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DOI: 10.1177/1477370812453103
2012 9: 621European Journal of Criminology
Heidi Grundetjern and Sveinung Sandberg
Dealing with a gendered economy: Female drug dealers and street capital
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European Journal of Criminology
9(6) 621­–635
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370812453103
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Dealing with a gendered
economy: Female drug dealers
and street capital
Heidi Grundetjern and Sveinung Sandberg
University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Early studies of female drug dealers suggest that women are marginalized, passive victims. In
contrast, more recent studies describe women as skilful and competent dealers. In a Bourdieuinspired
theoretical framework of ‘street capital’, we suggest that the truth is somewhere in
between. Female dealers can be successful, but they face more obstacles than men do. The illegal
hard-drug economy is gendered and favours men. In this paper we discuss how female drug
dealers develop particular strategies to prove they still belong in ‘the game’. Four such strategies
are emphasized: desexualization, violent posture, emotional detachment and service-mindedness.
These are common strategies for all drug dealers, but the gendered economy forces female
dealers to be particularly careful about their business and self-presentation.
Keywords
Drug dealing, gender, illegal drugs, street capital
Introduction
When you’re a woman, they charge you double price – right? ’Cause they know they can do
this, since we do not have that same frightening physical appearance. Of course, I can hire a
couple of torpedoes to counterbalance this, but those torpedoes also would charge me double
price because I’m a woman, so then I’m back at square one again. (Female dealer, 35)
This article examines the role of female drug dealers. An understanding of women as
subordinate to men was dominant in the field early on. They were portrayed as victimized
and positioned at the periphery of the drug economy, lacking the qualities needed for
Corresponding author:
Heidi Grundetjern, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Box 1096
Blindern, Oslo, N-0317, Norway.
Email: heidi.grundetjern@sosgeo.uio.no
453103EUC9610.1177/1477370812453103European Journal of CriminologyGrundetjern and Sandberg
2012
Article
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622	 European Journal of Criminology 9(6)
success (Adler, 1993). In more recent research, this view of women as passive victims
has been challenged. Denton argued that female dealers ‘were not victims and certainly
not saints’(Denton, 2001: 4). Many other studies have found that women can be successful
drug dealers. They are not marginalized in a male-dominated world; in fact, they may
use their ‘female attributes’ to their advantage.
The drug economy is male dominated. In the absence of special privileges, the key
to gaining and holding a position as a dealer is to enact ‘masculinity’ (Dunlap et al.,
1997: 42). For example, most female dealers in this study stressed the importance of
being ‘one of the guys’ (Miller, 2001). They use a particular set of strategies to succeed,
most of which involve enacting some kind of ‘street masculinity’ (Mullins, 2006).
Female dealers have to be particularly careful about their image in a drug economy that
strongly favours males.
Inspired by Bourdieu’s (1990) attempts to find a middle road between agency and
structure, we suggest a compromise between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ perspectives on
women in the illegal drug economy. Female dealers work in a gendered economy that
puts them at a huge disadvantage. At the same time, successfully or unsuccessfully, they
develop or exaggerate particular strategies to cope with their marginal position. These
are not conscious strategies, but rather what Bourdieu (1990) describes as ‘practical
rationality’. We will argue that his concepts of capital and habitus are fruitful for describing
female dealers’ creative strategies and outcomes in a marginal situation.
We start by discussing earlier research on female dealers and argue that none is
entirely suitable when studying the complex role of female dealers. What follows is the
main purpose of this article. We will present four strategies that female drug dealers use
and discuss how the gendered character of the illegal drug economy influences their
dealing and their lives more generally. Our data are from 30 interviews with female drug
dealers in prison. These interviews were conducted as part of a larger research project
that included qualitative interviews with 80 drug dealers. These other interviews are used
as a point of comparison.
Female dealers: Marginalized victims or successful
entrepreneurs?
Overall, research on women and drug dealing is scarce, but some relatively recent research
hasdealtwiththesubject(forexample,Anderson,2005;Denton,2001;DentonandO’Malley,
1999; Dunlap et al., 1997; Miller, 2001; Morgan and Joe, 1996). In earlier studies of the drug
economy, men assumed various roles. Women, in contrast, have traditionally been regarded
as passive and helpless victims (Adler, 1993; Maher, 1997; Maher and Daly, 1996;
Steffensmeier, 1983). Some researchers have even emphasized the forced entry of women
into crime through victimization, through economic marginalization and for survival needs
(Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996: 470). Adler (1993) found that women were absent in drug
distribution and placed below men in the drug hierarchy. Illustratively, the most ‘active’
women in her study were employees of male dealers. Moreover, according toAdler, the most
common role for a woman was as a sex object – they worked as escorts in the large entourages
surrounding male dealers (Adler, 1993: 91).
