It'S Not Just The Drugs That Are Difficult To Quit': Women'S Drug Dealing As A Source of Empowerment and Its Implications For Crime Persistence

doi:10.
1093/bjc/azy040 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL
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‘IT’S NOT JUST THE DRUGS THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO QUIT’:
WOMEN’S DRUG DEALING AS A SOURCE OF EMPOWERMENT
AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CRIME PERSISTENCE
Heidi Grundetjern* and Jody Miller
Research comparing crime desisters with persistent offenders has tended to find persisters to be
a marginalized group who, for personal, interactional and/or structural reasons, are unable to
break free from crime. On the basis of in-depth interviews with a group of empowered women drug
dealers in Norway, this article suggests that the processes of psychological empowerment emerging
within some individuals’ criminal success are an under-investigated aspect of crime persistence.
We describe how these processes are gendered in important ways. Empowerment was prominently
linked to what the women recognized as their hard-earned place at the table as successful drug deal-
ers, including their skill in navigating a gendered field in which the presumptive female subject is
marginalized and sexualized. Our findings demonstrate that success in the drug market is fuelled
by and fuels women’s empowerment, and also that such empowerment can be a significant deter-
rent for attempts at and the desire to desist. Our findings have import for research on the rewards
of crime, for scholarship on gender and crime as well as for scholars of desistance.
Key Words: female drug dealers, psychological empowerment, crime persistence,
desistance
Introduction
A rich body of scholarship has documented the gender-segmented organization of crim-
inal markets that gives structural power to men (Maher 1997; Miller 2001; Anderson
2005). Steffensmeier (1983) theorized the place of ‘institutional sexism’ in criminal
enterprises, arguing that men’s exclusionary practices hinder women’s participation.
Indeed, multiple studies have shown that women are under-represented and margin-
alized in drug markets, particularly at higher levels (Adler 1993; Jacobs and Miller
1998). Women’s involvement as sellers often goes through male intimate partners, who
they depend on for drugs (Bourgois et al. 2004; Maher and Hudson 2007). As a conse-
quence, women’s desistance challenges have largely been understood as hindered by
drug addiction, psychological distress and marginality (Giordano et al. 2002).
We add complexity to common understandings of crime desistance challenges by
considering a group of women dealers who were relatively successful and demonstrated
aspects of empowerment in their drug market navigations. Several previous studies
have described women who are successful dealers, despite noting how uncommon such
women are (Dunlap and Johnson 1996; Denton and O’Malley 1999). For example,
Morgan and Joe (1996) described how drug dealing can lead to feelings of control,
*Heidi Grundetjern, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis, 542, Lucas Hall,
One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121, USA; grundetjernh@umsl.edu; Jody Miller, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers
University–Newark, NJ 07102, USA.
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© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).
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GRUNDETJERN AND MILLER
independence and pride for women users. Feminist scholars have thus called for fur-
ther investigation of women’s agency in drug markets (Maher 1997; Anderson 2005).
However, this work has not yet considered how drug market success might contribute to
women’s crime persistence.
Another body of work has focused on the potential rewards of crime (Katz 1988;
McCarthy and Hagan 2001; Lindegaard and Jacques 2014). This work raises important
but largely underexplored questions for scholarship on crime desistance, which gener-
ally has distinguished desisters from persisters by characterizing persistence as lack of
success. Persisters are said to perceive themselves as ‘doomed to deviance’ (Maruna
2001: 74) or are caught in a spiral of cumulative disadvantage (Sampson and Laub
1997) and thus are unable to embrace the desistance ‘reform project’ (Giordano et al.
2002: 1027).
In correspondence with the narrative and cognitive traditions guiding recent desist-
ance work, our focus is on ‘actors’ own cognitions and associated agentic moves’
(Giordano et al. 2002: 1033). On the basis of interviews with women drug dealers in
Norway, we investigate their individual empowerment in the drug economy and trace
the role such empowerment plays in women’s accounts of their crime persistence and
challenges of desistance. Our understanding of empowerment draws on Zimmerman’s
(1995) conceptualization of psychological empowerment as an individual’s sense of per-
sonal control emerging from insights into their place in the social context in which they
are situated and their skill in navigating within it. Although marginalization traps some
women in persistence (Giordano et al. 2002), we argue that the self-efficacy (Bandura
1977) empowered women experience in the drug economy can be a gendered reward
that keeps them in ‘the game’.
Empowerment and Crime
Empowerment is a common concept within social work and psychology, yet not widely
applied within sociology and criminology. In criminology, the term appears primar-
ily in reference to the cognitive and behavioural changes individuals undergo when
successfully desisting from drug use and crime (Veysey et al. 2009). Such usage is com-
patible with Zimmerman’s (1995: 581) definition of psychological empowerment: an
individual-level construct, it is characterized by ‘perceptions of personal control, a pro-
active approach to life, and a critical understanding of the sociopolitical environment’.
Desistance scholars connect such empowerment to individual change. Yet, although
Zimmerman recognizes psychological empowerment as a dynamic phenomenon that
can change over time, change is not required for empowerment. Rather, ‘every indi-
vidual has the potential to experience empowering and disempowering processes,
and to develop a sense of empowerment at one time and disempowerment at another’
(Zimmerman 1995: 586).
Two facets of Zimmerman’s framework are particularly useful for our investigation of
how empowerment relates to crime persistence. First, he conceptualizes empowerment
as both process and outcome. This means that although success as an outcome can be
part of psychological empowerment, individuals may experience empowerment without
fully achieving their ambitions or having what Anderson (2005: 372) refers to as ‘power
over’. Second, Zimmerman (1995: 596) understands empowerment as a ‘dynamic con-
textually driven construct’, which we find particularly useful for understanding women
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WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND CRIME PERSISTENCE
dealers’ empowerment in a gender-segmented field. Women’s ability to navigate suc-
cessfully in a context characterized by gender inequality may itself be empowering.
