Bowker, L.H., H.S. Gross, and M.W. Klein. 1980. ~Femate Participation in Delin- quent Gang Activities." Adolescence 15:509-19.

446 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Bowker, L.H. and M.W. Klein. 1983. "The Etiology of Female Juvenile Delinquency and Gang Membership: A Test of Psychological and Social Structural Explana- tions." Adolescence 18:739-51.

Bryan, B. 1998. "Woman Is Beaten, Tortured by Gang Members, Police Say." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 26, p. lB.

Campbell, A. 1984. The Girls in the Gang. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell. . 1990a. "Female Participation in Gangs." Pp. 163-82 in Gangs in America,

edited by C.R. Huff. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. ............ ,1990b. "On the Invisibility of the Female Delinquent Peer Group." Women & Criminal Justice 2:41-62.

Chesney-Lind, M. and J.M. Hagedorn, eds. 1999. Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs and Gender. Chicago, IL: Lakeview.

Connell, R.W. 1987. Gender and Power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. .1995. Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Curry, G.D. 1997. "Selected Statistics on Female Gang Involvement." Presented at the fifth Joint National Conference on Gangs, Schools, and Communities, Sep- tember, Orlando, FL.

.1998a. "Female Gang Involvement." Journal of Research in Crime and Delin- quency 35:100-18.

• 1998b. Personal correspondence, August 13. .1998c. "Proliferation of Gangs in the U.S." Presented at the Eurogang Work-

shop, October, Schmitten, Germany. Curry, G.D., R.A. Ball, and R.J. Fox. 1994. "Gang Crime and Law Enforcement Re-

cordkeeping." Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. Decker, S.H. 1996. "Collective and Normative Features of Gang Violence." Justice

Quarterly 13:243-64. . 1999. Untitled paper on future directions of gang research. Presented at

gang research cluster meeting, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Pre- vention and National Institute of Justice, October, Washington, DC.

Decker, S.H. and B. Van Winkle. 1996. Life in the Gang. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Esbensen, F. and E.P. Deschenes. 1998. "A Multi-Site Examination of Gang Mem- bership: Does Gender Matter?" Criminology 36:799-828.

Esbensen, F. and D. Huizinga. 1993. "Gangs, Drugs, and Delinquency in a Survey of Urban Youth." Criminology 31:565-89.

Esbensen, F., D. Huizinga, and A.W. Weiher. 1993. "Gang and Non-Gang Youth: Differences in Explanatory Factors." Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 9:94-116.

Esbensen, F. and L.T. Winfree. 1998. "Race and Gender Differences Between Gang and Non-Gang Youth: Results from a Multi-Site Survey." Justice Quarterly 15:505-25.

Fagan, J. 1989. "The Social Organization of Drug Use and Drug Dealing Among Ur- ban Gangs." Criminology 27:633-67.

• 1990. "Social Processes of Delinquency and Drug Use Among Urban Gangs." Pp. 183-219 in Gangs in America, edited by C.R. Huff. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Fishman, L.T. 1995. "The Vice Queens: An Ethnographic Study of Black Female Gang Behavior." Pp. 83-92 in The Modern Gang Reader, edited by M.W. Klein, C.L. Maxson, and J. Miller. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.

Fleisher, M.S. 1998. Dead End Kids: Gang Girls and the Boys They Know. Madison, WI: Wisconsin University Press.

Giordano, P.C. 1978. "Girls, Guys and Gangs: The Changing Social Context of Fe- male Delinquency." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 69:126-32.

Glassner, B. and C. Carpenter. 1985. "The Feasibility of an Ethnographic Study of Property Offenders." Unpublished report prepared for the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC.

Glassner, B. and J. Loughlin. 1987. Drugs in Adolescent Worlds: Burnouts to Straights. New York, NY: St. Martin's.

Hagedorn, J.M. 1997. "Frat Boys, Bossmen, Studs and Gentlemen: A Typology of Gang Masculinities." Pp. 152-67 in Masculinities and Violence, edited by L. Bowker. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• 1998. People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: Lakeview.

MILLER AND BRUNSON 447

Hagedorn, J.M. and M. Devitt. 1999• "Fighting Female: The Social Construction of Female Gangs•" Pp. 256-76 in Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs and Gender, edited by M. Chesney-Lind and J.M. Hagedorn. Chicago, IL: Lakeview.

Harris, M•G. 1988• Cholas: Latino Girls and Gangs. New York, NY: AMS. Horowitz, R. 1990. "Sociological Perspectives on Gangs: Conflicting Definitions and

Concepts" Pp. 37-54 in Gangs in America, edited by C.R. Huff. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Jankowski, M.S. 1991. Islands in the Streets: Gangs and American Urban Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Jensen, E.L. 1995. "An Interview with James F. Short, Jr." Journal of Gang Re- search 2:61-68.

