Ignoring women prisoners makes the operation of state punishment partly illegible

Evidence

Despite the availability of perceptive portrayals of life in women’s prisons, it has been extremely difficult to persuade the public—and even, on occasion, to persuade prison activists who are primarily concerned with the plight of male prisoners—of the centrality of gender to an understanding of state punishment. Although men constitute the vast majority of prisoners in the world, important aspects of the operation of state punishment are missed if it is assumed that women are marginal and thus undeserving of attention. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 170

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Punishments inflicted on women and slaves were systematically excluded from prison reformers’ agenda. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 104; Women face unacknowledged state punishment outside formal prison; Formal equality fails because male prisons define the punishment norm (+3 more)

Related

• Male prisons functioning as the punishment norm drives women’s conditions toward greater repression. (similarity 0.92)
• Women face unacknowledged state punishment outside formal prison (similarity 0.90)
• Men’s prisons are gendered institutions, not the norm against which women’s prisons are judged (similarity 0.90)
• Formalistic equality with male prisons makes women’s prisons more repressive, not less. (similarity 0.87)
• Women have been punished more through psychiatric institutions than prisons (similarity 0.86)
• Sexual abuse operates as an institutionalized, unsanctioned dimension of women’s punishment. (similarity 0.85)
• Punishments inflicted on women and slaves were systematically excluded from prison reformers’ agenda. (similarity 0.84)
• Women who are punished are seen as more aberrant and threatening than men (similarity 0.82)
• Early prisons held mostly men because women lacked rights to lose (similarity 0.79)
• Women’s struggle has shifted from imprisonment to demanding equal transcendence (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Women face unacknowledged state punishment outside formal prison #expands (0.85)
• Formal equality fails because male prisons define the punishment norm #expands (0.70)
• Male prisons functioning as the punishment norm drives women’s conditions toward greater repression. #expands (0.65) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 204
• Formalistic equality with male prisons makes women’s prisons more repressive, not less. #expands (0.60) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 197