Description
Incarcerated women are rehabilitated under the guise of patriarchy and research often fails to explore the consequences of creating prison programs with sexist foundations. Furthermore, there is little research that investigates very specific efforts used by prisons to control and define gender for women. Generally, few incarcerated women will have the necessary skills to be successful in the labor market once released from prison, yet these women will have spent much of their time incarcerated engaging in assigned prison work programs. This thesis will focus on the powerful methods of control utilized by carceral institutions in attempts to regulate gender norms. More specifically, it will focus on the use of control and power in terms of the heavily gendered work programs designed for incarcerated women and how these programs dependence on outdated definitions of gender contribute to the subordination of women. Using the theoretical framework from Joan Acker and Michel Foucault, these prison work programs are examined thoroughly for their use of power and control of gender. The findings of this thesis illustrate that gendered prison work programs not only limit opportunities for incarcerated women upon release, but also reinforce a gendered hierarchy where women reside at the bottom.
