Working ‘the Code’: On Girls, Gender, and Inner-City Violence

Abstract

Much attention is given to young men's experience with inner-city violence; however, this ethnographic study demonstrates that innercity girls are not necessarily isolated by virtue of their gender from much of the violence experienced by poor, urban boys and men. Over time, both young women and men in distressed inner-city neighbourhoods come to realise how reputation, respect and retaliation — the fundamental elements of ‘the code of the street’ (Anderson, 1999) — organise their social world. At times, how young people work the code is similar across gender. Gender also works to shape teenaged girls' and boys' experiences with violence in distinct ways.