Feminist school of criminology

The feminist school of criminology was developed in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s in response to discrimination against women in criminology studies and theories. In the past, criminology studies and theories involved only male subjects, mainly because men are much more likely to engage in criminal behavior. However, the theories resulting from male criminology studies have also been applied to women even though male crime and female crime often differ in patterns, motivations, and social contexts.

The feminist school of criminology is connected to the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States and Western Europe, which began in the 1960s and was inspired by the civil rights movement. Members of the feminist school contend that female crime is the result of inequalities and discrimination in society and most violent crime has to do with aggressive forms of masculinity.

Members of the feminist school would like to discover reasons for the “gender ratio,” the consistent finding that women commit fewer crimes than men, especially serious crimes. They believe that learning the reasons for the gender ratio may shed light on the underlying causes of crime in general, and this knowledge may be used to prevent both male and female crime.

Background

Female offenders are starkly different from male offenders. For starters, there are fewer of them. Men commit the majority of crimes. Women are arrested less often than men in all categories of crime, except offenses related to prostitution or commercial sex, where women have historically been more likely to be arrested. This is true of women in all countries and of all racial and ethnic groups. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2024 men made up approximately 93 percent of the incarcerated population, while women accounted for less than 7 percent of the state and federal prisoner population.

On average, crime committed by women tends to be less serious than crime committed by men. Among the most common charges leading to female incarceration are drug possession, larceny/theft, and fraud/forgery. Women are more likely to commit minor crimes such as shoplifting, passing bad checks, and benefits-related fraud. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to commit serious crimes such as robbery, burglary, rape, and assault. Women who do commit violent crimes tend to cause less serious injuries than men. Women are less likely than men to become repeat offenders or to belong to dangerous gangs.

Female offenders are like male offenders in that they most often come from a disadvantaged background associated with poverty, poor schools, substance abuse, and broken homes. However, unlike male offenders, female offenders have often suffered past physical or sexual abuse and report higher rates of mental health conditions, often linked to prior trauma and abuse.

Overview

Prior to the emergence of the feminist school of criminology in the late 1960s, little attention was paid to female crime. Criminology studies and theories considered only male crime. The reason for this may have been, at least in part, that males much more often perpetuate crime. Early criminologists believed that the small number of women who committed crimes did so for biological reasons, most of which were beyond their control. Some early criminologists claimed that mental illnesses or hormonal imbalances during menstruation and pregnancy cause women to commit crimes. The work of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist who is considered the father of psychoanalysis, supports the biological theory of female crime. According to Freud, unresolved penis envy leads some women to more closely identify with men, which makes them more likely to become criminals. Feminist scholars rejected the biological theory as the cause of female crime; they stressed that women are not controlled by biology and can instead think for themselves.

An early goal of the feminist school of criminology was to draw attention to the lack of research on female crime. Its members wanted to conduct studies to gain knowledge of women, the types of crimes they commit, and the reasons they do so. It also sought to make public the violence some women encounter in their everyday lives.

By the late 1980s, the feminist school began focusing on finding answers to two central problems. The first is the "generalization problem," the theories of crime drawn from studies of only men and boys. Feminist criminologists want to know if any of these theories—or even aspects of these theories—could also be accurately applied to women and girls. The second is the "gender ratio" problem. They seek a reason why males are more likely to commit crime than females. While these problems are the heart of the feminist school of criminology, solving them may require many decades of research.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the feminist school also focused on women as victims of crime, in particular sexual assault. Members of the feminist school often speak out about rape to remind people that this heinous act is not uncommon. They point out that in the past, women abused by husbands and partners were unlikely to realize they were being raped, as male dominance and women's submission were considered the status quo.

Since the 2010s, feminist criminology has increasingly incorporated intersectional frameworks, emphasizing how race, class, sexuality, immigration status, and gender identity shape experiences of criminalization and victimization. Scholars have also critiqued carceral approaches to gender-based violence and examined the disproportionate criminalization of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals.

The feminist school has made connections between women who are victims and later become criminals—a concept referred to as "blurred boundaries of victimization and criminalization." Consider this scenario: A young woman flees an abusive home and becomes homeless. (Studies show that women are less likely than men to have the resources required to leave an abusive situation.) The young woman turns to prostitution and thievery to survive. Women who are victims sometimes escape from a frightening home life and become criminals. These women are also more likely to use and become addicted to drugs.

The feminist school has also investigated whether female offenders receive more lenient sentences than men. Some feminist criminologists support the chivalry, or paternalism, hypothesis, which contends that women are treated more leniently during criminal justice proceedings because men desire to protect what they perceive to be the weaker sex. Others advocate for the evil women hypothesis. According to this theory, women receive harsher sentences than men because in addition to breaking the law, they have violated gender-role expectations.

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