Female criminology : a critical

analysis
February 18, 2021
6322

Image source: https://bit.ly/2VHNQyV

The article is written by Akarsh Tripathi, a learner of Symbiosis Law School
Noida. This is an exhaustive article, which analyzes female criminology and
explains everything one needs to know.
 Table of Contents

 Origin
 Definition
o Criminology
o Feminist criminology
o Scope
 The need for a feminist perspective
 Theoretical traditions
o Liberal Feminist Theory
o Radical Feminist Theory
o Marxist Feminist Theory
 Impact of feminist criminology
 Criticism against the feminist perspective on gender and crime
 Female offenders: statistics
 The global perspective
 Challenges for the future
 Conclusion
 References

Origin
Even until the latter half of the twentieth century, almost every criminological
work and study focused on male offenders and the responses of the criminal
justice system towards males. There was a lack of attention to the female
offenders which was mainly because of the reason that most of the crimes were
committed by males, and the same was backed up by the statistics. However,
by the end of the 20th century, the rates of female incarceration (the state of
being confined in prison) skyrocketed, while drawing attention towards the
study and research of the girls, women, crime and the criminal justice system.
The driving forces in these research work were also the war on drugs and
federal reforms.

Definition

Criminology
What is the meaning of ‘criminology’? The term refers to the study of a crime,
the criminal behaviours, and the criminal justice system associated with it. Now,
it is a debatable thing, to exclusively define the branches of criminology,
however, the debate has helped in producing 5 different types of definitions of
the term ‘criminality’. These are:
 1. Natural law explanations,
2. Moralistic explanations,
3. Labelling explanations,
4. Social harm explanations, and
5. Legalistic explanations.

Feminist criminology
In this article, we’ll be dealing with “Feminist Criminology” and the theories
which are the cornerstones of the topic. Now, if we explain the term ‘feminist
criminology’ according to what most of the people think it is, that would again
end with some misleading conclusions about the topic. So, it’s better to first
define the term with its actual methodology.

The term “Feminist Criminology” encircles an expansive and extensive

theoretical perspective and the methodologies which shape the gender
experiences at the centre of the study of criminology and criminal behaviour. It
also focuses on a wide range of agendas like female offenders, female victims,
the response of female offenders and the special need of female prisoners.
Scope
Feminist criminology addresses the limitations which are there in the criminal
justice system and due to which there has been a failure to take consideration
of the fact that there are some important differences in the male and female
path to enter into a crime, the types of crime, the victimization and
punishments faced by both of them. The study has been on the basis of the
responses to male offenders by the criminal justice system, and on male
criminality.

According to the researchers, and those who studied criminology, it has always
been assumed that while studying a generic crime, it will be a study of male
crime and a crime committed by a woman would be kind of an aberration. This
is how the practice was criticized and there was the emergence of female
criminology.

In this article, the terms ‘Feminist’ and ‘Feminism’ are loosely defined, so that
its reasonable for you to understand the topic with a much wider perspective
and also so that it is possible for a writer [who is influenced by the idea of
‘feminism’ but wouldn’t necessarily call himself/herself a ‘feminist’] to explore
the nuances of this topic in a better way.

The need for a feminist perspective

Before we learn in detail about the theories of feminist criminology, feminist
explanation of female crime, impact and statistics, etc, we should first know the
‘need’ and ‘importance’ of studying feminist perspectives within criminology.
The reason behind this is that criminology and related studies have ignored
women to a large extent. There has been masculine domination on the
development and construction of criminological knowledge, and its
dissemination. It is hardly a satisfying and logically correct response to say that
women are not the only ones to be ignored, and the exclusion of females from
the study calls for some fundamental questions which need to be addressed on
the adequacy of analyses being done.

Also, whenever the criminologists talk about women as offenders they do it in a

very stereotypical way and consider women who commit crimes, i.e. women
offenders are abnormal. In simpler words, they have usually been displayed on
the basis of their biological nature and their psychological state. Now, you must
be thinking that all we need to do to solve this problem is to do a crash course
of research on women, and feminist criminology. Well, the truth is that it has
already been done and carried out by various scholars, professionals,
institutions and feminists themselves. As of now, it is time for the feminists who
work within criminology to carry out more research on women, but not just by
accumulating surveys and other pieces of information, rather analyzing the
frameworks of feminist criminology outside the place of solidarity.