Joe, K.A. and M. Chesney-Lind. 1995. "'Just Every Mother's Angel': An Analysis of Gender and Ethnic Variations in Youth Gang Membership." Gender & Society 9:408~30.

Kanter, R.M. 1977. "Some Effects on Proportions of Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women." American Journal of Sociology 82:965-90.

Klein, M.W• 1971. Street Gangs and Street Workers• Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall.

- - . 1995. The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence and Control. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Lauderback, D., J. Hansen, and D. Waldorf. 1992. "'Sisters Are Doin' It For Them- selves': A Black Female Gang in San Francisco." Gang Journal 1:57-70.

Lauritsen, J.L., R.J. Sampson, and J.H. Laub. 1991. "The Link Between Offending and Victimization Among Adolescents." Criminology 29:265-92.

Lefkowitz, B. 1997. Our Guys: The Gled Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of a Perfect Suburb. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lynskey, D•, F. Esbensen, and J. Miller. 2000. "The Impact of Gender Composition on Gang Member Attitudes and Behavior: Results from a Multi-Site Survey." Presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology. No- vember, San Francisco, CA.

Maher, L. 1997. Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Mar- ket. Oxford: Clarendon Press•

Maher, L. and K. Daly. 1996. %Vomen in the Street-Level Drug Economy: Con- tinuity or Change?" Criminology 34:465-92•

Martin, P.Y. and R.A. Hummer. 1989• "Fraternities and Rape on Campus." Gender & Society 3:457-73.

Maxson, C.L., K. Woods, and M.W. Klein. 1995• "Street Gang Migration in the United States." Final report to the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC.

Messerschmidt, J.W. 1993. Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualiza- tion of Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Miller, J. 1998a. "Gender and Victimization Risk Among Young Women in Gangs." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35:429-53.

. 1998b. "One of the Boyz? Girls' Gender Strategies in Youth Gangs." Presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Au- gust, San Francisco.

• 1998c. "~p It Up: Gender and the Accomplishment of Street Robbery." Crim- inology 36:37-66.

• 2001. One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs and Gender• New York, NY: Oxford Uni- versity Press.

Miller, J. and S.H. Decker• Forthcoming, 2001. "Young Women and Gang Violence: An Examination of Gender, Street Offending and Violent Victimization in Gangs." Justice Quarterly 18.

Miller, J. and B. Glassner. 1997• "The 'Inside' and the 'Outside': Finding Realities in Interviews." Pp. 99-112 in Qualitative Research, edited by D. Silverman. London: Sage.

Miller, W. 1975. Violence by Youth Gangs and Youth Groups as a Crime Problem in Major American Cities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Moore, J. 1991. Going Down to the Barrio: Homeboys and Homegirls in Change. Phil- adelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Nurge, D. 1998. "Female Gangs and Cliques in Boston: What's the Difference?" Presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology, No- vember, Washington, DC.

448 GENDER DYNAMICS IN YOUTH GANGS

Portillos, E., N. Jurik, and M. Zatz. 1996. ~Machismo and Chicano& Gangs: Symbolic Resistance or Oppression?" Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 24:175-84.

Pyke, K.D. 1996. ~Class-Based Masculinities: The Interdependence of Gender, Class, and Interpersonal Power." Gender & Society 10:527-49.

Quicker, J.C. 1983. Homegirls: Characterizing Chicana Gangs. San Pedro, CA: Inter- national University Press.

Richardson, L. 1990. Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Schwartz, M.D. and W.S. DeKeseredy. 1997. Sexual Assault on the College Campus: The Role of Male Peer Support. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Steffensmeier, D.J. 1983. "Organizational Properties and Sex-Segregation in the Underworld: Building a Sociological Theory of Sex Differences in Crime." Social Forces 61:1010-32.

Steffensmeier, D.J. and R. Terry. 1986. ~Institutional Sexism in the Underworld: A View from the Inside." Sociological Inquiry 56:304-23.

Swart, W.J. 1991. "Female Gang Delinquency: A Search for 'Acceptably Deviant Be- havior.'" Mid-American Review of Sociology 15:43-52.

Taylor, C. 1993. Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Thornberry, T.P. 1997. "Membership in Youth Gangs and Involvement in Serious and Violent Offending." Pp. 147-66 in Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions, edited by R. Loeber and D.P. Farring- ton. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Thornberry, T.P., M.D. Krohn, A.J. Lizotte, and D. Chard-Wierschem. 1993. "The Role of Juvenile Gangs in Facilitating Delinquent Behavior? Journal of Re- search in Crime and Delinquency 30:75-85.

West, C. and D.H. Zimmerman. 1987. "Doing Gender." Gender & Society 1:125-51. Wilson, W.J. 1996~ When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New

York, NY: Knopf. Winfree, L.T., Jr., K. Fuller, T. Vigil, and G.L. Mays. 1992. "The Definition and Mea-

surement of 'Gang Status': Policy Implications for Juvenile Justice." Juvenile and Family Court Journal 43:29-37.