Girls in Gangs: Listening to and Making Sense of Females' Perspectives of Gang Life

Abstract

This thesis is an exploratory qualitative study that seeks to capture some of the experiences and challenges faced by females who have been gang-involved, either directly or peripherally. A total of eleven interviews were completed with seven women who were either former members of a gang (directly involved) or knew and associated with male and female gang members (peripherally involved) in Canada. The thesis examines my participants’ views of why women enter, persist and desist from gangs. My participants reported that girls join and stay in a gang primarily because they have a significant other who is a male gang member. A sense of kinship, financial dependency, and a lack of alternatives were cited as reasons for girls to join and persist in gangs. The main motivators for desisting were pregnancy, physical separation, treatment and hitting “rock bottom”. The principal findings indicate that there is a gendered hierarchy within mixed gangs that enables males to maintain power and control over females, impacting girl’s expectations, roles and responsibilities in a mixed gang. The significant social, psychological, physical and financial barriers to desistance are outlined and should be considered when devising programming to facilitate gang desistance for females. Furthermore, my participants stressed the need for comprehensive intervention initiatives that account for gender in order to help women desist safely and successfully. The study highlights that desisting from a gang can be a lifelong process, requiring ongoing support structures. The findings speak to the need to make the ‘invisible’ female gang members visible.