Delito y pecado. La transgresión en femenino

Abstract

What is understood by crime and what is considered a sin, why we feel guilt, which aspirations we think we have a right to defend, which strategies we use to tackle difficult situations – all these are experiences conditioned by gender models. This article focuses on how women experience rules, how women are appraised when these rules are broken, the risks that women consider paramount to defend themselves from, the slanders they refuse to accept, and the resources they use to avoid what they consider to be the worst situations. Even though women are the poorest group in every society as well as those who assume the highest amount of responsibility, they commit very few of the crimes related to economic needs. They avoid breaking the law by developing alternative strategies, turning to support network creation, to unregulated work or to sexual work, among others. Prison represents a more important problem for women than for men, in the sense that prison breaks family bonds and takes women away from what they see as their care duties. Therefore, and among the options at their reach, women choose the solutions they find more suitable or less negative. This strategy of ‘the lesser of two evils’, however, does not always yield satisfactory results.