Thus, we need to deconstruct the existing frameworks on criminologies and

reconstruct them, while giving core attention to the prevalent female enterprise.

Theoretical traditions
Feminist thought is not a homogenous thing or a congruent theory. It rather
incorporates a wide range of ideologies and feminist thinking.

Liberal Feminist Theory

According to the Liberal Feminist theory, the main contention is that women are
discriminated and treated unequally on the basis of their gender. And the
‘motive’ behind this could be to deny women access to equal opportunities (be it
in the field of politics, career or personal) as compared to those available to
men. Criminologists like Freda Adler and Rita Simon have argued that the
women’s criminality can be best explained by taking into consideration the
sociological factors rather than the physiological factors.

One of the most recognized feminist theory is the ‘liberal feminist theory’,
especially in North America. Now the next question that needs to be addressed
here is:- “what can be done for solving this problem of gender inequality?” The
answer is very logical and non-debatable to a great extent, which is ‘rapid
integration’ of women into the world full of male dominance. This means giving
women equal opportunities and encouraging them to take roles of stakeholders
and policymakers of the country.

Another locus on which the Liberal Feminist Theory is based upon is that once
women become more liberated, we might observe the engagement of women in
the types of crime, similar to those committed by men. However, at this
moment it lacks some first-hand support. It can be easily observed that even
now, women are engaged in only petty offences, for instance, crimes like
shoplifting, minor frauds etc. and the reason behind this is the increasing level
of the feminization of poverty.

The rate of these crimes being committed is also significantly lower than the
male rate of offences. Those who make an attempt and challenge the prevalent
patriarchal ideology related to gender roles are construed as ‘unruly’ women,
who should be punished.

Radical Feminist Theory

This theory had for the first time, criticized the assertions of ‘Liberal Feminist
Theory’, by calling it as simplistic. It has also dominated the perspectives of
feminists on issues related to women abuse. These feminists are of the view
that male power and the privileges they have been given, is one of the root
causes of all the gender-inequality, social relations and crime issues.

Patriarchy is one of the most important relationships which can be found in the
society by observing the masculine control of the labour-power and on the
sexuality of women by men. This being the primary relation, all the other
relations (for instance, class) are secondary and its derivation is from the male-
female relations of the society.

According to Radical feminism, the main cause behind gender inequality and
male dominance are:

 The unsatisfied want of men to take control of a women’s sexuality.

 Patriarchy.
 The privilege of men being at positions of power and the existence of
unequal representation.
Thus, if we closely observe the works of radical feminists, we will come to the
conclusion that it mainly focuses on the victimization of females and being the
survivors of male violence. Men tend to victimize women sexually, physically
and even psychologically because of their desire to have control over them and
over their potentials.

Another important thing which has to be stated here is that be it any kind of
feminist theory or ideology of feminism, the main motive is NOT to push men
out, rather pulling women in the society and social relations. This will finally
lead to the successful elimination of all types of gender inequality.

Marxist Feminist Theory

Another feminist theory worth discussing here is that of ‘Marxist Feminist
Theory’. The term ‘Marxist’ refers to people who support the theories (political
and economic) of Karl Marx and F. Engles. The emergence of Marxist feminism
was in around the late 1960s as a response to the Marxist social theory which
talked about the existence of masculine bias.

Those who believe in the ideology of ‘Marxist’ feminist theory say that the main
determinant of a person’s social relation is the economic formation of society. It
agrees with the theory of liberal feminism which says that women are living in a
male dominant society and are not given the requisite opportunities to
participate in society. The nature of an economy is the ultimate factor
influencing the gender division and gender inequality present in society.

According to the Marxist feminist Julia and Herman Schwendinger, the class
division of labour is often viewed as gender division of labour, the reasons being
the domination by capital and the males. But what is the strategy to bring
change to this system? Well, it is the transformation of the society from a
capitalist one to a more democratic socialist.

To further support this answer, we need to draw special attention to the high
rate of rape offences being committed in capitalist societies, because of the
gender inequality relations which foster violence, both physical and emotional.
The intensification of sexual inequality and sexual violence is due to the
exploitative modes of production which have got accumulated in the class
societies.

