The Star Reports Majority Male Offenders
The genders of the offenders were all male. Not a single embezzler was reported as female. This suggests that in the area of Washington D.C. and the parts of the country the Evening Star reported on, embezzlement was a masculine crime. However upon further examination of where money was being embezzled from it would appear that it was mostly men who had the opportunities to steal in large amounts from businesses.
Traditionally in this period of 1880-1900, it was not common for women to work high ranking bureaucratic or certain sales jobs like the ones reported being stolen from in the Star’s articles. This means that embezzling was not in a sense a crime that would make you more of a man socially, but it was a crime that was presented to more men to perform at a disproportionate rate.
This also fits in line with the boodler stereotype found in Unterman’s work, that these were men who were given an opportunity to steal because of where they worked. With emphasis that most of these crimes were not planned out. A man did not get hired from a bank to embezzle most of the time. It was the case that these men found themselves in a criminally advantageous position. Positions that women were not offered that much if at all.
Also fitting within the stereotype of the boodler as explained by secondary literature is that these men had the ability to make there lives better with money and not attract suspicion. (Unterman, K. (2012). Boodle over the Border: Embezzlement and the Crisis of International Mobility, 1880–1890. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 11(2), 151-163.) In the case of a lot of boodlers and con men, they were able to travel state lines and buy certain property that would raise suspicion for even a woman today to buy independently. Property like houses or cars are all unique in that no one imagines a woman buying one of these pieces of property solo the way a male boodler would.
In the end, embezzlement had an overall higher chance to be presented, commited, and profited off by a man than a woman in this period due to two major factors, employment opportunities and basic mobility in all aspects.