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  February 2010 Edition

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Women in Crime

By: Sharon White

Criminology is an independent inter-discipline science with its own history that uses original methods of research and has its network of institutions and organisations worldwide.

Criminology studies crime, its causes and conditions, individuality of a criminal and prevention of a crime as a mass social phenomenon.

Nowadays the notion of feminism has not been definite exactly yet. Feminism constructs social, economic, and political responsibilities as to the eradication of racial, class and sexual domination, and also promotes for such an organization of society when individual self-development would have a priority over imperialism, economic expansion and concentration of desires on material sphere.

As this essay title is particularly diverse it is not possible to adequately cover all aspects or subcategories of feminism in relation to its contradictory nature to criminology therefore this essay will be based around liberal feminism and particularly the debate of ‘the new female offender’, as brought to light by Adler, 1975. The essay will critically assess why feminist perspectives in criminology are relevant and detail the use of them in relation to female offending.

In any discussion of the relationship between feminism and criminology it is important to recognise the complexities in their relationship. There is no one feminism and no one criminology. “Different schools of thought within the sphere of feminism have developed out of different political and theoretical traditions. Central to all feminist criminology is the commitment to ending sex-based discrimination in society towards women” (source adapted from Tierney, 1996:163).

Her concern was that criminology, even in its more radical form, would be 'unmoved' by feminist critiques. She viewed criminology as completely dated and patriarchical and wished to abandon it because she could not see what it had to offer feminism.

“The 1970’s…saw the beginning of serious research in Britain on issues of gender, crime and criminal justice from the perspective of feminism. This reflected the growth of feminism in a general sense, in the United States during the 1960’s and in this country during the 1970’s” (Tierney, 1996:162-163).

Up until and during this time feminism had achieved little or no credibility within the sphere of criminology, however these decades began a wave of feminist criminological literature that went much further than merely a critique of the masculine nature of criminology and the criminal justice system. “Feminist perspectives, over the past thirty years have not only put some new topics under the criminological cover, they have challenged the theories, concepts, methods and assumptions of most of the people already involved in the study of crime.

Feminists argue that theories of criminality have been developed from male subjects and validated on male subjects. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this, the problem is that these theories have been extended generally to include all criminals, defendants and prisoners. It was assumed that the theories would apply to women; most however appear not to do so”

“Since 1975, the impact of the women’s liberation movement on female crime has become the basis of a heated debate in the criminological literature on women, which I will now go on to discuss in more detail.

The catalyst was Freda Adler’s Sisters in Crime (1975) in which the proposition was advanced that women’s liberation was causing women to engage in more violent crime…Women have fought and won their battle for equality. They have ‘come of age’, and ‘the phenomenon of female criminality is but one wave in this rising tide of female assertiveness’ (Adler, 1975:1, source taken from Naffine, 1987:89). But do we take from this that there is feminine criminality or merely that women offenders are more assertive, more aggressive and hence more masculine?

There are two main arguments as to why feminism and criminology are ‘contradictions in terms’ as Walklate puts it. The first being that female offending makes up only a small amount of all criminal activity wherever research is carried out. The statement that “women commit much less crime than men do, is a statement that has achieved the status of a truth universally acknowledged” (Maguire et al, 1997:764).

Differences between male and female offending seem to be common across a variety of nations and cultures and in his research, Frances Heidensohn found the same consistent pattern which he believes has “led some commentators to suggest that women offenders are ‘only 10% of the trouble’ (Maguire et al, 1997:766). This argument would therefore suggest that in the arena of crime feminism has no relevance, as females are not equal to males in terms of offending.

There is however another more telling argument as to the contradictory nature of feminism and criminology concerning the historical social construction of gender and more specifically those of ‘masculinities’ and ‘femininities’. Criminology is concerned with the factors that cause crime and therefore focuses heavily on the criminal and deviant mentality of individuals. Such mentality in females means the embracing of certain given masculine qualities such as competitiveness defiance and daringness.

About the Author:

Sharon White is a senior writer and writers consultant at term papers.

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