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Grundetjern and Sandberg	 623
Similarly, Maher and Daly (1996) described how women are marginalized in the drug
culture. They are forced to rely on sex work and earn significantly less than men. Other
scholars have highlighted that gender differences are prominent in the illegal drug economy,
using the argument that men perceive women as lacking the qualities needed to
succeed in the drug-dealing business and therefore prefer not to work with them.
Furthermore, women do not have the same physical appearance as men, and this reinforces
female dependency on men (Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996). Women are seen as
gossip-prone, untrustworthy and emotional, as well as being more likely to succumb to
police interrogation pressures (Steffensmeier, 1983: 1014–1015). This means that women
often see themselves as others do – lacking the potential to commit such crimes
(Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996: 477).
The overall tendency in more recent studies of female drug dealers counters the traditional
victim perspective. These studies often describe women’s achievements and competence,
thus challenging the earlier representations of women as passive and powerless
(Anderson, 2005; Denton, 2001; Denton and O’Malley, 1999; Mieczkowski, 1994;
Morgan and Joe, 1996). Denton and O’Malley argue that earlier studies of female drug
dealers are ‘male centred’and present ‘narrowly masculinist conclusions about the nature
of the operations, resources and skills involved in drug dealing’ (Denton and O’Malley,
1999: 514). Anderson suggests a move away from the one-sided focus on ‘dysfunction,
dependence, exploitation and victimization’ (Anderson, 2005: 373). She claims that a
‘pathology narrative’ has dominated studies of female dealers and suggests an ‘empowerment’
narrative instead. Anderson finds that women are powerful and competent, but
their importance is ‘behind the scenes’. She reinterprets ‘supporting roles’ (for example,
cookers, baggers, sex workers) as female competence, which she sees as fundamental to
the organization of the illegal drug economy (Anderson, 2005: 376). However, she does
not address how, and in which ways, women can be involved in drug dealing.
The Melbourne women studied by Denton (2001) and Denton and O’Malley (1999)
illustrate how women can be successful dealers. These authors describe the entrepreneurial
roles women take on in some markets and their successes relative to those of their
male colleagues. They also suggest that most female drug dealers are competent and
skilful operators who choose their lifestyles out of curiosity and for the excitement
(Denton, 2001). They conclude that it is crucial not to think of female dealers as ‘male
drug dealers who happened to be women’ (Denton, 2001: 173). Women use their female
smartness, including trustworthiness and resourcefulness, to be successful dealers.
Most of Denton’s dealers were also lovers, partners and mothers.These women successfully
created a home base with the necessary communication facilities to run their business (Denton,
2001: 44), a strategy also found amongst the female crack dealers studied byWilson (1993). By
playing on traditional gender roles, such as being a housewife, it is argued that women have
resources particular to their sex if they want to be drug dealers. Some of these are important
qualities, because they deflect police attention, and most illegal businesses are interested in
operating peacefully. Thus, women are not necessarily disadvantaged if they avoid the use of
violence (Denton and O’Malley, 1999: 523). Being a woman can even be an advantage.
The studies mentioned above have quite different social contexts. Denton (2001) for
example describes successful female dealers in the suburbs of Melbourne,Australia, whereas
Maher and Daly (1996) studied poor crack dealers in Brooklyn, NewYork.The social context
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624	 European Journal of Criminology 9(6)
of drug markets will vary, and this will influence the role of women. Whereas many smallscale,
private and soft-drug markets downplay violence and thereby facilitate female drug
dealing (Sandberg, 2012), most hard-drug and public markets are strongly gendered in favour
of men (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009). However, there are also important similarities, such
as the dominance of men and the gendered character of the economy, which makes comparisons
across social contexts valuable. In this paper, we study hard-drug female dealers. In
contrast to small-scale female cannabis dealers, for example, such women operate in a gendered
and often violent economy, which is a huge disadvantage for them.Yet they continually
and creatively develop new strategies to overcome their shortcomings.