Zimmerman outlines three components of psychological empowerment: intraper-
sonal, interactional and behavioural. The intrapersonal component parallels Bandura’s
(1977) concept of self-efficacy (i.e., an individual’s belief in her ability to manage and
influence a situation or context) and involves ‘perceived control, competence, and effi-
cacy’ (Zimmerman 1995: 589). At the interactional level, psychological empowerment
reflects an individual’s deep knowledge of the navigational context and ‘critical aware-
ness … of the resources needed to achieve a desired goal, knowledge of how to acquire
those resources, and skills for managing’ them (Zimmerman 1995: 589). For women in
a gender-stratified environment, this implies understanding the gendered rules of the
game and the gendered consequences of any given action. Finally, the behavioural com-
ponent of psychological empowerment emerges from the combined intrapersonal and
interactional components. It refers to the actions the individual takes to achieve her
desired outcomes, based on her belief in both her own abilities and her ‘environmental
mastery’ (Zimmerman 1995: 589).
Scholars who theorize that desistance is grounded in cognitive transformation have
demonstrated that components of psychological empowerment are present in many indi-
viduals who successfully desist from crime. Maruna (2001: 9), e.g., found that desisters
had ‘an exaggerated sense of control over the future, and an inflated, almost mission-
ary sense of purpose in life’. Similarly, Giordano et al. (2002) emphasized the ‘up front’
(intrapersonal) work individuals must do to recognize (interactional) ‘hooks for change’
in order to take actions (behavioural) towards crime-free lives. Alternatively, desistance
scholars emphasize the negative impacts crime has on individuals. Desisters are implicitly
or explicitly compared favourably to crime persisters, with the latter understood as una-
ble—for personal, interactional and/or structural reasons—to break free from crime.
Although a fatalistic outlook (Maruna 2001), marginalization and psychological dis-
tress (Giordano et al. 2002), and cumulative disadvantage (Sampson and Laub 1997),
undoubtedly are crucial facets of persistence for many offenders, those who find psycho-
logical empowerment in their crime involvement may see no need for ‘a replacement self’
(Giordano et al. 2002: 1035). Rather, empowerment itself can be an incentive for continued
involvement in crime. The literature on this question—especially in relation to crime per-
sistence—is comparatively scarce, despite an existing body of work on the rewards of crime.
Katz’s (1988) Seductions of Crime is one of the few influential studies of the social-
psychological benefits of crime. Using a phenomenological framework, he underscored
the sensual, emotional and moral rewards of crime, including ‘sneaky thrills’, a sense of
righteousness and identity construction as ‘badass’. Similarly, Anderson’s (1999) Code of
the Street highlighted status enhancement as a reward for the willingness to use violence.
Other scholars have investigated the material benefits of crime (Steffensmeier and
Ulmer 2005; Thompson and Uggen 2012). McCarthy and Hagan (2001: 1053) noted
that ‘the notion of illegal prosperity challenges commonly held beliefs that success
requires participation in conventional activities’. Their investigation of street youth
revealed that drug dealing led to both the accumulation of criminal capital and at
least short-term economic success for some. In a study of young men in disadvantaged
neighbourhoods in Cape Town, Lindegaard and Jacques (2014) showed that partici-
pants obtained three types of status from their criminal involvement: group belong-
ing, peer respect and wealth. The authors suggested that such rewards were crucial
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for crime persistence and ‘allowed them to redefine themselves in a manner that gave
them self-esteem and power, rather than construct their identity as victims of their cir-
cumstances’ (Lindegaard and Jacques 2014: 96).
The question of whether the psychological rewards of crime may be gendered has
received little attention. Works such as Katz’s (1988) and Anderson’s (1999) are implic-
itly, at least, about rewards that would seem to accrue primarily to men: both the
‘badass’ and the ‘street code’ are masculine constructs. Jones (2010), e.g., documents
how African American young women face conflicting gendered expectations associ-
ated with the street code: a violent persona is not necessarily status enhancing, as it
violates respectable black femininity. In addition, though scholars have considered the
strategic ways women navigate in male-dominated offending networks (Maher 1997;
Miller 1998; 2001; Mullins and Wright 2003), they have left underexplored the psycho-
logical impacts (including potential rewards) of such strategies.
Though most studies on women’s drug market involvement have shown their margin-
alization, a small yet significant body of work has addressed women’s successes as drug
dealers. This work, as with research on women in drug markets more generally, stems
primarily from the United States (Dunlap and Johnson 1996; Morgan and Joe 1996;
Jacobs and Miller 1998), with notable exceptions from Australia (Denton and O’Malley
1999) and the United Kingdom (Fleetwood 2014). These studies typically describe how
women’s dealing is different from that of men and that successful women often com-
bine conventional gendered obligations with their dealer roles. Some studies also show
how women draw on gendered expectations to conceal their dealing, e.g., benefitting
by staying hidden from the police (Jacobs and Miller 1998).
In their case study of the crack dealer Rachel in Harlem, New York, Dunlap and
Johnson (1996: 175) described that she succeeded by using ‘family and human resources’
in her dealing operations, which enabled her to live a conventional life and uphold a
conventional identity. The authors also argued that women’s motivations differ from
men’s in that they are ‘more likely than men to have specific short-term monetary goals
for selling cocaine whereas men sell cocaine as a way of achieving status and prestige’
(Dunlap and Johnson 1996: 185). Rachel, e.g., wanted to pay for a wedding and send
her daughter to college.
Similarly, in a study of methamphetamine markets in San Francisco, San Diego and
Honolulu, Morgan and Joe’s (1996) key finding was that a majority of their large sam-
ple of female drug users were also dealers. The authors found significantly more suc-
cess among women in the drug field than most research, which continues to focus on
women’s marginalization and victimization. Moreover, the dealers in their study viewed
drug selling as ‘a positive experience which provided them with economic independ-
ence, self-esteem, increased ability to function, professional pride and ethics’ (Morgan
and Joe 1996: 125). The most successful dealers in their study lived a conventional ‘citi-
zen lifestyle’, which included having families and legitimate jobs alongside their deal-
ing operations. Their study also demonstrated that women connected drug dealing to
having control over their own drug use, as well as control over others.
These previous studies on women’s success as dealers have documented their skills
and strategies for doing their dealing operations. Although not focusing on empower-
ment per se, they show evidence of the intrapersonal, interactional and behavioural
components that Zimmerman (1995) outlines. However, as Morgan and Joe’s (1996)
study was oriented towards showing how women can be successful dealers, it was not
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concerned with theorizing agency and empowerment, nor linking these to persistence.
