Critical Criminology 11: 83–85, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands.

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BOOK REVIEW

Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Women’s Prisons by MaryBosworth. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. ISBN: 1-84014-739-3 (hbk).

Reviewed by Barbara Hudson, Universtiy of Central Lancashire.

This book is important and timely. Important, because it makes a significanttheoretical contribution to studies of imprisonment in general and imprison-ment of women in particular; and timely, because of recent moves to createa separate role of director of women’s imprisonment in the UK, as wellas increased policy attention to what works in terms of rehabilitation andresettlement of prisoners. Bosworth’s book provides empirical detail, whichshould be of value to those concerned with policy, detail that is framed in asophisticated critical feminist theoretical and methodological framework.

Studies of imprisonment are all too often detached from theoreticaldebates and perspectives current in other fields of sociology of punish-ment and control. In the past, such studies were either under-theorised orremained within a liberal-rationalist framework that did not move far beyondthe confines of taken-for-granted ideas about the purposes of prisons andthe problems of managing them. Even where problems of gender or powerrelations of agency, and identity were addressed, the modes in which theywere addressed were, by and large, disconnected from critical work beingdone in other fields of social theory. While there are, of course, exceptionsto this generalisation, it is nonetheless the case that there is every reasonto welcome the signs that a new, albeit small, body of research on prisonsis emerging, bringing insights of the newer theories of gender, identity, andpower to bear on the study of regimes and inmates. Bosworth’s study is asignificant addition to this body of work.

Bosworth explores the world of the women’s prison through two setsof related concepts: identity and resistance; agency and power. She talks towomen inmates about their experiences of and feelings about various aspectsof prison life – relations between prisoners and officers, relationships amongprisoners, education and work, discipline, self-harm, and medical issues –and shows how clashing and contested ideas of womanhood become sitesfor struggles of powerlessness and empowerment, resistance and suppres-

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sion, identity and anonymity. She gives vivid examples of the ways in whichwomanhood can be both means of oppression and means of resistance inprisons. For example, stereotypes of womanhood deny female prisonersopportunities to learn the trades that might help them gain employmentoutside; but at other times (such as the example she gives of using “feminineproblems” to have harsh toilet paper replaced by soft), women use theirfemale biology to embarrass a male governor into giving them what theywant. Conventional ideas of motherhood give them little choice in the waysthey try to relate to their children, but motherhood provides a source ofidentity more powerful than that of prisoner or offender.

The book explores the ways in which identities and allegiances are medi-ated by class and race, as well as gender, detailing the different experiencesand difficulties of prisoners living abroad, the different reactions of officialsto demands for religious observance for women of differing race and classbackgrounds, and the ways in which coming from the same neighbourhoodmakes for stronger bonds than being of the same ethnic group. Although shediscusses sexuality, its implications for female identity and agency are not asfully developed as are the other structural factors of race and class.

Empirical detail is joined to a discussion of the debates around the theoryand politics of identity and resistance. These ideas are prominent in muchof the feminist work in social theory, and are seen as crucial to maintainingfocus on gendered oppression whilst taking note of the post-structuralist andpost-modernist critiques of unitary concepts of woman and power. To date,these ideas in their theoretically articulated forms have had little impact oncriminology. The book not only presents them and their critiques in acces-sible, comprehensible terms but also makes application of them. This meansthat it deserves to be read by students and academics who are interested in anyaspects of punishment and control, not just women’s imprisonment. Bosworthalso gives a comprehensive and principled discussion of feminist researchmethodology and the value of the standpoint methodology she uses, whichagain makes the book valuable beyond its immediate topic.

If I have any criticism of the book, it is perhaps the lack of attention tothe doing gender perspective that has been incorporated into criminology.Although her concepts draw on a different feminist-political theoretical back-ground, the doing gender/doing difference approach may provide a point ofconnection for criminology students for whom it is familiar. A comparisonbetween this approach to gender and identity and that of the theorists uponwhom Bosworth draws would have been helpful for criminology studentreaders. Similarly, the link between femininity and resistance is not new.Females have always sexualised their school uniforms and used their sexu-ality to empower themselves in male-dominated situations, whilst at the same

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time struggling against oppression by stereotypes of femininity as well asmaterial forms of gendered oppression. This theme of feminity and resistanceis present in some of the feminist subcultural studies of the 1980s; and again,this would have been a helpful point of connection to her preferred analyticframework.

Some reference to these earlier and more criminologically incorporateddebates would have connected the book more firmly to other studies ofimprisonment and control which have focused on gender, while revealingwhat is new and different about Bosworth’s approach. In turning the studyfrom a Ph.D thesis to a book, she might perhaps have contracted some ofthe other theoretical sections, such as those relating mainly to sentencingrather than prison regimes, to give some attention to these other approachesto gender, deviance, and control. But this quibble does not detract from arecommendation of this as an important, original book, well worth reading.