Gender, Delinquency and Child Welfare

Abstract

The article explores how assumptions about gender are made visible in child welfare work. Boys and girls considered delinquent in post-war Norway have been placed in institutions for different reasons; boys for committing crimes, girls for being `sexually delinquent'. Socialization into the appropriate gender roles has been a main objective for correctional institutions: rebellious boys are to be subdued and made law-abiding without hurting their masculinity, while girls are to be restored to virtuous femininity. Standards used by child welfare to evaluate the parental performance of mothers and fathers also mirror the implicit, `self-evident truths' of the gendered order of society. The child welfare officials themselves, the vast majority of whom are women, are caught in the dichotomy between `professional' (with its masculine connotations) and `personal' (with its feminine connotations), and thereby have problems gaining professional recognition. Change seems to have occurred primarily in the applied, relatively flexible, `regulative rules', rather than in the basic `constitutive rules' of the gendered order.