Up It Up: Gender and The Accomplishment of Street Robbery *

In the late 1980s, feminist sociologists began theorizing about gender as situated accomplishment. According to these authors, gender is “much more than a role or an individual characteristic: it is a mechanism whereby situated social action contributes to the reproduction of social structure”. Feminist scholars who address the use of street violence by women often suggest that women’s violence differs from that of men’s—women use violence in response to their vulnerability to or actual victimization in the family and/or at the hands of men. Men accomplish street robberies in a strikingly uniform manner. Respondents’ descriptions of their robberies are variations around one theme—using physical violence and/or a gun placed on or at close proximity to the victim in a confrontational manner. The women in the sample describe three predominant ways in which they commit robberies: targeting female victims in physically confrontational robberies, targeting male victims by appearing sexually available, and participating with males during street robberies of men.