Impact of feminist criminology

Feminist writing has enhanced the discipline of Feminist Criminology is 4 main
ways. These are:
 1. Neglecting female offenders- The previous criminologies have neglected
the fact that offenders can be both male and female. There has been an
assumption that whenever we are talking about ‘offenders’, they’ll be
males. Also, the discussion on female offenders laid enriched individual or
biological abnormality. They were explained in terms of biological factors.
2. Bringing attention to the treatment of females within the criminal justice
system of the country is another significant impact of feminist writing. It
has helped in changing the old and vague assumption of “common sense”,
by challenging the historical concept of female benefiting from chivalry
within the male-dominated society and thus having more lenient
sentences.
3. Due to the advent of feminist ideology, the much-neglected areas of legal
study have started to gain attention. For instance, crimes like domestic
violence and female sexual abuse, which are faced by women, sometimes
even at their ‘supposedly’ safe home. Female writing has helped in
protecting girls and women against male violence and has raised
questions about how the victims or the survivors can be supported.
4. Last, but not the least, the focus has been made to the highly gendered
nature of the criminal activities, and thus, raising the questions like ‘why
is it the females who commit only a few offences, and male offences are
so many?’ There is a femininity which has been associated with these
relatively low rates of crime, and the males being predicted as the most
likely offender.
As we have already observed in the previous sub-topic, and will further learn
more about feminist criminology, we will realise that the criminal justice system
needs to learn from the feminist ideas and its also the responsibility of the
social workers to contribute in this process of reformation.

Criticism against the feminist perspective on

gender and crime
Not every theory comes without shortcomings and space for criticism. Same is
the case with Feminist Criminology. There are 3 main areas and points of
contention which we’ll understand in detail about the criticism that exists
against the feminist perspective on gender and crime, and will also analyze its
merit, in this section. But before that, it is also important for us to know about
some of the areas which the feminist theories fail to explain. These are:

 Women’s crime is of the underclass, and suggest ‘class conflict’.

 Women who are in prison, usually suffer from poverty issues.
The theory of feminist criminology is often said to be gender centric and an
overall level gives a shadow motive of separatists. These ideologies of feminists
like Smart and Cain often lead to theoretical and political implications.

Female offenders: statistics

Feminists argue that the study of criminology neglects ‘victimisation’ and
‘survivors’ as one of the major factors which affect gender inequality, and
contend that there has been a minimal study on these factors. To highlight this
is a more comprehensive yet detailed manner, we should also look at the
statistics supporting the theory of ‘victimology’.

According to the WHO report on global and regional estimates of violence

against women across the globe:

 Approximately 35% of women worldwide experience violence either

physical and/or sexual. This number in itself represents a large chunk of
the women’s population of the world.
 These violent acts are mostly done by intimate partner violence.
Statistically speaking 30% of all the women who have ever been in a
relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some of
the other point in their lives.

The global perspective

Before coming to any conclusion, and talking about the challenges which still
persist in this arena, it is more than reasonable for everyone to understand the
feminist criminology from a global perspective and taking into consideration the
criminologists study from across the world on this subject.

The focus on violence against women is no doubt a hallmark which has been
actively used to highlight the problems on an international level. To name a few
other topics, the abuse on women in Islamic countries, the traditional practices
against humanity like female genital mutilation are also the focus areas which
act as a base for the need to further study feminist criminology and women’s
victimization across the globe.

Also, another important contribution of the study of feminist criminology will

help us understand how the criminal justice policies around the world, often
victimize women and even sanction them for supposedly ‘violating’ the
traditional gender norms, particularly with regards to their sexuality. For
instance, in some Islamic and Muslim-dominated countries, the women who
have unfortunately been raped/sexually abused are often viewed and treated as
‘offenders’ rather than a victim. The ideology is that they had violated the
expectations regarding women’s sexuality.

Challenges for the future

Now the question comes, what are the challenges which will be based in the
21st century and afterwards? There is a huge scope of study on the subject of
female criminology, which has not been explored yet. Some of these subject
areas which need focus are criminology on women as offenders and the work
which needs to be done, on areas concerning women as victims.