We do so in the current study by situating women’s agency within the larger context
in which they operated. We argue that Zimmerman’s (1995) theory of psychological
empowerment is particularly useful for investigating empowerment within gender-
stratified fields. In addition, we demonstrate how such empowerment experiences are
connected to crime persistence. In this regard, our findings fundamentally differ from
those of Dunlap and Johnson’s (1996) in which women’s dealing was time-limited and
related to short-term financial goals.
Although the aforementioned studies focused on successful women dealers, Anderson
(2005) explicitly theorized about empowerment and agency among women typically
understood as marginalized. Acknowledging the male-dominated nature of the drug
economy, she argued that women’s power is interdependent with men’s, linked to their
crucial supporting roles ‘behind the scenes’. By performing ‘core activities’ such as
‘providing housing and sustenance needs, purchasing drugs, subsidizing male depend-
ency, and participating in drug sales’ (p. 371), women gain relational power that ‘assists
males’ accumulation of structural power and is … fundamental to “successful” … drug
world organization’ (p. 373) while also enabling women to uphold their conventional
gendered obligations. From this she also argued that women’s conventional ties may
make it easier for them to desist.
We take a different approach. Investigating facets of empowerment articulated by
women with drug market success, we explore the relationship of such empowerment
to narratives of persistence. Our approach corresponds with recent theoretical works
on desistance (see Veysey et al. 2009) as well as developments in narrative criminol-
ogy (Presser and Sandberg 2015), in that we recognize that narratives represent an
important window into how individuals ‘organize views of themselves, of others, and of
their social worlds’ (Orbuch 1997: 455). We connect women’s empowerment explicitly
to their decisions undertaken in response to the structural inequalities they face in the
gender-segmented drug economy. This provides a useful strategy for understanding
psychological empowerment (Zimmerman 1995: 596), especially with regard to how it
can contribute to crime persistence.
Method
Our study relies on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with women drug dealers
in Norway during 2011 and 2012. In all, 32 women were interviewed, 30 in prison and
2 in their homes. Of these, eight were interviewed twice, including two women inter-
viewed while incarcerated and again post-release (see Grundetjern 2015 for detailed
descriptions of sampling and interview procedures). Here we focus on the 22 women
in the sample who articulated aspects of empowerment as they narrated their naviga-
tions as drug dealers.1 Although a thematic interview guide was used, the interviews
were organized as life stories (Atkinson 1998), as we wanted participants to empha-
size the matters most important to them, and for unforeseen topics to emerge. The
interviews were conducted using a collaborative style (Marvasti 2002), in which support
1
Ten women in the sample consistently emphasized their disempowerment in the drug field, and thus are excluded from the
analysis. They had in common dependence on men for dealing and financing their drug use, and/or dealing at the lowest levels
of the drug economy; all but two self-identified as drug addicts.
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and affirmations were offered to encourage participants to feel comfortable expressing
themselves, rather than taking a more neutral or questioning tone, while also asking
for clarification in cases where inconsistencies arose.
Interviewing in prison allows access to hidden populations, and participants are often
interested in speaking about their experiences (Copes and Hochstetler 2010). However,
participants are not as close to the events they are recounting, and may be affected
by the institutional setting (Wright and Decker 1997). Retrospective accounts may be
influenced by impression management, including exaggerations of success or distanc-
ing from crime. Still, most interviewees in this study served rather short sentences;
the median sentence was one year, which may have prevented them from becoming
fully ‘institutionalized’. Moreover, the accounts of women interviewed outside prison
and post-release were similar to those of women interviewed solely on the inside, cor-
responding with Copes and Hochstetler’s (2010) view that interviews with imprisoned
and active offenders are not strikingly different. Incarcerated research participants pre-
dominantly discussed their dealing in the past tense, which makes sense given their
removal from the drug economy at the time.
Grounded theory methods were used in this study, with data collection and analysis
tightly intertwined (Charmaz 2014). The topic of empowerment emerged unexpect-
edly from the first interview conducted, as one of the dealers explained that success-
ful drug dealing contributed to her ‘self-esteem’. It soon became evident that around
two-thirds (N = 22) of the original sample talked about their dealing in positive terms.
They described their lives as highly different from what they labelled as the realities
of ‘most women’ in the drug economy. Although the interviews were open-ended, the
first author added follow-up questions on empowerment to further explore this topic.
As data collection proceeded, a vastly different pattern emerged as well: One-third of
the sample (N = 10) emphasized their marginalization in the drug economy and nega-
tive experiences related to dealing. These two distinct patterns, between dealers who
perceived themselves as empowered versus those who saw themselves as disempowered
became increasingly evident as data collection continued.
Although we analysed the entire data set, we focus on the 22 empowered dealers in
this study, as their stories are distinct from what is typically known of women in the
drug economy. We used inductive techniques to identify and analyse empowerment-
related themes, paying attention to the contexts associated with these. The analysis was
an interactive process, where each author independently interrogated relevant data,
before together refining the thematic patterns. We have taken care to ensure that the
illustrations provided typify the most common patterns in the data, and make note of
exceptions as appropriate. Understanding women’s empowerment, as both process and
outcome, appears important for understanding their persistence as drug dealers.
Empowerment and Persistence

In Zimmerman’s (1995) tripartite framework of psychological empowerment, an
empowered person must perceive herself as competent within the domain she is navi-
gating, have a critical understanding of this navigational context and its challenges,
and engage in actions directed at overcoming such challenges and realizing her objec-
tives. Psychological empowerment is both a process and an outcome: ‘One can be psy-
chologically empowered without having the ultimate authority or power to realize one’s
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objectives’ (Zimmerman 1995: 592), but there also can be tangible rewards associated
with empowerment.
Empowerment was a strong thread in women’s articulation of their drug market
experiences, particularly at those times they were most successful. Specifically, empow-
erment emerged from the ability to control one’s drug use, sexual autonomy and inde-
pendence in relationships with men, financial independence and control over one’s
business, and the enjoyment of lifestyles at odds with traditional gendered constraints
and from other tangible rewards of drug dealing. Together, these created spaces within
the drug market for women dealers to experience psychological empowerment, with
important consequences for their commitment to dealing, and their struggles with—or
rejection of—desistance.