Women in the hard-drug economy face overwhelming structural constraints, such as being
physically weaker and the perception that they are less violent and less trustworthy than men
are. In short, they have to cope with a gender role that is the opposite of the traditional view of
a drug dealer. Studies of female dealers should acknowledge these constraints, but they should
also examine the strategies marginalized actors develop to overcome them. In this study, we
suggest that a theoretical framework of street capital (Sandberg, 2008a, 2008b; Sandberg and
Pedersen, 2009) synthesizes, and includes insights from, both the traditional victim approach
and the contemporary empowering approach to female drug dealers.
Gendered street capital
Men dominate the importation and distribution of drugs across the world (for example,
Bourgois, 2003; Decker and Chapman, 2008; Jacobs, 2000; Mullins, 2006). In Norway,
for example, women account for less than 20 percent of people charged with drug-related
criminal offences (Statistics Norway, 2009). Men not only dominate most illegal drug
markets, they also tend to display a particular form of masculinity when they manoeuvre
in the market. Bourgois (2003) describes a street culture that is characterized by both
hypermasculinity and hypersexuality. Unfortunately, despite general notions about street
culture being ‘masculine’ or a ‘world for men’, the complex character of gender in street
culture has received little attention so far (but see Mullins, 2006).
Connell (1995) argues that there are several competing types of masculinity. The prevalent
masculinity observed in drug dealing is similar to what he describes as protest masculinity.
Protest masculinity is characterized by violence, school resistance, crime, heavy drug or
alcohol use, motorbikes or cars, and short, heterosexual relationships (Connell, 1995).
Mullins (2006) describes a similar concept of street masculinity, which may be even more
appropriate for dealing in hard-drug markets. This understanding of street masculinity rests
on an understanding of gender as a practice (West and Zimmerman, 1987). Men in the drug
economy regularly display gender through activities that express street masculinity (Mullins,
2006: 7). Street masculinity values smartness, violence, retaliation, fashionable clothes and
female attachment. Building a reputation for violence is seen as an integral part of drug dealing
– to gain respect, deter attacks and punish people, especially when they have not paid
their debts to the dealer. Moreover, displaying a violent attitude is the most common way to
‘do gender’and thus be seen as ‘a man’(Mullins, 2006: 152).
Street masculinity is most clearly constructed in opposition to ‘punks’. The category
of punk is linked to both femininity and male homosexuality. Punks are regarded as soft
or womanly, ‘bitches’ or ‘fags’. Mullins (2006) describes street masculinity as ‘gender
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Grundetjern and Sandberg	 625
capital’, but unfortunately he does not expand on the relationship between gender capital
and Bourdieu’s (1984) cultural capital, other theoretical concepts of capital or its relation
to particular social fields. Moreover, when applied to drug dealing, the concept of street
masculinity risks exaggerating the gendered nature of the activity.
In this article, competence and skills that have previously been conceptualized as
‘streetwise’, knowing the ‘code of the street’ (Anderson, 1990), protest masculinity
(Connell, 1995) or street masculinity (Mullins, 2006) are reconceptualized as street capital
(Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009). This concept points to the importance of early socialization
and the practical rationality involved when people start dealing illegal drugs. It
also develops a middle position between individual agency and structural constraints,
which is essential to understand the position of female dealers (Sandberg, 2008a). Drug
dealers’ street capital can be seen in their technical knowledge of illegal drugs and dealing
and in their mythological knowledge of drug symbols and cultures. Knowing how to
avoid the police and make good deals, a readiness to use violence and self-presentation
as ‘gangsters’ are crucial (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009). As with cultural capital
(Bourdieu, 1984), street capital can be converted to economic capital, and it is closely
linked to one’s social capital. It differs from cultural capital, however, because it is difficult
to transfer to other social arenas.
Most importantly, the street capital concept emphasizes street knowledge and competence.
Habitus is Bourdieu’s concept for the practical sense, or ‘what is called in sport the
“feel for the game”’(Bourdieu, 1998: 25). Habitus is a learned and durable system of preferences
and practices, produced by historical and social conditions (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu
and Wacquant, 1992). Embodied street capital also includes more ‘objective’ characteristics
such as skin colour (Sandberg, 2008a) and sex. Street capital is closely linked to particular
ways of ‘doing gender’(protest and street masculinity), and it can be described as a gendered
form of capital more readily available to men. Women who want to gain street capital must,
literally, contradict one of their most fundamental embodied characteristics.
