Gender and white-collar crime: examining representations of women in media?

Purpose: Recent work on gender and white-collar crime is extended through a case study examining gender differences in white-collar crime in Norway.

Methods: Based on a content analysis of reports in Norwegian newspapers and court documents regarding white-collar crime cases that were of enough importance and notoriety so as to garner attention from national media outlets, this study investigates whether high level white-collar crime in Norway is gender neutral or gender specific (i.e., mostly male) as it is in the United States.

Results: Even though gender inequality is much lower in Norway than the United States, the gender gap in Norwegian white-collar crime appears to be nearly identical to that observed in the United States. Out of 329 individuals identified in the newspaper reports only 22 (6.7%) were women.

Conclusions: Formal gender equality does not appear to lead to increased involvement of women in white-collar crime, thus providing little support for the emancipation hypothesis and suggesting that theories focused on gendered focal concerns and gendered access to criminal opportunities have greater utility as explanations of the gender gap in white-collar crime. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.