These dealers did not tell seamless stories of empowerment, nor would we expect
them to. They were diverse in several ways, and variations among them are relevant for
understanding the contours of their psychological empowerment. First, for six women
(Hege, Ina, Ingvild, Janne, Pia and Rakel) empowerment came, in part, from their par-
ticularly high level of cultural competence in navigating the drug market. Drawing on a
multitude of strategies in their dealing, they operated successfully at the highest levels2
of the drug economy. Among these, four dealt amphetamines and two dealt cocaine.
Second, eight women (Cecilie, Eli, Jorunn, Rannveig, Signe, Torill, Vigdis and Yvonne)
eschewed the dominant masculine model of drug dealing that valued violence and
retaliation (Sandberg 2008), and instead organized their business around an ethic of
integrity and care for their clients. They experienced their dealing strategies as empow-
ering, particularly as these were coupled with market success. Among these, six were
high-level dealers, and two dealt at the upper end of mid-level, yet none dealt at the
volume of the first group. Six dealt amphetamines, one heroin and one cocaine.
Third, eight women (Angelica, Grete, Kine, Marte, Rebekka, Sunniva, Tonje and
Vivian) conducted their dealing consistent with the dominant masculine model that
valorized tough presentations of self and the willingness to use violence. They garnered
psychological empowerment from their successes as ‘one of the guys’ (Miller 2001).
They were mid- or low-level dealers who primarily sold amphetamines. Compared to
the other empowered women, these eight had more chaotic and less stable lives, and
reported extensive polydrug use. Finally, four women (Janne and Rakel among the
highest level dealers, and Angelica and Kine among the masculine-oriented dealers)
described variations in empowerment, including moments of disempowerment associ-
ated with periods in which they lost control of their drug use, entered problematic
romantic relationships and/or lost custody of their children. These cases capture the
nuances of empowerment processes, which corresponds with Zimmerman’s (1995)
characterization of psychological empowerment as a dynamic process that can change
over time and vary across context. Despite this diversity, which we highlight later, themes
related to empowerment remained strikingly similar across these groupings.
2
High-level dealers reported dealing one or more kilograms at a time, and/or described importing and distributing higher
volumes of drugs. Mid-level dealers usually purchased 100–200 g at a time for future sales, and low-level dealers were women
who reported buying 50 g or less for future sales.
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Controlled drug use
All empowered dealers identified constrained drug use as critical for success in the
drug economy and described themselves as empowered because of their ability to con-
trol their use. Framing this in intrapersonal terms, Sunniva noted, ‘it’s all about your
will [power]. What do you want for yourself?’ She contrasted herself with others in the
drug field:
I’ve never looked down on drug addicts. I’ve never judged them, I’ve never done that. And I’ve used
drugs myself too, so I see the[ir] problem, [but] maybe I am stronger, right, stronger than them. And
for that I’m glad, but I can’t expect others to have that same strength.
Angelica used the English phrase, ‘don’t get high on your own supply. That’s the rule.
And I was pretty good at avoiding that’. Rakel said she was ‘very conscious about not
using a lot, because if one does it just becomes a mess’. That ‘mess’ was not just about
losing control of one’s drug use, but also included declining success in the market. Pia
explained: ‘If you don’t use any, and if you keep your head cool, you’ll manage to get
pretty far … [but] it’s easy to fuck up if you use a lot.’
One facet of psychological empowerment thus emanated from dealers’ pride in their
ability to control their drug use. Rannveig underscored the discipline involved, because
selling drugs also meant ready access to them: ‘It’s just like working in a chocolate fac-
tory: you can’t just stand there and eat all day long.’ Rakel explicitly linked the decline
in her drug use to the growth of her business: ‘The bigger I started selling, the less
I used myself…. Both to avoid being high, and also … I had so much, so [access] wasn’t
kind of [something I worried about].’ She prided herself on her ability to maintain self-
control, noting that ‘at first when I started selling big, I was like “oh my god, now I have
to [control myself]”’. Her mindfulness and constraint meant that eventually ‘I didn’t
think about it a lot’. Others noted that it was easier to maintain control over one’s drug
use when dealing on higher levels, because there was more to lose from the failure to
do so.
Rakel’s account of the contrast between her usual high standing as a dealer who
constrained her drug use, and the ‘chaos’ she once experienced upon losing control,
provides a stark illustration of the link between controlled use and empowerment. An
independently successful dealer, she had merged her business with that of a boyfriend
when they were expecting a child together. Shortly thereafter, her boyfriend was busted
and received a long prison sentence. After struggling to handle everything on her own
with an infant and her other child, her drug use increased and her business declined.
Rakel resorted to low-level street dealing and described both the experience and the
environment as out of control:
There you hang with people who are way more messed up, and [there is] far more drug use…. It’s
complete chaos basically. The entire existence is just chaos. It’s chaos in every possible way: it’s chaos
when it comes to money, it’s chaos when it comes to drugs. It counts for men and violence and sex too.
It’s like you don’t have control of anything basically.
For Rakel and the others, psychological empowerment was not merely a result of their
perceptions of themselves as capable of constraining their drug use, or their recogni-
tion of its import for retaining control of themselves and their business. Instead they
actively developed and employed behavioural strategies to succeed. For example, some
Page 8 of 19
described only taking amphetamines orally, not injecting, and eating throughout the
day despite a suppressed appetite. Hege described herself as ‘in complete control’ as
a dealer. When she occasionally took too much amphetamine, she used strategies to
control the potential consequences for her credibility as a high-level dealer:
I’ve always liked being in control, and I always need to be in control. That’s why I never used so much
drugs that I risked losing control. I never used speed for several days in a row or things like that. If
I did, I sat alone in my apartment and had control over it so that nobody would know. I never went
out or things like that.
The ability to manage one’s drug use was thus a critical facet of women dealers’ psycho-
logical empowerment, in addition to being necessary for their drug market success. All
women who described empowerment in the drug trade noted its import, with the few
who had at some point lost control punctuating this theme with explicitly contrasting
tales of personal and market-based disempowerment. Thus, controlled drug use both
required and contributed to intrapersonal, interpersonal and behavioural empower-
ment, and was a component of successful crime persistence.
