Women make good crime bosses too

The author is a scholar at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego

Women perform vital roles for criminal groups, and have been doing so for over 100 years — not that you would know this from most accounts. Take Emma Coronel Aispuro, who was arrested in the US last month for her alleged involvement with international drug trafficking. Her arrest would have gone unnoticed, except that she was identified as the wife of the world-famous drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera. 

Such coverage of Coronel’s arrest is a perfect example of what I have called the invisibility paradox that benefits criminal groups. Coverage of her arrest was not about her role in criminal activities but her marriage to “El Chapo”.

When law enforcement and the media treat women’s involvement in organised crime as exceptional, or the result of romantic or family ties, they obscure the managerial functions women perform. This can turn them into ideal criminal partners as law enforcement rarely suspects them. Stereotypes of female participation in organised crime are also perpetuated as an exception rather than the norm. 

The relevant question is not if women are involved in organised crime but how. Women supplied the US illicit drug market as early as the 1930s. María Dolores Estévez Zuleta, known as Lola la Chata, led her own drug-trafficking organisation based in Mexico City. She entered the drug trade with her mother, who moved on from selling coffee and pork rinds to the more profitable markets of morphine and marijuana. 

Beyond Mexico and drug trafficking, Yang Fenglan, known as the “Ivory Queen”, was found guilty in 2019 of smuggling about 800 elephant tusks worth more than $2.5m. Tanzanian authorities accused Yang of running a supply chain between Africa and China. In 2013, Naimo Warsame was identified as a member of a criminal organisation in Canada involved with firearms trafficking. Court documents show Warsame acted as a courier and safe custodian of some firearms. 

Women also participate in piracy in Somalia. They facilitate “relationships” between women and pirates, provide essential resources, perform care work in hijacked vessels and invest in piracy operations. In line with existing work on Japanese organised crime, I have found that even when membership is not formally recognised, the boss’s wife ensures cohesiveness of the group via her relationship to subordinates and female companions. 

Why, given clear evidence of women’s roles in criminal groups globally, does the invisibility paradox endure?

On the one hand, it is linked to gender stereotypes that assume “normal” or “real” women are not violent, let alone criminal offenders. Additionally, there is a failure to recognise that women may also choose to participate in criminal activities, notwithstanding romantic or family ties. To be sure, criminal organisations often victimise women. But the point is that women can be perpetrators as well as victims. 

Failing to understand female participation in organised crime has implications for economic and social development. The OECD estimated in 2016 that global counterfeiting, drug trafficking and human trafficking generated $461bn, $320bn and $150bn respectively. In Mexico, where Coronel holds one of her citizenships (the other is the US), the government estimates that in 2019 the consequences of crime cost the country about 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product, or $20bn a year.

To the extent that female participation in organised crime is unrecognised, different genders will continue to experience unequal treatment under the law and in society. As victims, women may lack equal access to justice. As perpetrators, women should be held accountable for their actions.

More research is needed to understand how women participate in criminal groups. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has commissioned a paper aimed at providing an overview of gender-related issues that affect the implementation of the Organised Crime Convention, an international legal framework for preventing and limiting organised crime. The paper will be published later this year.

The goal is to have a holistic understanding of transnational organised crime, and to assess the measures that states are taking to limit and preclude these activities. This means analysing different gender identities within criminal operations, their varying experiences in the criminal justice system and the roles of international co-operation and enforcement. In other words, it means transcending the perception that Coronel is mostly the wife of you-know-who.