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: 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. In the United States, women constitute less than 20 percent of arrests for most crime categories. Females have even lower representation than males do in serious crime categories. Since the 1960s in the United States, the extent of female arrests has generally been less than 15 percent for homicide and aggravated assault, and less than 10 percent for the serious property crimes of burglary and robbery. Aside from prostitution, female representation has been greatest for minor property crimes such as larceny-theft, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. Female arrests for these crime categories has been as high as 30 to 40 percent, especially since the mid-1970s.