Sexual autonomy and independence from men

A related facet of women’s empowerment was sexual and relational autonomy. The
import of such autonomy was heightened in the drug field, where many women’s
dependence and marginalization at the hands of male users and dealers was quite
visible. This was, first and foremost, presented as a deeply felt intrapersonal statement
of empowerment. Ina noted: ‘I have always been independent and managed myself.
I have never been dependent on anybody.’ In addition, independence from men in the
drug trade was viewed as critical for success, and thus was also interpersonal—demon-
strating an awareness of the navigational field. Janne explained: ‘This is a very male
dominated world. We women don’t get the same respect even though we deal with
the same quantities … and they don’t take us as seriously.’ In this environment, where
most women were dependent on men for access to drugs, it was particularly necessary
for women dealers to protect their reputations to remain successful, requiring behav-
ioural strategies of empowerment. Men’s sexual advances were described as routine,
enacted both by male dealers and those men the women sold to. But as Janne surmised,
‘from the moment you have sex with one of them, you are out of the game’. Rannveig
explained: ‘When I sold large scale, almost every man I met tried to hit on me…. I’m
not stupid, nobody used to do this when I was not selling amphetamines.’ Recognizing
that women’s sexualization was a prominent disempowering feature of the drug mar-
ket, Rannveig saw these as opportunistic men with ulterior motives. Similarly, Ingvild
said she ‘never played on sex to close a deal’, as doing so meant being ‘out of the game’:
A lot of people, and particularly girls, think it is … so easy for a girl to play upon sex and play upon
looks to get what they want from men, but that only works for short periods of time. Then one has to
jump to the next [man], and then ones has to make oneself smaller and smaller. And at the end one
has no self-respect left, nothing.
Whereas ‘playing on sex’ might lead women to short-term gains in the drug field,
empowerment depended upon recognizing its longer-term limitations. Maintaining
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boundaries with male dealers and users was important for one’s ‘self-respect’ in the
male-dominated drug field and was crucial for success as dealers.
Sexual and relational autonomy took different behavioural forms among the empowered
dealers, corresponding with their position in the drug economy and the dealing strategies
they adopted. The eight dealers who conducted their dealing consistent with the dominant
masculine business model tended to work alone but in close networks with male friends
or brothers. They had rules for these relationships and for sexual encounters. First, they
underscored the importance of not being the ‘girlfriend’ of any of the men they spent time
with. Second, they avoided casual sex with men in the drug economy. Kine explained:
Once in a while I have brought female friends … [to] meet these guys, and they have a completely
different behaviour than I have … and that gets exploited very quickly.… My brother early on taught
me how to not get exploited, and to keep my boundaries. And I’ve managed that the entire time.
Although most of these women were single, they did have boyfriends from time to time.
However, these relationships were with men outside of the drug economy. Tonje sur-
mised, ‘it’s important not to be a girlfriend to [male drug dealers]. That’s very impor-
tant, because then one has gone too far’. Vivian noted, ‘I don’t want to be the person
people see as “the girl who needs help”. I want to make it on my own’. While they prided
themselves on being ‘one of the guys’—spending time with men in the drug economy
without sexual or romantic entanglements—other women tried to avoid any interac-
tions with men in the drug trade, romantic or otherwise.
The eight women who emphasized service-mindedness and sociability in their deal-
ing ran their businesses alone and were voluntarily detached from the drug market’s
dominant organizational arrangements. Torill had a boyfriend outside the drug busi-
ness and drew a sharp line between the two: ‘Nobody’s allowed to interfere with my
business…. There I am completely independent. He has no say, I am doing my own
thing.’ Most, though, were consciously single. Yvonne said, ‘you cannot have a boyfriend
when in my position’, explaining:
He would feel completely overrun. You know, it does not work. I have tried, but [laughs] there are no
men who can do it. They cannot handle it, you know…. I am way too independent. I am simply far
too high up in the hierarchy. It will never work.
Rannveig, too, pointed to a double standard within the drug economy to explain why
she avoided relationships: ‘They’d rather not be together with someone like me who
sells large…. It wouldn’t fit with their gender norms, you know’.
For the six women who held top positions in the drug market hierarchy, their par-
ticularly high status seemingly allowed them more freedom of action than the other
empowered dealers. Women in the other two groups eschewed romantic relationships
with men in drug circles, whereas all six top dealers had involved boyfriends in their
work. Four built their businesses on their own but subsequently merged with a boy-
friend. Except for Janne, discussed later, they worked on equal terms after becoming
romantically involved. The remaining two used their boyfriends as assistants, not let-
ting them into their business in a meaningful way. However, all of them drew clear
boundaries between these boyfriends and other men in the drug field. In this way, like
the empowered women who adopted service-oriented and masculine business mod-
els, these women too made behavioural choices to ensure their sexual and relational
autonomy, and thus their empowerment.
Page 10 of 19
Ina noted that her supplier ‘was a real player. So he always tricked girls with drugs
and such. And almost every time I was there, three or four girls were wandering around
in their underwear [laughs]. But he never got me into bed’. Ingvild also stressed the
importance of not involving sex in her business dealings:
There’s no chance in hell they’ll be able to get you to bed just because they give you a good deal, right.
You must never do that [laughs]…. Everybody tries. It is sort of in their nature…. But then it’s all about
showing them the right way. Show them that, ‘listen, there’s no point even trying. Sorry!’ [laughs].
Hege used her boyfriend as an assistant and stressed the importance of maintaining
her independence as a businesswoman:
It’s a shame, most girls—not all girls, but most girls—they are forced [to work for boyfriends]….
I’ve been lucky that way because I’ve always dealt myself! So I’ve never been dependent on my boy-
friends…. I had my own [business] so I never needed to be below anybody.
Janne’s previous experience illustrated the dangers Hege alluded to. She fell in love
with the ‘wrong’ high-level dealer, and he convinced her to scale down her own busi-
ness and assist him instead:
Even though I lived well and I didn’t have to worry about money … I never was paid like before
I involved myself emotionally. Before it was pure business … but from the moment he showed up with
his suitcase and his bag, then it was over…. That is the big trap. Because then it usually is like, if you
have built up status like in my case—‘I am Janne’—ok, then people know who you are. But then you
lose that, and instead become ‘his woman’.