 According to Chesney Lind, In order to understand women’s pathway to

crime, a very fruitful approach could be to develop the thoughts on a
women’s structural and social roles in society and the ideas on a women’s
lifestyle.
 In some of the feminist thinking, there is a privilege given to gender than
race, on the subject of crime and justice. Here comes the challenge, to
address this properly, and observe the fact that it also obscures our
understanding of the real issues.
 It is often said that a ‘gendered lens’ will help us in knowing the features
of problems related to crime, in a much more clear manner.
 However, the one thing that gets overlooked is that many times, the
clarity which has been supposedly made brighter by gender, often gets
distorted by the same.
 Another question worth pointing out, is that do we really need to pursue
matters like these under the banner of ‘feminism’? Can’t we develop a
new humanistic criminology which will be more reflexive, more anti-
discriminatory and gender-sensitive? This is a debate in itself.

Conclusion
Feminist Criminology has been dramatically developing and going through some
changes. However, It can be observed and concluded that although there have
been publications made on feminist scholarship, however, the same remains
marginalized in many aspects. Even the mainstream journals publish only a
limited feminist scholarship, and the same is the case with textbooks which
provide very scant and vague attention to the theories of feminist criminology
and their relevancy.
References
 Carlen, P., (1992) ‘Criminal Women and Criminal Justice, the Limits to and
the Potential of, Feminist and Left Realist Perspectives’, in Matthews, R.,
and Young, J., (eds), Issues in Realist Criminology. Sage, London.
 Lloyd, 1995: xvii as cited in KeltaWeb (2005): A Feminist Perspective on
Women and Crime. Available from:
http://www.keltawebconcepts.com.au/efemcrim1.htm Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20110123150207/http://www.keltawebconc
epts.com.au/efemcrim1.htm) 2011-01-23 at the Wayback Machine.
 Chesney-Lind, M. (1997) The Female Offender. Girls, Women and Crime.
Thousand Oaks, California: Sag
 http://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/1838/Feminist-Criminology-
And-Integrated-Theory.html
 https://feminisminindia.com/2018/09/18/feminist-criminology-leniency-
women/
Men commit more crimes than women do. A lot more. This holds true over
time and across cultures. In America, the incarceration capital of the world
(more than 2 million detainees), males comprise 93% of the prison
population. Men also account for 73% of all arrests and 80% of those charged
with violent crimes. This disparity between the sexes is particularly stark when
it comes to murder: 90% of the time, the ones who do the killing are men.
All these numbers add up to what criminologists call the “gender gap”. But
read enough academic journals and government crime reports, and some
curious facts emerge: while crime rates in the western world have steadily
declined over the past three decades, the number of young women being
convicted for violent crimes in some western countries has increased
significantly; law enforcement records indicate the opposite is true for their
male counterparts. In other words, the gender gap is closing.
In some UK cities, the number of female arrests increased by 50% from 2015
to 2016. That’s more than a blip. A 2017 report by the Institute For Criminal
Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London came up with this sobering
data point: the global female prison population has surged by more than half
since the turn of the century, while the male prison population increased by
just a fifth over that same period. Women and girls may account for only 7% of
all incarcerated people today, but their numbers are now growing at a much
faster rate than at any time in recorded history.
Kelly Paxton, a Portland, Oregon-based private investigator known as
the Pink-Collar Crime Lady, says she isn’t surprised that female arrest rates
are going up: “Women suddenly have the financial pressures that men have
had for decades. They’re the breadwinners in 40% of all households. If these
women can’t pay the bills, some will resort to committing crimes.”
The new crime trend hasn’t gone unnoticed. The National Herald ran this
story last month: Greek cops nab teen girl pickpocket ring in Athens. And
here’s a recent BBC News headline: Sharp rise in women caught carrying
knives (up 73% in the past five years). Even InSight Crime, a not-for-profit
that studies organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, is all-in. One
of their recent reports sounds like a Netflix elevator pitch: female prisoners in
Venezuela become cell block bosses to survive.
What’s really cemented this pulpy women-behind-bars image in the collective
conscious, though, is Crime Has No Gender, a controversial
Europol campaign that launched last August. “Are women equally capable of
committing serious crimes as men?” reads the news release. “The female
fugitives featured on Europe’s Most Wanted website prove that they are.”
Are women equally capable of committing serious crimes as men? The female
