Women Role Perpetrators Essay

This chapter focuses on the functions of explaining how ordinary people can commit extraordinary evil through “ a societal product in which a complex and sustained series of social forces enables ordinary people to commit such evil” (Waller, 269). While the outcome depends entity upon the situation and the environment that the person is placed in, the social construction of cruelty helps explain the female role perpetrators. By examining the situations where women are placed and immersed in it explains the roles and actions that they choose to take.

In considering the role of gender for perpetrators I personally feel that the role of women in a genocide is vastly underestimated. I think that society has a stereotype for looking at women as unable to be perpetrators of genocide, nor do I believe that women do not hold the structure and store in society. A large issue concerning gender and perpetrator
Society also seems to link genocide with masculinity and violence, two features that are perceived to be more commonly found in men rather than the docile female. "The violence system was powered by men and structured to promote 'masculine' forms of power—emphasizing competition, dominance, and control" (Waller, 264-265). Women during wartime and genocide, are normally thought of to have non-combative roles and instead hold homely roles by supporting the men at war and working to further the war as well as defending the homefront. Logically, we look at statistics that tell us that women are perceived to be less of a threat than men and that they are less inclined to commit violence in comparison to their male counterparts. “Cross-cultural homicide statistics, for instance, reveal that men are overwhelmingly more often the killers than are females and that the majority of their victims are other men”