Janne later rebuilt her reputation and stayed intentionally single. Her regained empow-
erment facilitated her persistence as a successful dealer. In this way, women emphasized
the interconnections between empowerment as women and as dealers: Sexual autonomy
and independence from men were not only about ‘self-respect’ as women who were free
from abusive treatment at the hands of men, but also about specific behavioural strate-
gies that facilitated empowered outcomes in the drug field.
Money, financial independence and control of one’s business

Sexual and relational autonomy corresponded with financial independence for women
who described empowerment in the drug economy. Their ability to avoid exploitative
sexual entanglements or unequal romantic partnerships positioned them to operate
successfully and independently, translating the process of empowerment into tangible
outcomes that facilitated persistence. Torill explained, ‘dealing is sort of my thing; it’s
what I’m good at. That is why I will continue doing it’. Moreover, being ‘in control’—not
just of drug use and in relations with men, but also of their business—was an important
part of their identities, and thus a key facet of empowerment. Eli surmised, ‘I have been
in control of everything I do basically’.
Particularly for high-level dealers, control of one’s business also meant empower-
ment afforded by access to a sizeable disposable income. Eli described herself as a ‘big
spender’ who had ‘lived well’:
So it was taxies whenever I was going somewhere, and [laughs] … I bought everything I wanted. And
‘tomorrow we’re going abroad for a vacation!’ Right? … I always had one hundred or two hundred
thousand [NOK] in savings. All the time.
Page 11 of 19
Holidays abroad, and nice clothes and cars, were repeatedly mentioned as among the
perks of being a successful drug dealer. Torill noted: ‘I pretty much do what I want.
I buy pretty much what I want. When it comes to things, clothes. Chihuahua dogs are
expensive! [laughs]’.
Constrained drug use and autonomy from men were described as necessary for
financial independence, and thus may be understood as processes of empowerment rela-
tive to women’s dealing. Yet it was economic success—an empowered outcome—that was
among the most frequently mentioned barriers for desistance. Many had stopped sell-
ing drugs for periods of time, but found themselves drawn back to the money. Vigdis
explained, ‘I get myself 50,000 [NOK] in a week. Without even blinking’. Rakel explic-
itly connected earning money to a ‘sense of achievement’, noting that for her it was ‘so
easy’ to earn money selling drugs: ‘One gets this sense … that crime really pays. Now
I have done this for almost 15 years, and I have been one year in prison. Yes, so for me,
it pays!’
For some of the empowered dealers—those selling at the highest levels and those who
embraced masculine-style dealing—it was not just control of one’s business that was a
source of empowerment, but also control over others, especially men. Ina described
using an ‘errand boy’, explaining, ‘well [giggles], I think he was in love with me’. This
young man worked for free and also carried most of the risks. Hege also used her boy-
friend as an ‘assistant’ in her drug trade. He helped with small assignments without
receiving access or insights into her business, and in return received drugs for dis-
counted prices or for free:
He was really just my boyfriend. I basically used him to deliver around…. By that time I had been
dealing for so many years that I didn’t … need the respect … and was mostly concerned about not
exposing myself. So it became like that. He was the one driving around delivering and fixing things,
although it was mine…. I had him twisted around my little finger.
Hege justified this arrangement by pointing out how he benefitted too: ‘I was the one
who brought in the money. So I don’t really think I exploited him. He could often go
on holidays and he could buy what he wanted’. Thus she was more similar to male
drug dealers in their romantic relationships than what is typical of women in the drug
economy.
Hege enjoyed other perks from her position in the drug market, including having
assistants run errands: ‘I could make a call at 3am to someone in Oslo and say “I want a
Snicker’s bar, please get here with a Snicker’s bar.” I live in Ski [about 30 km away]. And
people would drive the whole way to bring me a Snicker’s bar!’ Similarly, when Angelica
was on top of her drug career, she described using ‘errand boys’ to do most of her ‘dirty
work’: ‘I could just sit there and control who owed what to whom. Collect debts, and put
people to do it.’
Like economic rewards, having control—of one’s work and over others—was a facet
of empowerment that women said made desistance difficult. Thus, for women empow-
ered within the drug economy, it was dealing, not drug use, that was the hardest sac-
rifice when considering an exit from the drug trade. Hege stated: ‘I was in complete
control. So it’s things like that. It’s not just the drugs that are difficult to quit doing. It
is the way of being and the methods I am used to accomplishing things with.’ Angelica
noted that in a regular job:
Page 12 of 19
You have to be a bit humble, and show that you might not be the one who knows best all the time.
[But] that’s how it is in the [drug] environment—you are the one who knows this: ‘Nobody’s going to
tell me anything’, ‘I know best, just shut the fuck up’, and things like that.
Torill, too, said that control was the main reason she continued dealing. Asked whether
she ever considered quitting, she explained:
Not really…. The desire might be there kind of, but I don’t think I will get back home and start living
a straight life. I don’t think I will ever do [it]…. It’s just not me, sort of…. I’m in control, you know.
And that’s what’s important.
These examples illustrate our primary argument: the empowerment that comes with
drug market success, including financial and status outcomes, appears to be a strong
incentive for successful women dealers’ crime persistence.
The thrill of a non-‘straight’ life

For many of the women who found empowerment in drug dealing, there was a certain
thrill that came from living outside the constraints of a ‘straight’ life.3 Like money and
economic success, excitement was identified as a motive for persisting in the business—
an empowered outcome that hindered desistance. Such excitement was identified in
both general and gendered ways. First was a general sense of the thrill that came with
success. Rakel explained, ‘when it comes to crime … it is so easy in many ways, to be a
criminal…. That desire to do criminal things, both because it is exciting and because
it pays. [When I try to quit,] I will have to work hard to put that aside’. Ina said, ‘you
know, it is fun and exciting … living on the edge of the law [laughs]’. By comparison,
she found ‘boring’ the numerous straight jobs she had held. Ingvild similarly described
dealing as ‘fun’, explaining:
Eventually one figures out how the police work, and then it becomes a cat-and-mouse game…. It
wouldn’t have been fun without the police…. You would have earned a lot of money and all that,
but the excitement—that’s half the fun! If it had been legal, one might as well have opened a corner
grocery store.