Method
This study is part of a six-year research project interviewing drug dealers. In an ethnographic
study of a street cannabis market, we interviewed 20 street drug dealers, including
one woman (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009). In addition, in a study of private and
high-end cannabis markets, we interviewed 20 small-scale dealers and 20 larger-scale
dealers and smugglers. Five of the small-scale dealers and one of the smugglers were
women (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2010). Following these studies, we wanted to expand
our research beyond the cannabis market, and parts of a recent study have been to interview
30 female drug dealers in Norwegian prisons. These interviews are the focus of this
article, but previous interviews with female and male drug dealers serve as an important
context for interpretation and analysis.
The first author (a woman in her late twenties) conducted the prison interviews with
female dealers ranging in age from 20 to 50. The interviews were conducted in small
visiting rooms and lasted between one and two hours. Four dealers were interviewed
twice. The interviews were semi-structured and organized as ‘life stories’ (Bertaux,
1981). We started by asking the research participants to talk freely about their lives, but
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in every case the informant quickly turned to drug-related stories. The interviews were
recorded and transcribed. All the dealers we interviewed were involved in hard-drug
markets characterized by what Bourgois (2003) describes as street culture. They were
positioned at every level of the drug hierarchy and, though they dealt a variety of drugs,
amphetamines were the most common.
Using a prison to recruit informants and conduct interviews has several advantages.
First, it allows access to a hidden population. Second, imprisonment gives research participants
time to reflect upon their lives. Third, informants are likely to be motivated,
contemplative and clear-headed. In a more natural context, the informants often have
other matters occupying their time, and thus they may be eager to finish interviews
quickly (Copes and Hochstetler, 2010). A disadvantage of prison interviews is that
research participants are not as close to the events they are recounting, and they can be
influenced by the institutional setting (Wright and Decker, 1994).
Strategies of female drug dealers
A female dealer we interviewed was discontented and told us that ‘when you are dealing
you cannot be respected as a woman’. She felt she had to choose between being a ‘woman’
in the traditional sense and being a drug dealer. There were two elements to her argument.
First, she received no respect as a woman when dealing drugs. Second, she received no
respect as a drug dealer if she appeared too womanly. Street capital is crucial to success as
a drug dealer, but the dilemma for female dealers is that street capital is in many ways
opposed to what being a woman is traditionally about. Below, we describe four strategies
female dealers use to compensate for their embodied lack of street capital. The first three
strategies – desexualization, violent posture and emotional detachment – are attempts to
become ‘one of the guys’. The fourth strategy – service-mindedness – involves rejecting
the hardcore masculine ‘rules’ of drug dealing and emphasizes the more gender-neutral
role of ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘seller’.
Desexualization
Siri was 35 years old when we met her. She grew up with a mother who used a wide
variety of illegal drugs. In her early teens she started stealing cannabis from her mother
to sell to other youngsters downtown. She soon befriended some older dealers and was
eventually picked up by some of the ‘big guys’ selling hard drugs. She started selling
amphetamines and cocaine for them, gradually rising in the drug hierarchy to become a
large-scale cocaine dealer. She held an important position in both the importation and
distribution of cocaine. ‘We ordered from some of the biggest cocaine smugglers in
Europe,’ she told us. In Siri’s opinion, her success as a dealer was possible mainly
because of her ability to desexualize herself and be ‘boyish’.
The most common strategy used by the female dealers in this study was desexualization.
It was important to avoid sexual and/or personal relationships with men in the drug
business. Many female dealers stressed the importance of being single and avoiding onenight
stands. ‘From the moment you have sex with one of them, you’re out of the game,’
Siri explained. Another dealer said, ‘As long as you do not get on your back, you are able
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to gain more respect,’ and a third dealer said, ‘You cannot use sex to close a deal, but
many women falsely think they can.’ Abiding by this restriction became increasingly
difficult, however, because the higher in the hierarchy they rose, the more desirable they
were to men. Siri explained:
The craving to curb you, to have you as their girlfriend or just to get you in bed, is much bigger
when selling cocaine. Because there’s status in it, and they are curious about which important
people you know and what’s in it for them.
When asked about personal relationships, a (high-ranking) dealer similarly emphasized,
‘Oh, you cannot have a boyfriend in my position.’ The imminent risk of sexualization
makes it challenging to uphold one’s position as a dealer. There is a constant struggle to
avoid being reduced to the status of a (potential) sexual partner. Hence, being single and
avoiding sexual relations with others in the illegal drug economy are important in order
to gain and maintain street capital. This corresponds with Campbell’s (1987: 452) findings
that gang girls often disapprove of random sexual activity.
Nevertheless, being sexually harassed was an everyday part of life for most of the
female dealers we interviewed. They reported frequent and repeated sexual and physical
abuse. ‘The men keep testing you to check how far they can go,’ a dealer related.
