Feminist Criminology: Understanding Women's Involvement in Crime

This essay explores the need for a feminist perspective in understanding women's involvement in crime from three feminist epistemological perspectives- feminist empiricism, standpoint feminism, and postmodern feminism. The mainstream theories of crime have a serious lacuna in explaining the nuances of women’s involvement in crime. The feminists have made an attempt to explain the propensity of women to commit crimes from an impartial perspective. The essay concludes that the feminist discourse was indeed necessary to focus on the areas missed out by the male centric biased ideological perspective that tended to mix up sex as a biological category and gender as a social construct in providing the explanation of criminal mindset in women.

Running head: FEMINIST CRIMINOLOGY
FEMINIST CRIMINOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The feminists have tried to draw the attention towards the fact that crimes committed by
women have some uniqueness attached to it. Hence, the attempt to understand it must be done
from a feminist perspective for a having a better understanding of nuances of their involvement
in the crime. In this particular essay the discussion shall be focusing upon exploring the need for
a feminist perspective in trying to explain the involvement in crime from three feminist
epistemological perspectives- feminist empiricism, standpoint feminism, and postmodern
feminism. In trying to address the theoretical perspectives, the aim shall be highlight how the
feminists have justifiably put forward the issue of being more empathetic understanding of the
involvement of women in crime.
The mainstream theories of crime have a serious lacuna in explaining the nuances of
women’s involvement in crime. The Anomic theory of crime derives its relevance from
Durkheim’s theory of anomie, which implies a degree of normlessness that percolates into the
social fabric. Anomic theory of crime states that lack of means to achieve the socially accepted
goals pushes an individual to pursue the socially ostracized path to achieve it. That leads an
individual to commit crimes. The subcultural theory of crime states that certain social groups
within a larger society are more inclined towards committing crime, than the others. That is
owing to the socio-cultural conditions one has been subjected to. The differential association
theory of Sutherland in his theory has proposed that criminal inclinations are a result of
acculturation which one learns as a result of interaction and by exposure to individuals having
criminal tendencies, which complements the subcultural theory of crime. Control theory of crime
suggests that crimes are a result of lack of self control. This can be a result of several reasons,
societal or personal. These theories of crime were essentially male centric and the need to devote
some insight into the nuances that drive the psyche of a woman to crime has been missed out.

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General explanation of the reasons that drive one to crime shall not suffice to explain what drives
women to crime, and how that is similar and different from a male being involved in the act
(Mason & Stubbs, 2010). Hence a feminist perspective is needed.
Having provided an idea of the mainstream theories of crime, which treat crime as a
gender neutral affair without problematizing the issue, some modernist perspectives of crime
which had tried to explain the involvement of women in crime shall be discussed. Lombroso and
Ferrero had provided a biological deterministic understanding of criminal mindset. They had said
that persons possessing sharp physical features are more likely to commit crimes. They
considered women to be inferior to men and had also stated that given the soft nature of women,
they are less likely to commit crimes than women, innately. However, criminal women were as
per their conception more dangerous than men. The Gluecks had held that criminality in women
was a reflection of the fact that they belonged to either underprivileged backgrounds and also of
their inability to control their sexual desires. They tended to be quite judgemental about female
offenders in rendering them as pathetic creatures. Pollak had a sociological, economic, gendered
and biological aspect to the understanding of criminal women. He suggested that crimes
committed by women are a result of their deviance from the lady like behaviour that they ought
to observe and a delinquent conception about maleness and chivalry. He had argued that the
involvement of crime in women are more often than not underrepresented and underreported as a
result of the male chivalry and kindness on the women which seeks to protect and cover up the
fault of women. However, women who get convicted for a particular crime are made to face
double jeopardy because of the fact that they have transgressed the boundaries of their gender
and also because of the nature of the gravity of the crime. The Post Menstrual Stress Disorder
theory suggests that women soon after the completion of their menstrual cycle tend to become

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more aggressive and are rendered with an unsound mind. That is the reason behind them
committing acts of crime.
The problem these approaches and theoretical standpoints embody are that they are based
on generalization with little enquiry about the actual psychological dispositions that cause
women to commit crimes. Instead it focuses on generalizations and patriarchal biased feelings to
explain the criminal inclination in women. To address these discrepancies, the feminist theories
had made an attempt to explain the propensity of women to commit crimes from an impartial
perspective (Jiwani, 2006). The following sections shall be discussing about how the feminists
have devoted their understanding towards comprehending crime and the involvement of women
in it.
The chivalry and the women’s liberation theory proposed by the feminist empiricists
tend to suggest that crime is essentially seen as a male activity, and they consider it as a flawed
premise. It is owing to the fact that crime involves a degree of violence and aggressiveness
which is conventionally quite ungentle and hence quite unfeminine. Hence the women who end
up prosecuted as criminals tend to be treated more harshly than their male counterparts for
transgressing the gender norms specifically, rather than for committing the crime. The feminists
thus tend to disagree with the chivalry thesis which suggests that women get preferential
treatment in prosecution. They present the example of the overhyped media coverage of women
criminals to substantiate their argument. Hence the feminists call for liberation of women from a
biased legal and social set up which tends to victimize women in an unjustified way. They call
for making crime a gender neutral affair and call for punishment of the criminal for the crime
and not for the gender. The chivalry thesis of women getting preferential treatment in