fugitives featured on Europe's Most Wanted website prove that they are
To show that women can be vicious sociopaths too, Europol asked 21 of the 28
EU member countries to select a single fugitive for their campaign. The
methodology may have been flawed, and the sample size small, but the
gimmick worked. The bad girls theme was reflected in the head count: 18
females, three males. Elena Puzyrevich (Russia), who trafficked nine young
women into Spain and forced them to work as prostitutes, made the list. So
did Dorota Kazmierska (Poland), a 44-year-old femme fatale who killed her
husband by shooting him in the head. Then there’s Zorka Rogic (Croatia), a
blonde desperado who works in sales: narcotics, “psychotropic substances”,
firearms, munitions and explosives.
Documenting the rise in female crime is one thing. Explaining it is quite
another. Cesare Lombroso, the Italian physician known as the “father of
modern criminology” (he invented the first lie detector) also wrote the first
book about women and crime, La Donna Delinquente, in 1893. He concluded
that women who broke the law exhibited crude male traits. The profile was
simple: short, lusty, vulgar and prone to wrinkles. They also had darker hair
and smaller skulls than “normal” women. A Lombroso dating tip: beware of
girls with prominent lower jaws – they’re likely to commit crimes of passion.
Freud also thought criminal women were more like men. Sort of. He blamed
female crime on a “masculinity complex”, which could be traced back to (of
course) penis envy. Most women resolved this complex and developed into
law-abiding citizens. Others, however, fared worse. Instead of embracing
femininity, these women over-identified with males and coveted their floppy
organs. Think of a woman who smiles while she stabs her husband to death in
bed, and later cleans the sheets.
Biology and psychology theories are still discussed in criminology classes
today. Studies that link the menstrual cycle to female crime have persisted for
decades. According to the three female authors of The Curse: A Cultural
History of Menstruation, the 19th century axe murderer Lizzie Borden
butchered her family because “her period coincided with an epileptic attack”.
Psychology models, of course, continue to be popular. Behavioral theory
suggests that becoming a criminal requires conditioning, a form of learning
that involves positive reinforcement: rob a bank, spend the money, rob
another bank.
According to three female authors axe murderer Lizzie Borden butchered her family
because "her period coincided with an epileptic attack"
Increasingly, though, many of today’s gender gap theories focus on external
factors, like tougher drug sentencing laws (25% of women in US state prisons
have been convicted of a drug offense, compared to 14% of male prisoners)
and the proliferation of violent female gangs (the Bad Barbies, an all-girls
“sister gang”, with chapters in Harlem and Brooklyn, have pulled off multiple
revenge murders). There’s also the post-conviction barriers that uniquely
affect women and lead to recidivism: prison guard abuse, few mental health
services and a lack of job training. Police, lawyers and judges being less
protective toward women is another reason criminologists believe the gender
gap is shrinking.
We should have seen this coming. In 1975, the famous criminologist Freda
Adler trumpeted this warning in her bombshell book Sisters In Crime: The
Rise of the New Female Criminal: “In the same way that women are
demanding equal opportunity in the fields of legitimate endeavor, a similar
number of determined women are forcing their way into the world of major
crimes.”
Forty-five years later, Adler’s feminist manifesto still resonates. Just try
finding a criminologist who doesn’t own a dog-eared copy. Critics may argue
that her prediction was wrong (the 70s women’s lib movement didn’t breed a
vast army of females toting guns and flashing armpit hair), but Adler was onto
something. More women are committing violent crimes. It just took longer
than she expected.
The most intriguing academic paper that explores the women behaving badly
phenomenon is the 2015 article The Darker Side of Equality? The Declining
Gender Gap in Crime. Rejecting Adler’s gender equality theory, the authors
offer a reverse hypothesis: the real reason that the gender gap is shrinking
isn’t because women are copying the behavior of men and committing more
crimes – it’s because men are copying the behavior of women and committing
fewer crimes. The idea that feminism might be making our mean streets safer
may sound absurd to a beat cop, but the theory is being hotly debated among
criminologists and gender studies scholars at liberal arts colleges.
The Pink-Collar Crime Lady has her own gender gap theory, and it doesn’t
have anything to do with feminism, chivalrous judges or menstrual cycles.
“Women nurture and raise us. We love and trust them,” explains Kelly Paxton.
“So being a female crook is the perfect cover.” Then she shares some insider
wisdom: “The first thing I tell clients is never underestimate a woman. They’re
ruthless.”
… there is a good reason why