It is a common in our culture to hold the opinion that women are more innocent than men. Men are traditionally seen as the workers and bread winners for a family, whereas the woman is expected to be in the home and raising the children. This idea of a woman being sheltered within the walls of her home and confided to a close social circle of other like minded women has been greatly challenged in the past few decades as women have permeated the workforce. However, there still remains the stigma of women being weaker or more innocent than men due to the very nature of their sex. The "gentler sex" is characterized as being ruled by emotions rather than logic, and thus more sympathetic to the plight of others and more likely to conform to laws and expectations. It is also commonly believed that when pushed, men will resort to any means necessary to survive or provide for his family, whereas the temperament of a woman is not thought to align with such a reaction. In fact, they are often expected to become helpless victims of their circumstances. When you look at statistics for men and women being arrested and prosecuted for the same crimes, there is a trend showing that women are more likely to go unpunished, or have a lesser sentence than their male counterparts. The reasons for this have been speculated that officers and judges often sympathize more greatly with women because they are not viewed as as much as a threat to society. Interestingly enough, when you look at the gender of the judges, female judges tend to prosecute other females more readily than male judges. So that then makes the question not why are women seen as more innocent, but instead who is it really that see women as more innocent? It is my opinion that although women are gaining more equality, the structure of society and the social norms are still mainly formed with strict gender division in favor of masculine power. If women are still seen as innocent, the connotation of naïvety will still be tied with it, and thus continuing the cycle of male dominance, and the presumption that women are incapable of bending their traditional roles.
As for the notion of different races being seen as more or less innocent, that also ties into societal construct. In the United States, the government and economy has been built on the tradition that the wealthy hold the power. At the time of our country's founding, the people in power were white, europeans. They constructed the government and society to protect their own interests. They did an amazing job, because the power structure they set up in the beginning still resounds in modern times. Although a great deal has been done to advance the plight of minorities and the disenfranchised, there is still evidence to suggest that within the criminal justice system, there is still a great deal of inequality between the numbers of each race represented in prison populations. This inequality tends to lean in favor of caucasians. But again, is the question really of race? Or is it a question of society's structure being so solid in it's foundation, that change, if it is to occur at all, will be a slow and even tenuous.