ABSTRACT
Persons low on self-control may avoid restrictive conditions or situations, while persons high on self-control may act in ways that limit their own opportunities for delinquency or crime. In this chapter, the author attempts to take a different tack toward the gender question, treating it as a challenge to the theory of self-control. This theory offers only two concepts, namely, self-control and opportunity, that might be used to explain gender differences. If self-control were the only concept explaining gender differences, the gender effect would be constant from offense to offense. Self-control is measured in two ways: the attitudinal index and the behavioral index. The behavioral index is composed of six self-report delinquency items, including, alcohol use, marijuana use, making obscene phone calls, avoiding payment, strong-arming students, and joyriding. The author shows that the direct effect of gender stronger in analytic models using offenses with high male/female ratios.