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prosecution of crimes was limited to a small section of the society, who were essentially the
white females. The rest were excluded from the privilege (Comack, 2006).
The branch of enquiry within the broad field of feminist criminology called the
Transgressing Criminology uses the violence against women to substantiate their
argument. They are called the standpoint feminists and the approach they use is called
pathway approach. These particular theoretical propositions tend to explain the crime of
women from the perspective of viewing women as victims seeking revenge and justice. These
theoretical approaches particularly focus on the aspect of the violent crimes that are perpetrated
on women, like domestic abuse by their male partners, rape and experience of sexual assault as
children. These bitter experiences turn women to commit crimes as their psyche is rendered
deeply scarred as a result of the crimes perpetrated on them. Left sympathizing feminists view
such criminal women who commit crimes to avenge for the crimes done to them as oppressed
sections of the society who are in need of a voice to be represented. This group of feminists are
also called as the standpoint feminists who proposes the solution that the legal system should
take the experience of the criminal woman into account for analyzing the crime committed as a
part of their pathway approach in providing a solution (Balfour & Comack, 2006). The solution
or the pathway approach calls for reducing crimes against women to prevent delinquency in
them.
Unlike the modernist perspectives, the postmodern feminist perspective in
criminology tends to negate the modernist approach of genderizing crime. The modernist
perspective of genderizing crime is a flawed approach in their view as that the duality between a
criminal women and a non criminal woman tends deprive both of them of the fact that both are
but women. The postmodern feminists are however not averse to the idea of empiricism in

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judging upon the reasons which drive the female psyche towards crime, a conventionally held
male activity. They are more in favour of locating the role of power and knowledge in
ascertaining the nature of crime committed. Access to knowledge and power can drive an
individual to commit crime is what they maintain as their standpoint. That tends to delineate the
element of gender from crime. Power and knowledge are something to which anyone can get
access to, and that is the driving force which can turn people to crime irrespective of gender.
Through this explanation the postmodern feminists tend to actually make crime gender neutral
(Bittle, 2013).
With the advent of the neo liberal age and the call for more freedom of the self and
individualism, a sense of anomie had dawned which had called for the laws and regulator order
to be made more stringent. That was a response to the lack of morality and social cohesion that
had percolated in the sphere of society. This gradual social change has been termed as neo
conservatism, characterized by the return to the old values. The violent women and nasty girls
approach tends to echo the same sentiment that is voiced by the chivalry theory. They say that
the women are likely to kill their partners, but are less likely to be persecuted. Thus the neo
conservatives call for stricter punishment for women who commit such crimes (Pearson, 1995).
Outraged by the ideological standpoint of the neo conservatives, the feminists had
rebutted with the intersectionality discourse. The feminists had put forward their argument that
the category of women is not an organic whole and there are several differences that demarcate
one group of women from the other. They include, class, economic status and family
background. They had also cited the brutal murder of Virk and the Homolka Case whereby the
women had been subjected to immense brutality and torture before putting to death. Hence they

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voiced their opinion that stricter laws to victimize women were not the solution, the real solution
lied in eliminating the conditions that turned women delinquents (Kendall, 1991).
The relation between the three feminist perspectives of criminology is that they have
made an attempt to explain the reasons behind women turning criminal, with different
approaches although. Their aim have been to negate the male centric mainstream and
modern theories of crime which very narrowly explain the involvement of women in crime.
They have been extremely biased towards women criminals in their assessment, hence
feminist perspectives have devoted their efforts to ensure that an empathetic and genuine
understanding of women criminals is provided. At the concluding section it can be said that
the feminist discourse was indeed necessary to focus on the areas missed out by the male centric
biased ideological perspective that tended to mix up sex as a biological category and gender as a
social construct in providing the explanation of criminal mindset in women. There have been
attempts to understand the criminal mindset among males from an analytical perspective but the
same has been eliminated in case of women. That is owing to the fact that women were unlikely
to commit crimes, and the ones who committed were essentially less womanly. Breaking the
stereotypes the feminists have delineated gender bias from criminology.

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References
Balfour, G., & Comack, E. (Eds.). (2006). Criminalizing women: Gender and (in) justice in neo-
liberal times. Halifax, Canada: Fernwood.
Bittle, S. (2013). Still punishing to ‘‘protect’’: Youth prostitution law and policy reform. Selling
sex: Experience, advocacy, and research on sex work in Canada, 279-296.
Comack, E. (2006). The feminist engagement with criminology. Criminalizing women, 22-54.
Jiwani, Y. (2006). Discourses of denial. Mediations of race, gender, and violence.
Kendall, K. (1991). Masking Violence against Women: The Case of PMS. Canadian Woman
Studies, 12(1).
Mason, G., & Stubbs, J. (2010). Feminist approaches to criminological research.
Pearson, P. (1995). Behind every successful psychopath. Saturday Night, October, 50-63.