Cecilie exclaimed, ‘you get a kick out of it!’ And Rannveig noted, ‘it is the excitement
that drives you’. She had tried to scale back her business and even desist once before,
but began selling again because ‘it gets really boring. Oh god, everyday life gets so bor-
ing … how boring it is to live a normal life!’ She surmised:
I believe I was hooked on that kick of excitement…. [It’s] not the most important [thing], but it is part
of what made it so difficult to stop pushing. Because of course it was the money, but it was also this
part: It gets very, very boring when one did not do it any longer! And that’s when I realized I prob-
ably was hooked on the excitement that follows. At least when you get a lot [of business]. And you sit
there with several kilos or [are] about to move it. Then … you get a lot of butterflies in your stomach.
3
Four dealers (Signe, Pia, Jorunn and Janne) were deviant cases who did not explicitly reference excitement or thrills as a
facet of their empowerment. Two talked about their dealing in particularly calm and informative manners. The other two were
dealers whose interviews were shorter than most, lasting only 50–55 min each. This might have been the reason some topics
did not emerge.
Page 13 of 19
Yvonne too had made attempts to exit the drug economy to avoid getting caught again,
but started again each time. She said it was the ‘self-confidence’ she experienced from
being a dealer that made desistance most difficult:
It is silly, because it sounds like I’m bragging, but of course it has been very exciting. And it has also
been … it has affected my self-confidence…. When one gets that kind of trust, and has such a good
reputation, then of course that affects your self-confidence…. So the whole situation makes it dif-
ficult to quit. Because you get in a mode where you are respected.
Sunniva also described her successes in the drug economy as ‘very exciting. Everything
has an excitement, right, all these things. And that was what drove me’.
Hege, who was the only long-term desister in the sample, decided to quit several years
earlier when she was nearly caught in a large drug bust. But leaving the thrill behind
was challenging:
I got big problems with my self-confidence when I quit and did not get all that attention any longer….
It was a hard blow. And I’m sure I will miss the excitement and the chase and such…. One has gotten
used to so many things.
Hege was thus a deviant case in our sample—a desister rather than crime persister—
but her account of the difficulties of desistance is strikingly consistent with our argu-
ment, namely that empowerment within the drug economy can function to promote
persistence.
Self-confidence, pride and excitement—empowered outcomes associated with suc-
cessful drug dealing—were also gendered. Many women mentioned that the thrill they
got from their activities came in part from being one of the few women to succeed
in a male-dominated field. Moments of triumph in standing up to men were often
recounted. Ingvild, e.g., described a male colleague who had routinely treated her ‘like
air’. She chose to confront him about his routine dismissals of her: ‘So we got into a
fight with each other, and I beat him up really bad [laughs]. I don’t think I have ever
beaten someone like that before…. After that I really got respect in the environment’.
Similarly, Torill took pride when she successfully navigated interactions in which men
in the drug economy sought to exploit what they perceived would be her gendered fear.
The stress of such situations made the reward all the better: ‘It becomes a satisfaction,
like “now I’m in complete control.” Even though it is a bit of chaos [you feel] inside
yourself, you get that feeling afterwards—“Yes! I managed this!”’
In addition, for women whose model of drug dealing was oriented more towards
service and client care, pride came from successfully doing drug sales in a way differ-
ent from the masculine field (Grundetjern 2015). Rannveig explained: ‘It’s a pretty bad
advertisement for [others] that I’m a woman who treats people all right, who deletes the
debts of people who quit—that [a] woman does it well. Then people see that it actually
is possible to sell this stuff without becoming such a horrible human being.’ Likewise,
Torill surmised, ‘we girls are better at doing things in a diplomatic way, even in the
drug environment’.
Gendered exceptionalism within the drug economy was a strong theme as well. This
took the form of feeling special vis-à-vis other women, who were cast in more stereotypi-
cal roles. Janne noted that ‘few girls have dealt with the volumes of coke I did’. Yvonne
also emphasized her uniqueness by pointing to women who were not as successful as
herself: ‘I’ve been able to go directly to the source. And not a lot of girls are able to
Page 14 of 19
do that. At least nobody that I know of. The other girls have had to sell themselves
and do all kinds of awful things to get what they need. I’ve never had to.’ Although
most women made note of such contrasts, they were most striking among women who
felt empowered being ‘one of the guys’. For these dealers, success in what they saw as
masculine enterprises—drug sales and violence—was noted as particularly rewarding
(Grundetjern 2015). Vivian took pride in being the ‘girl’ who had ‘been part of that
tough environment … only hang[ing] with the big guys’. Likewise, Monica delighted in
being ‘one of the boys … do[ing] the same things they do … so eventually they don’t
see you as a girl’. Abandoning this hard-earned source of empowerment was difficult.
Discussion
The women dealers narrated their empowerment as emerging from their successful
navigations of what they recognized as a gender-stratified environment. Zimmerman’s
(1995) tripartite conceptualization of psychological empowerment, as a process involv-
ing intrapersonal, interactional and behavioural components, provides a useful way to
understand these women’s perceptions and experiences. Their stories of empowerment
and its tangible benefits offers a promising direction for investigating what may be an
under-examined mechanism for crime persistence. Theories of desistance—and thus,
at least implicitly, persistence—have focused largely on empowerment as a mechanism
for change. Persistent offenders, in contrast, have been characterized as being ‘stuck’: in
fatalistic mindsets, stigmatized identities, grim realities and cumulative disadvantages
that ultimately result in self-defeat. Our findings suggest that, at least for some success-
ful offenders, similar processes of empowerment might instead encourage persistence.
Empowered women in our study demonstrated intrapersonal empowerment through,
e.g., their perceived ability to control their drug use and navigate relations with men in
the drug economy in a way that resisted men’s moves to disempower them. Their suc-
cesses were tied to an interpersonal dimension of empowerment: their critical under-
standing of the gendered context in which they operated and the decisions they had to
make to ensure ongoing success. This included knowledge of the personal and business
harms of ‘uncontrolled’ drug use, the risks involved in romantic or sexual relationships
with men in the drug field and broader insights into how the drug business worked.
