Law Faculty website
FACULTY OF LAW BLOGS / UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DPRU Blog submissions
Why take a gender-based approach to the death penalty for drug
trafficking?
Author(s)
Lucy Harry
DPhil
Criminolog y
Posted
11 October 2021
Time to read
4 Minutes
On World Day Against the Death Penalty 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes
Callamard, announced the prioritisation of a ‘gender-based’ approach to capital punishment. This announcement coincided with the
publication of the Cornell University Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide’s report, Judged For More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of
the Women Facing the Death Penalty – the `rst systematic examination of the issue of gender and capital punishment – which found that of the
approximately 500 women on death row worldwide, many are victims of gender-based discrimination and have faced, and continue to face,
various forms of oppression.
Around this time, I began my doctoral research into the experiences of women sentenced to death for drug traf`cking in Malaysia, and I
bene`ted from the momentum established by Cornell’s report. However, as I began conducting my interviews with stakeholders involved in
the women’s cases – including lawyers, NGO activists, consular of`cials, judges, prosecutors and police – I encountered some resistance to my
research topic. Several of my interviewees mentioned that they did not really see this as a ‘gender issue’ – indeed, the majority of those on
death row in Malaysia (and around the world) are men. There was a concern that by focusing on women this would detract attention away from
the expansive male death row, or, worse yet, that retentionist governments (such as the Malaysian government) might champion the cause of
women on death row (‘low-hanging fruit’) in an effort to appease the UN and other abolitionist groups, whilst avoiding making any meaningful
change.
Furthermore, as I began discussing my research topic – women on death row for the crime of drug traf`cking – some of my interviewees,
especially the lawyers I spoke with, were perplexed about the ‘gender dimension’ to this crime, as there are many more men than women on
death row for drug traf`cking in Malaysia. Moreover, if we were focusing on the crime of homicide, it would be easier to chart the causal
relationship between gender-based discrimination and the ensuing crime, for example, as has been shown by other research from the DPRU in
conjunction with the Death Penalty Project, which focused on women on death row in Ghana and Sierra Leone who were survivors of domestic
abuse and were convicted of killing their abusers, otherwise known as ‘battered women syndrome’.
So, what are the gendered dimensions of women on death row
for drug traf`cking? Well, since its inception in the 1960s and 70s,
feminist criminological theorising has shown that women
commit crimes – and are criminalised – for gender-speci`c
reasons, often related to their position in patriarchal society
(see, for example, the seminal work of scholar Beth Richie). And,
the death penalty aside, over the past few decades we have
witnessed a marked increase in the number of women
incarcerated worldwide (e.g. the female prison population grew
by 59% globally between 2000 to 2020), which has largely been
attributed to the over-incarceration of women for low-level drug
offences. Much of the existing research on women and drug
traf`cking has highlighted that women – predominantly from
the global South – engage in drug smuggling for economic
reasons as a result of neoliberal reforms and the ‘feminisation of
poverty’.
If we take the speci`c case of Malaysia, it is helpful to look at a
break-down of the statistics on the death row population:
according to `gures from Amnesty International, in 2019 there
were 1,140 men and 141 women on death row in Malaysia. Whilst
there is a higher number of men on death row than women, it is
important to note that:
1.
A higher proportion of women are sentenced to death for
drug traf`cking (95% as compared to 70% of the male
death row); and
2.
A higher proportion of women on death row are foreign
nationals (86% of the female death row population and
only 39% of the male death row population).
So, what is behind the disproportionately high number of
foreign national women on death row for drug traf`cking in
Malaysia? Many of the women are from other countries in the global South, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, China and Thailand, and I
link this trend to the ‘feminisation of migration’ in the region, where, again owing to neoliberal economic reforms in the latter part of the
twentieth century, women have migrated to work abroad in feminised industries. And indeed, `ndings from my empirical data suggest that
many of the women were working in feminised `elds such as domestic work and within massage parlours, and agreed to courier drugs, or were
duped into doing so, in the course of travelling for their work. Other criminological research has also focused on the criminalisation of female
migrant domestic workers in Asia.
As part of my research I reviewed court testimonies and found that many of the women’s defences centred around the role that a male intimate
partner played in duping them into couriering drugs, in some cases through online romance scams. Reports have emerged from the region of
drug syndicates targeting women speci`cally in this way. My data also show that women engaged in drug couriering (many claimed they did
not know it was drugs they were carrying, but thought they were being paid to carry items such as clothing and electronic goods) for other,
gendered reasons, such as to make ‘quick money’ as single mothers to support their children or to pay for family members’ medical bills.
Overall, I argue that women engage (knowingly or unknowingly) in drug couriering for money as a consequence of gendered economic
precarity – more on this, here.
Moreover, once intercepted and charged, I found that women were often held to different standards in court. My review of judgments (from the
High Court, Court of Appeal and the Federal Court of Malaysia) found that judges had in mind a paternalistic stereotype of a vulnerable,
uneducated female dupe who was deserving of mercy, but dismissed the defences of those who did not `t this role. This is evidenced in the
following quotations from judges:
We are of the considered view that it is very unlikely that the respondent, who is a diploma holder… could have placed herself in a
situation where she could be exploited to commit a crime.
Her handbag contained make-up, ladies’ accessories, a Gucci watch, sunglasses and a wallet containing American dollars… These
items are not a poor lady’s possession, but the items indicate she is a socialiser – a lady of the ‘world’.
Overall, therefore, my research `ndings from Malaysia demonstrate that gender is indeed a signi`cant variable to consider when researching
capital punishment. It is important to consider the gendered drivers behind women’s involvement in capital crimes, as well as to examine the
differential treatment of female offenders in death penalty trials and appeals. The death penalty – like the rest of the criminal justice system –
is not gender-blind.
Lucy Harry is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology and Death Penalty Research Unit.
The World Day Against the Death Penalty 2021, held on 10 October, focused on the theme 'Women and the death penalty: An
invisible reality'. For further details about the World Day, see the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty website here
here..
Share
@OxfordLawFac
On Youtube
Our blogs are written by individual contributors and so
consist of individual opinions and viewpoints which are
not necessarily the views of either the Faculty of Law or
of the University of Oxford.
Privacy Policy
Contact
Accessibility Statement
Cookie Statement
Contact us
The Faculty of Law, University of Oxford,
St Cross Building,
St Cross Road, Oxford OX1 3UL
Enquiries: See contact emails
Contact Us
Data Protection
University of Oxford
Non-Oxford login
Oxford Login