Title: Gender and Crime | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Gender and Crime
Gender and Crime
GENDER AND CRIME
Similarities in male and female offending rates and patterns
Differences between male and female offending patterns
Explaining female offending
Recent developments
A gendered paradigm of female offending and the gender gap
Summary
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Content: A variety of factors account for this difference. For example, males arrested under a solicitation of prostitution charge may be men old enough to have acquired the power to be pimps or the money to be customers — men who often put a premium upon obtaining young females. The younger and more peaked female age curve clearly reflects differing opportunity structures for crimes relating to prostitution. Older women become less able to market sexual services, whereas older men can continue to purchase sexual services from young females or from young males. The earlier physical maturity of adolescent females also contributes to their dating and associating with older male delinquent peers. Female offenders, like male offenders, tend to come from backgrounds marked by poverty, discrimination, poor schooling, and other disadvantages. However, women who commit crime are somewhat more likely than men to have been abused physically, psychologically, or sexually, both in childhood and as adults. Differences between male and female offending patterns
Females have lower arrest rates than males for virtually all crime categories except prostitution. This is true in all countries for which data are available. It is true for all racial and ethnic groups, and for every historical period.