Siri’s male colleagues and friends would, for example, suddenly test her by ripping
off her shirt and touching her breasts. Siri explained that she had to respond in a similar
fashion: ‘You just have to grab their balls in return.’ In this way, she displayed a sexualized
way of acting that the men do not normally expect from women. This also involved
talking in the same way as men. Siri adopted men’s vulgar and sexist language: ‘When
the guys would brag about being out all night banging girls, I played their game and
replied, “Oh, how was that pussy?”’ Because she was a woman, she often felt she had to
use even rougher language than her male counterparts. Similarly, another dealer stated,
‘You need to use bad language to be heard.’They had to overcompensate verbally for not
being a man. One drug dealer explained that it was best if her business partners forgot
that she was a woman. ‘As soon as they no longer see you as a girl, then you can be
friends with the big guys,’ she argued.
Desexualization also involves downplaying all signs of femininity to avoid sexual
attention in the first place. One dealer explained, ‘What makes me successful is that I’m
not about boobs and ass and all that. I never act upon looks and sex . . . I find other ways
to get around.’ In the same way as gang girls, these dealers questioned the integrity and
authenticity of women who used sex as a strategic means (Miller, 2001: 193).
Furthermore, Siri told us that she gained weight so that she became less sexually attractive
to men: ‘I desexualized myself by being overweight, ’cause you know these guys,
they have a certain standard for what a woman should look like . . . they usually are
skinny, pretty girls with huge boobs and low self-esteem.’This narrative may be a ‘rational
reconstruction’(Cromwell et al., 1991) in order to positively reinterpret the experience of
gaining weight from being an indication of poor will to being one of strong will. It nevertheless
illustrates the rationale of street culture and how female dealers need to be
particularly conscious about their appearance. It also demonstrates how slenderness is
an ideal of female attractiveness (Bordo, 1993), even in the drug economy. Female
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628	 European Journal of Criminology 9(6)
dealers are thus not that different from women generally in their understanding of the
body as a symbol of gender identity.
Violent posture
Renate was only 22 years old but she had a long history as drug dealer. Before being imprisoned
she ran an amphetamine and heroin operation from her house, alone – without the help
of men. From the moment she entered the room for the interview she displayed a tough
appearance. Right away she began telling stories of how she dealt with people who had not
repaid their debts:
He owed me forty grand and refused to pay it back, so I found him on the street and screamed,
‘Where’s my money?’ Then he started to cry and replied, ‘Come on, we’ll get it from the cash
machine over there.’ But when I turned the other way, he tried to escape, so I grabbed him,
threw him into my car and dragged him into a friend’s house. Then I took some handcuffs and
locked him up in the garage. I took a lot of pills, shot amphetamines, and then I took a bat and
beat the crap out of him. I kept him there for a week.
Drug dealers face a high risk of being robbed because the people around them, especially
buyers and competitors, know they have both money and drugs (Jacobs, 2000).
According to Renate, aggressive behaviour was necessary to survive in the drug market.
Violence could also be used to balance one’s image as a dealer. Some dealers told us
that, if a woman gave in to the temptation of a sexual relationship with a male dealer,
being violent could restore her reputation as ‘one of the guys’. One of the most important
aspects of street capital is violence (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009), and earlier
research suggests that women need to be violent to survive in the hard-drug economy
(Dunlap et al., 1997: 44). Renate explained why:
I’ve had no other choice but to be a violent girl to get respect and to get people to understand
that they shouldn’t mess with me . . . I’ve had no choice but to show my bad side to prevent
people from coming to my house robbing me or beating me to pieces.
For these dealers, the use of violence and maybe more importantly the enactment of a
violent persona, was a crucial strategy to operating in a male-dominated economy. As
Zaitch (2005) emphasizes, it is not so much actual violence as the threat of violence that
is effective in the illegal drug economy.
One female dealer stated illustratively: ‘I hit people with baseball bats, fighting gloves
and various objects . . . I guess I’ve always been pretty tough.’Another told us that she
practised martial arts to acquire the skills she needed to be physically threatening. She
said this kept her from being pushed around: ‘I never let myself get bullied. If a man
slaps me, I hit him back. One time I beat a man really hard in front of a bunch of witnesses.
Since then people have respected me.’Another dealer explained that her violent
reputation still clung to her many years after she had last used violence: ‘When I walk
downtown I still see drug addicts run away as soon as they get a glimpse of me.’
