Working Through Desistance: Employment in Women’s Identity and Relational Desistance

Grace Low

The British Journal of Criminology, 2024, vol. 64, issue 4, 846-862

Abstract: Desistance and re-entry literature has traditionally explored particular types of women’s relationships and social roles (such as maternal identities and familial relationships), while neglecting the potential for employment and work-related roles to support change. Through interviews with 15 (predominantly Indigenous) women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article contributes to feminist literature on women’s desistance by exploring the role of employment in their change. The article explores how women (particularly Indigenous women) face significant barriers to employment, based on multiple sites of inequality. It also explores how employment (and employers) can support women’s identity and relational desistance. It is argued that policy and practice should recognize and attempt to leverage the beneficial effects of employment on women’s desistance.

Keywords: women’s desistance; employment and desistance; relational desistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azad064 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:crimin:v:64:y:2024:i:4:p:846-862.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The British Journal of Criminology is currently edited by Eamonn Carrabine

More articles in The British Journal of Criminology from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().