The Limits of Available Research on Gangs

Women are almost completely left out of South African research on gangs (as researchers and researched). There is also no clear conceptualisation of what constitutes a gang, with writers sometimes treating a whole range of collective behaviours as the same phenomenon.1 Writers also refer to different types of gangs without always specifying how they are similar to or different from one another.2 Further, despite an emerging body of work on African gangs,3 media and public attention remains focused on coloured gangs in the Western Cape. Additionally, apart from Glaser's work on tsotsi4 gangs (1990), writers on African gangs have focused even less on women gang members than their counterparts writing on Western Cape gangs. Inevitably then, information in this article is mainly about coloured Western Cape gangs.5 Female gangsters are disrespected by male gangsters, researchers and police Although the number of women drawn into gangs is increasing, they wield no power … Female gangsters have very little respect for anybody and seldom get respect from others. (NICRO and the Institute of Criminology 1990:6) Unless featured in magazine articles,6 the voices and experiences of women gan