The Opioid Crisis in America - Part II (The Drug Culture in the U.S.)

the drug economy that are liberated from mainstream society’s gender inequality, or
does society’s sexism reproduce itself in the drug economy?
Anthropologist Phillippe Bourgois, in an ethnography of the crack market in Spanish
Harlem, states that the presence of women on the streets and in the crack market
illustrates their emancipation from household labor and childcare. They are free to
participate in street life. According to Natasha Du Rose, Wilson (1993) makes the
argument that women’s crime and drug use are rising to match men’s because of
women’s emancipation. Du Rose quotes Fagan as saying that women’s positions in the
drug economy are high-status enough that prostitution plays a “relatively insignificant”
part in generating income for these women.
The Drug Economy Perpetuating Inequalities
While Bourgois in 1989 states that women are free to take part in the drug trade now
that they have been liberated from being wives and mothers, he qualifies this by saying
that “traditional gender relations still govern income-generating strategies in the
underground economy”. His ethnographic research shows that the majority of women in
the Spanish Harlem crack market become sex workers to support their addictions.
While women participate more in the drug economy, they still are forced into traditional
street roles when they need to generate income.
Sociologists Lisa Maher and Kathleen Daly in 1996 performed an ethnographic study of
women in the Bushwick drug market in Brooklyn. They used a combination of
participant observation fieldwork and interviews with the women and found that, in a
highly hierarchical drug market, women occupy the lowest rungs of the market.
“Owners”, who all happen to be men, employ “managers” who control a number of
regular and casual “sellers”. These sellers in turn employ “runners”, “steerers”, and
“coppers”, who supply the sellers, advertise their brand of drugs, or buy drugs for other
customers. The runners, steerers, coppers, and casual sellers occupy the lowest-power
and lowest-income positions of this market, and have the most women participants. The
upper levels of the hierarchy have only men participants. In this study, Maher and Daly
refute the idea that the emergence of the crack economy has afforded emancipation
and opportunity for women; gender inequality has continued to be a presence even in
the informal economy. The only change Maher and Daly found brought by women’s
liberation appears to be a decrease in the number of women relying on male boyfriends
or husbands to sell drugs.
Lisa Maher continues her research on the Bushwick drug economy in her 1997
book Sexed Work. She reiterates her findings with Daly on the low-income, low-power
participation of women in the drug market, but she also focuses on the sex work women
more commonly perform to generate income. Since the influx of cheap crack into the
market, Maher finds out that more women have been induced to participate in streetlevel
prostitution, driving up competition and driving down prices, further disadvantaging
the women, especially low-income women of color who typically do not attract high-
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