FROM TRUST TO TECHNOLOGY: GENDERED PATHWAYS INTO CYBER AND WHITE-COLLAR CHARGES AMONG WOMEN IN CUSTODY IN SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

Abstract

Women’s participation in cyber-enabled and other white-collar offences remains under examined in African criminology, partly because women form a small proportion of custodial populations and offence statistics rarely show their roles within collaborative schemes. This article presents an exploratory secondary analysis of data from a larger concurrent embedded mixed-methods study of 208 women in six correctional centres in South-South Nigeria. Survey data were used to describe reported charge categories, while ten in-depth interviews supplied contextual accounts of technological access, social relationships and pathways into offending. Twenty-five respondents (12.0%) fell within the white-collar category. Within this small subgroup, cybercrime was the most frequently reported subtype (6; 24.0%), followed by Ponzi schemes (4; 16.0%) and money laundering (3; 12.0%); the remaining cases were dispersed across fraud, insider trading, bribery or corruption, forgery or counterfeiting, embezzlement, identity theft and other offences. Qualitative accounts suggested three intersecting pathways: gendered deployment in online social-engineering roles, relational entry through intimate partners or associates, and peer exposure sometimes connected to substance dependence. Feminist criminology and social learning theory clarify how constrained choices, relationships, learned techniques and agency may coexist in these accounts. The findings are not population estimates and do not establish guilt: most members of the wider sample were awaiting trial, and the white-collar subgroup was small. Their value lies in making a rarely documented Nigerian subgroup visible and in identifying questions for larger studies. Gender-responsive screening, digital and financial literacy, substance-use treatment, livelihood support and more precise correctional data are recommended.