Renate had a small, slim body and was probably aware that her appearance was not
frightening. However, she stressed that using drugs, and being under the influence of
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multiple drugs, lowered the threshold for using violence. The female dealers telling stories
of violent behaviours all seemed to exaggerate and emphasize their stories in a way
that we did not see among male dealers. They were concerned about their violent image
too, but both the frequency and the intensity of many of the female dealers’ stories about
violence were noteworthy. Female drug dealers probably have to compensate for not
being men in many ways (Dunlap et al., 1997: 50). Using excessive violence and exaggerating
the enactment of a violent persona was important for many, especially among
those involved in illegal drug markets embedded in street culture.
Emotional detachment
Maren was 28 years old when we interviewed her, and she had been involved in dealing
since she was 16. She stressed the importance of always hiding one’s true feelings in
front of men. Her most important strategy as a female dealer was to put on a ‘poker face’
to hide her real emotions. When she was watching a sad movie with other dealers, for
example, she would not allow herself to cry:
You put on your poker face. You have to pretend like nothing affects you, that nothing makes
you sad. You cannot cry when watching a movie. You put your emotions aside – right? This is
something you have to do to get by. Or else you get crushed by both girls and boys.
According to Maren, there was no place for ‘soft-hearted’ behaviour in the illegal drug
economy, or at least not in the parts where she was involved. This was endorsed wholeheartedly
by many of the dealers we spoke to. One 30-year-old dealer explained that
prior to her recent imprisonment she had not cried since the age of 14: ‘I’ve always
played a game . . . until I got to prison I did not cry one time. Not a single tear. And I went
through a lot during those years.’ Another female dealer expressed similar experiences
and opinions. ‘I had a reputation to protect,’ she told us; ‘I needed others to think of me
as tough, hard and cynical. I let nobody know the real me, because if I did, they might
consider me weak.’ This story was far from uncommon in our interviews, illustrated by
yet another dealer: ‘I embraced that role. I was invulnerable. No one could hurt me, no
matter what. I never let people know the real me.’
The importance of this strategy could be seen in the women’s stories of how they were
constantly being ‘tested’ by male dealers: ‘From the moment you show that you are
affected, by blushing or being embarrassed, then they’ve got you. You should be pretty
good at displacing your emotions, that’s for sure,’ one dealer explained. Another dealer
emphasized the importance of always staying calm:
Agirloncetoldme,‘IwishIwasyou,’causeyouarealwayscoolasice,nomatterwhat.’ThenIthought
to myself, ‘No I’m not, I just have to pretend, and keep my face on, even though I’m scared to death.’
Emotional detachment is about being able to pretend that one is emotionally cool and
‘heartless’. Many research participants described this as the key to gaining approval from
the men. However, at a more personal level, the women also used this strategy to detach
themselves from difficult situations – to avoid the emotional pain. ‘I guess it is a defence
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630	 European Journal of Criminology 9(6)
mechanism,’a dealer said. Emotional detachment is often used in combination with both
the violent posture and desexualization strategies. Desexualization even requires some
emotional detachment. For example, female dealers acted as if sexual harassment did not
affect them, even though it did. Emotional detachment can be used to gain street capital
in a gendered drug economy, but it comes at a cost. ‘I have lost myself over the years,
and now I don’t know who I am,’ one dealer said, and many dealers reported that they
did not know who they really were any more. Maren explained, ‘The longer the time, the
harder it gets to get back to one’s true emotions, to know what you are supposed to feel.’
Dealing with sexual harassment and other degrading experiences while acting as if they
mean nothing is difficult. The marginal and vulnerable position that female drug dealers
hold creates some dilemmas that men avoid.
Service-mindedness
Bente was 45 years old and started dealing illegal drugs quite late in life. She explained
that she lost her job and needed to provide for her two children: ‘I called a friend and
asked him directly, “Listen, I have no job and no income, I have to do something. Can
you give me something?”’ From that day she started a close collaboration with her male
friend. Bente did not have to work her way up the drug hierarchy. She went straight to
being a high-level dealer. ‘To me this has always been a job,’ she said, ‘a regular job,
which I pride myself on doing properly.’ Many drug dealers describe their activity as a
‘business’and constantly compare what they do to what goes on in legal markets (Dwyer
and Moore, 2010).Although business often is associated with masculinity, such an image
of drug dealing is far easier to combine with being a woman than one emphasizing crime,
street masculinity and violence.
