Women and wildlife crime: hidden offenders, protectors and victims


J ES SIC A S. KAHL E R and MARISA A. RIN KUS


Abstract Gender is an explanatory factor in multiple di- mensions of conservation, including women’s access to and participation in conservation programmes, with gender bias in wildlife research persisting globally. There is reason to believe the current global wildlife crime crisis is no excep- tion, with a lack of critical examination of gendered roles in security for biodiversity conservation. Despite the emergence of high-profile all-women ranger units (e.g. Akashinga in Zimbabwe) there has been a lack of systematic integration of gender within biodiversity protection. Theoretical and methodological applications from criminology have become progressively more common in response to an increase in a wide range of environmental crimes with consequences for women and their communities. Herewe consider the impli- cations of the lack of knowledge of women’s direct and indirect roles in wildlife security. We used the criminology and conservation literature to identify key gaps in research, and relevant and robust typologies and frameworks informed by criminology to structure future research on women as offenders, protectors (handlers, managers, guardians) and victims of wildlife crime. We argue that more intentional research into the direct and indirect roles of women in wildlife crime is needed to address wildlife crime, protect biodiversity and support social justice in response to wildlife crimes.


Keywords Criminology, gender, guardians, illegal wildlife trade, offenders, poaching, victimization, women


Introduction


academics, and practitioners from conservation to crimin- ology. There is increasing awareness that the impacts of wildlife crime extend beyond biodiversity loss and are a sig- nificant threat to human economies, security, subsistence and well-being (Brashares et al., 2014; Gore et al., 2019). The growing literature on wildlife crimes (which can include


W JESSICA S. KAHLER (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0003-3963-5196)


Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117330, 3219 Turlington Hall, Gainesville, Florida 32611-0430, USA E-mail jkahler@ufl.edu


MARISA A. RINKUS ( orcid.org/0000-0002-5080-7262) Center for Inter- disciplinarity, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA


Received 23 July 2020. Revision requested 11 November 2020. Accepted 2 February 2021. First published online 1 September 2021.


ildlife crime has captured the attention of gov- ernmental and nongovernmental organizations,


poaching, trade, trafficking, and/or possession) provides new knowledge for addressing illegal activities and protec- tion of species, with the last decade marking an increase in theoretical and methodological applications from criminology. Research on wildlife crime is becoming in- creasingly nuanced and interdisciplinary, with advances in understanding wildlife crime offenders (e.g. Phelps et al., 2016), applications of situational crime prevention (e.g. Petrossian, 2015) and engaging communities in wildlife crime prevention (e.g. Anagnostou et al., 2020). Despite this growing attention, more research into the


direct and indirect roleswomen play as offenders, protectors and victims is needed to broaden our understanding of wild- life crime and protect biodiversity. Our aim here was to use the extant criminology and conservation literature to iden- tify key gaps in research and relevant typologies and frame- works informed by criminology to structure future research on women as offenders, protectors (handlers, managers, guardians) and victims of wildlife crime. We begin by clari- fying our terms when discussing gender, followed by context for our assertion based on an exploratory reviewof the peer- reviewed literature, and contrast this with results found from a search of news articles. Gender is an explanatory factor in multiple dimensions


of wildlife conservation, including women’s access to and participation in conservation programmes (e.g. Rinkus et al., 2017). Yet survey-based research on wildlife crime often fails to report the gender identity (man/woman) of the sample, often reporting offenders as ‘villagers’ or ‘com- munity members’. By gender, we are referring to the social and cultural aspects of the lived experiences of men and women. Gender interacts with, but is separate from bio- logical sex, and can be studied from multiple angles includ- ing, for example, gender identity, gender roles, gendered power dynamics, and gender-based relationships. We use ‘gender identity’ here instead of ‘sex’ because how people identify may or may not be related to their biological sex, and how others perceive gender identity can influence the gendered nature of relationships. Furthermore, it is unlikely that researchers ask participants to disclose their biological sex, nor is biological sex necessarily a determinant for gen- der identity. To examine the gaps in the conservation literature with


respect to gender as it relates to wildlife crime, we conducted an exploratory search in the Web of Science database for January 1990–March 2020. Of the 261 results returned for the search term ‘wildlife crime’ only two remained after fur- ther filtering for ‘gender’. Similar results were found using


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 835–843 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000193


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