In the world of criminality, we do not see men and women in the same light.
We know that women get less prison time when found guilty of the same crime (Starr, 2012).
We know that drivers who kill women get longer sentences than those who kill men (Glaeser, 2003).
We know police respond more negatively to male rape victims (Davies et al, 2009), and that female sex offenders get lighter punishments too (Shields & Cochran, 2019).
It’s no secret that fathers are discriminated against in family courts.
And even in schools, boys have been found to be marked lower and punished more harshly for the same work (OECD, 2015) and the behaviour (Shaw & Braden).
(But thankfully systemic sexism against men and boys doesn’t exist, phew!)
So what about when a person goes missing?
Does the media report equally on missing men as it does missing women?
What about missing White people versus missing Black people?
And if women, especially white women, are more likely to be picked up by the news, what sort of culture of fear is this creating?
Let’s look at ‘missing white woman syndrome’.
~
Source: https://tinyurl.com/bbxzh94m
Images by Frank Okay, Anjeet Mestry, Fran Jacquier, Francisco Andreotti and Levi State from Unsplash.