For Bente, the key to being a successful and respected dealer was to be serious about the
business: ‘Everyone respects you, not because they fear you but because you have done
it the way it should be done.’ She said she had a reputation for never snitching: ‘You
know, people in my position need to be one hundred percent reliable.’ Trust is paramount
in the drug business, and it was important to her never to cheat any of her buyers.
In this way, Bente also gained customer loyalty. ‘There has never been a single person
in court who admitted that I sold them anything,’ she stated with pride. Many dealers
stressed the importance of being loyal to the customers. ‘You will not get far by lying
and cheating. I truly believe “what goes around comes around”,’ a dealer said. Another
dealer emphasized the importance of not diluting the product: ‘It’s all about being reasonable
and fair. If you’re a bluffer, you might make it that one time, but you won’t
survive in the long term.’ One of the other dealers was less self-confident. In her opinion,
she needed to be service-minded because customers expected female dealers to
deliver drugs faster than men.
Being reliable, reasonable, fast and trustworthy are examples of how women can use
both smartness and business ethics to be successful dealers without having to resort to
violence (Denton, 2001; Hutton, 2005). This corresponds with the findings of Morgan
and Joe (1996) that women not only were successful dealers but also took pride in organizing
the business around ‘ethical standards’. Bente even argued that service-mindedness
was something that came naturally to her because she was a mother.
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One of the dealers was very clear that she was against violence. When asked about
how she dealt with people who owed her money, she replied:
Well, I have a lot of money outstanding. There are many people that owe me money . . . . If they
don’t have money, they don’t have money, right? I’m the one that has been dumb and put them
into such a bad situation. I just need to take it into account. It’s not like beating people half to
death makes things any better.
Men in the drug economy usually stereotype women as more untrustworthy and liable
to snitch (Covington, 1985: 330). As with the other strategies presented above, servicemindedness
can be seen as a way to prove these stereotypes wrong. Unlike the other
strategies, however, service-mindedness is not an attempt to be ‘one of the guys’and gain
street capital. It is instead an attempt to change, or redefine, the rules of the game.
Female dealers may emphasize service-mindedness because they cannot compete in
terms of a readiness to use violence and self-presentation as ‘gangsters’. One female
dealer, for example, suggested that physique barred her from threatening creditors with
violence. Her strategy was instead to forget about them and see the money as a ‘sunk
cost’:
It’s been like that a lot, because I feel that’s what pays in the long run. It’s not only a nice
gesture, you know, it is also a selfish choice, because it pays to be generous. It establishes trust.
That person is probably not the one to snitch you out.
Service-mindedness is thus a rather intelligent way to deal with an inferior status
(Hutton, 2005). Dealers who utilized this strategy often had a more varied social background
than other dealers. Some had held a legitimate job prior to their dealing career,
and others had been enrolled in higher education. These dealers were able to draw upon
a broader set of resources, which was required for successful enactment of this strategy.
Overcompensating, doing masculinity and challenging
the ‘rules’
Many illegal drug markets and social contexts of drug dealing are characterized by street
culture (Bourgois, 2003), street masculinity (Mullins, 2006) or what we have described
as street capital (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009). The relevance of the street capital concept
for a discussion of female dealers can be summarized briefly. Female drug dealers
have less embodied street capital – and they know it. As demonstrated above, their strategies
for overcoming this disadvantage are multifaceted. They involve ‘doing gender’
(West and Zimmerman, 1987) in complex ways, and they present several dilemmas.
Some previous research has argued that female drug dealers avoid adopting ‘typically
male behaviour’. Their argument is that, by dressing and acting differently from men,
women do not call attention to their illegal actions. Thus, being a woman can be an
advantage (Jacobs and Miller, 1998). Strategies to avoid the police are of little use, however,
if the potential dealer is not accepted by other actors in the illegal drug economy.
Among the disadvantages that female dealers face, many are of an economic character.
In our interviews, some women said they had to pay double price if they wanted to hire
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a torpedo (see the quote in the introduction). They were also expected to pay more in
interest if they needed to borrow money. These findings contradict others in the literature.
Adler, for example, reported how men ‘bent the rules for the “ladies”,’meaning that
women were given more time to pay back their debts (Adler, 1993: 91). She described it
as a chauvinistic trait. Both observations, however, illustrate the inferior role of women
in the illegal drug economy. Women are not regarded as equal, and if they want to be
included they need to work hard for it.