Behaviourally, their successes came when they put these insights into practice, just as
on occasion actions not in adherence to the rules of the game (relationships with the
‘wrong’ men, escalations in drug use) led to temporary periods of disempowerment.
Finally, these empowerment processes led to tangible outcomes. Enhanced self-effi-
cacy, material accumulations and even the thrills associated with a non-straight life
were consistent themes that the women identified as hindering efforts at desistance and
encouraging their persistence in drug dealing.
Our research has import for research on the rewards of crime, for scholarship on
gender and crime, as well as for scholars of desistance. Despite its prominent place in
the criminological lexicon, Katz’s (1988) Seductions of Crime has not sufficiently pivoted
scholars’ attention to the psychological rewards of crime. Our research suggests there
is an important place for such work. Moreover, we find that these rewards appear to be
gendered in important ways. Women’s empowerment here was prominently linked to
what they recognized as their hard-earned place at the table as successful drug dealers,
including their skill in navigating a gendered field in which the presumptive female
Page 15 of 19
subject is marginalized and sexualized. There has long been a call for better under-
standing women’s agency and power in the drug field (Maher 1997; Anderson 2005).
Our research specifically extends this call by demonstrating, first, that success in the
drug field is fuelled by and fuels women’s empowerment, and second, that such empow-
erment can be a significant deterrent for attempts at and even the desire to desist.
These findings warrant further investigation. Despite the strength of the patterns
we uncovered, our study has limitations that further research on crime persistence can
overcome. For instance, most of our participants were serving short terms in prison,
and we have no way of knowing whether they actually persisted or desisted over time.
The most influential studies of desistance in the narrative and cognitive traditions had
access to samples distinguishable in these ways (Maruna 2001; Giordano et al. 2002). Yet
the guiding assumptions—that persistence equates with failure and that empowerment
comes from transformation—may have limited the insights to be gleaned about crime
persistence. Giordano et al. (2002) call for more research specifically investigating per-
sistence processes, and the insights provided by the women in our sample point in one
important direction that challenges our standard ways of understanding the relation-
ship between desistance and persistence.
Our sample was unique in another way: Successful women drug dealers are a rela-
tive rarity in the gender-stratified drug market (Maher and Hudson 2007). Indeed,
research on processes associated with desistance and persistence among women has
largely focused on ‘highly marginal women’ (Giordano et al. 2002: 1048). In this way,
the empowered women in our study are ‘advantaged’ outliers within the drug field.
Desistance scholars have also identified advantaged outliers (Giordano et al. 2002:
1020–22), but with a focus on advantages that facilitate desistance, such as access to
conventional ties and resources. For the empowered women in our sample, their advan-
tages lied in their drug market rather than conventional success. This is an especially
relevant contrast with Giordano et al.’s (2002) study, in which women’s desistance pro-
cesses were oriented quite firmly towards the embrace of highly conventional gender
identities and arrangements:
Many of the women who were most successful as desisters crafted highly traditional replacement
selves (e.g., child of God, the good wife, involved mother) that they associated with their successful
exits from criminal activities. Nevertheless, such identities, even if accessible, could be considered
quite limiting in other respects. In many instances, the women appeared to have used their ‘agency’
only to become enmeshed in life circumstances that could be characterized as highly repressive and
lacking any means to become economically self-sustaining/independent (Giordano et al. 2002: 1053).
This may be our most meaningful insight for understanding gendered processes asso-
ciated with some women’s persistence. If the ‘replacement self’ on offer to women is
one that ties them to gendered constraints, women who find empowerment in their
offending may be understandably resistant to such change. Indeed, we have additional
evidence of this in our data. Although a number of studies have pointed to motherhood
as a ‘hook for change’ for women’s desistance (Kreiger et al. 2010), in a separate analysis
of constructions of motherhood, the first author found that the empowered women in
our sample negotiated the relationship between their drug dealing and parenthood
in relatively non-problematic ways (Grundetjern 2018). This suggests that, as with the
empowerment they experienced from sexual autonomy and relational independence, a
conventional gendered life is not an appealing alternative to crime persistence.
Page 16 of 19
An additional question is whether our findings are culturally distinct. This study
describes women’s experiences of psychological empowerment in the drug economy
in Norway, and the Nordic countries are at the top on global gender equality indexes
(Hausmann et al. 2012). Studies of women’s participation in drug markets in other coun-
tries have shown less evidence of their empowerment and success. Despite evidence of
the gender-segmented nature of the drug economy in Norway (Sandberg and Pedersen
2009), it might be that the broader Scandinavian context enables more successful drug
market participation and psychological empowerment among women than elsewhere,
and less pressure or desire to conform to the facets of traditional gender identities
found among many disempowered women in the drug economy and among Giordano
et al.’s (2002) successful desisters. Future research should investigate further the extent
to which processes of empowerment vary across drug markets and societal contexts,
including how these intersect with crime persistence.
Finally, given that most research on the rewards of crime has focused on male offend-
ers, it is worth considering the possibility that psychological empowerment may have
a meaningful gendered role in some men’s persistence as well. Although processes of
empowerment in drug dealing may be stronger for women—as they experience more
barriers for successful dealing than do men and thus a potentially greater sense of
accomplishment in success, and face distinctly circumscribed alternatives through
desistance—it is likely that men also experience increased empowerment through pro-
cesses associated with criminal success. Few studies have considered the place of mascu-
linities in men’s persistence and desistance (but see Carlsson 2013). The psychological
empowerment available through crime, particularly what it provides for the construc-
tion of social-psychological identities as ‘men’, may be a fruitful avenue for further
investigation.
Funding
Support was provided by the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the
University of Oslo, where the first author was previously affiliated.
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Page 19 of 19

It'S Not Just The Drugs That Are Difficult To Quit': Women'S Drug Dealing As A Source of Empowerment and Its Implications For Crime Persistence

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Empowerment and Persistence

Sexual autonomy and independence from men

Money, financial independence and control of one’s business

The thrill of a non-‘straight’ life

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