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Summary
Cutting-edge research into trends and social contexts of girls’ violence.
Have girls really gone wild? Despite the media fascination with “bad girls,” facts beyond the hype have remained unclear. Fighting for Girls focuses on these facts, and using the best data available about actual trends in girls’ uses of violence, the scholars here find that by virtually any measure, incidents of girls’ violence are going down, not up. Additionally, rather than attributing girls’ violence to personality or to girls becoming “more like boys,” the contributors examine the contexts that produce violence in girls, demonstrating how addressing the unique problems that confront girls in dating relationships, families, school hallways and classrooms, and in distressed urban neighborhoods can help reduce girls’ use of violence. Often including girls’ own voices, contributors illustrate why girls use violence in certain situations, encouraging us to pay attention to trauma in the girls’ pasts, as well as how violence becomes a tool for surviving toxic families, deteriorated neighborhoods, and neglectful schools.
“…a fresh, much needed look at violence among young (adolescent) girls. Chesney-Lind and Jones have assembled quite a volume; its ten chapters cover an enormous range … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE
“From a broad range of perspectives and empirical studies, this book addresses a number of important questions central to the study of girls and violence.” — Sara Goodkind, University of Pittsburgh
Meda Chesney-Lind is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her many books include Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence, and Hype (coauthored with Katherine Irwin); The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime, Second Edition (coauthored with Lisa Pasko); and Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice, Third Edition (coauthored with Randall G. Shelden). Nikki Jones is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner City Violence.
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction Meda Chesney-Lind and Nikki Jones
Part I. Real Trends in Female Violence: Getting Tough on Girls
1. Have “Girls Gone Wild”? Mike Males
2. Criminalizing Assault: Do Age and Gender Matter? Eve S. Buzawa and David Hirschel
3. Jailing “Bad” Girls: Girls’ Violence and Trends in Female Incarceration Meda Chesney-Lind
Part II. Girls’ Violence: Institutional Contexts and Concerns
4. The Gendering of Violence in Intimate Relationships: How Violence Makes Sex Less Safe for Girls Melissa E. Dichter, Julie A. Cederbaum, and Anne M. Teitelman
5. Policing Girlhood? Relational Aggression and Violence Prevention Meda Chesney-Lind, Merry Morash, and Katherine Irwin
6. “I don’t know if you consider that as violence . . .”: Using Attachment Theory to Understand Girls' Perspectives on Violence Judith A. Ryder
7. Reducing Aggressive Behavior in Adolescent Girls by Attending to School Climate Sibylle Artz and Diana Nicholson
8. Negotiations of the Living Space: Life in the Group Home for Girls Who Use Violence Marion Brown
Part III. Girls’ Violence: Explanations and Implications
9. “It’s about being a survivor . . .”: African American Girls, Gender, and the Context of Inner-City Violence Nikki Jones
10. The Importance of Context in the Production of Older Girls’ Violence: Implications for the Focus of Interventions Merry Morash, Suyeon Park, and Jung-mi Kim
Epilogue: Moral Panics, Violence, and the Policing of Girls: Reasserting Patriarchal Control in the New Millennium Walter S. DeKeseredy