For many women, the best strategy to become a respected drug dealer is to refrain
from sexual relations. In this way, they avoid being seen as a sexual object or, even
worse, as a ‘whore’. Conversely, the status of male dealers increases with the number of
women they are seen with, but they must avoid homosexual relationships. Both men and
women have to downplay femininity and avoid acting in a womanly manner. Mullins
(2006), for example, describes the constant and rather complex identity work that goes
into avoiding being seen as a ‘punk’. Violent posture and emotional detachment are also
shared strategies for both female and male dealers. There seems to be a tendency for
female dealers to overcompensate by trying to self-present as even more violent and
emotionally detached than men. It also seems as if they have more problems with this
role-playing than many men do. This may be because it is further from the traditional
gender role of women and thus it is harder to combine with other identities, such as that
of a mother or girlfriend.
Service-mindedness differs from the other strategies because it challenges or opposes
the rationale of street culture. It is not about gaining or upholding street capital but rather
about trying to define other rules of the game. This strategy is probably the one with the
greatest potential for women, because they do not have to work against their embodied
characteristics. It also means that they can combine being a drug dealer with other female
gender roles. Carlen and her colleagues found that criminal women rejected the conventional
gender roles offered to them. Yet they did not want to swap the conventional female
roles for conventional male ones. What they wanted was independence and success (Carlen,
1985). The service-minded approach to drug dealing, however, probably fits best within
low-scale, private and soft-drug markets, where violent street culture is less dominant.
Structurally constrained but competent
There are two main theoretical perspectives in studies of female drug dealers. The traditional
approach describes female dealers as marginalized, passive and helpless victims
(Adler, 1993; Maher, 1997; Maher and Daly, 1996; Steffensmeier, 1983). It emphasizes
the structural constraints women face in a gendered economy and the troubles women
have in a hypermasculine social context. In contrast, more recent studies describe women
as skilful and competent dealers, having some advantages because of their female characteristics
(Anderson, 2005; Denton, 2001; Denton and O’Malley, 1999). This latter
approach emphasizes the agency of women who get involved in drug dealing.
The different perspectives can be explained empirically partly by the fact that
researchers have studied different markets, with different structural prospects for women.
However, the divergence also reflects a fundamental theoretical difference between
structural and agency-based explanations in social science and some tensions within
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feminism. The traditional approach derives from a feminist perspective that emphasizes
how women are oppressed in a male-dominated society (or subculture). The newer
approach is a more radical, emancipating feminist approach that emphasizes the importance
of social science in patriarchal oppression. In short, if researchers describe only the
victim roles of women and neglect their successes, competence and agency, how can we
expect women to see themselves differently?
By introducing the concept of gendered street capital, we suggest a compromise
between these approaches. We argue that many female dealers operate in a gendered
economy that puts them at a huge disadvantage. Social relations in the drug economy
are power relations that regulate the positions that agents occupy. Both past and present
positions influence agents’ capabilities and the resources they can access and, thus, the
possibilities for their actions (Bourdieu, 1977: 82–3). In other words, women are structurally
constrained by their lack of embodied street capital. However, though they are
structurally constrained, their embodied capital or habitus also includes possibilities for
creative strategies and agency (Bourdieu, 1990). The strategies we described above are
structurally limited, but they are nonetheless strategic efforts to transcend a marginal
position.As Bourdieu (1984) emphasizes, however, these efforts will seldom be entirely
successful, and paradoxically they often reproduce oppressive structures in the field.
Conclusion
Illegal drug markets are difficult social contexts for women, and female dealers are heavily
underrepresented in most markets. Women face several challenges when dealing
drugs. Most importantly, they are often stereotyped as untrustworthy, snitchers, easy to
cheat and unable to protect themselves. To operate in a gendered illegal drug economy,
female dealers must prove these stereotypes wrong. This is a difficult task. Female dealers
often end up victimized or left in marginal positions in the economy, and sexual and
physical abuse are frequent. As an illustration, many of the strategies cited above were
employed to avoid sexual exploitation and violence. However, this was often not so
much a consequence of the dealing activity per se, as part of the masculine street culture
in which drug dealing occurred.
Nevertheless, women are not entirely powerless, and men are not entirely privileged.
Both men and women in the hard-drug economy typically come from marginalized backgrounds,
and many have suffered traumatizing experiences in early childhood and adolescence.
Poverty, sexual assaults and parental drug abuse are common to both male and
female dealers’ lives. In that sense, they are all victims. Still, after entering certain parts
of the illegal drug economy, men are privileged, their lives are better and it is easier for
them to succeed than it is for women.
Acknowledgment
This project was financed by Norwegian Research Council (research grant 196608).
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