However this view is criticised by many sociologists who hold different views on why women appear little in crime statistics. Some believe that the figures are misleading and that they rarely show up the data due to other reasons.
Otto Pollak in 1950 argued that crimes committed by women go unreported due to the nature of the crimes they commit such as shoplifting and prostitution. He says that these crimes are unlikely to come to the authorities attention. He also adds that the authorities themselves are on the whole, men so are more lenient on women due to their ‘chivalrous behaviour’ towards a woman. He also pointed to some interesting reasons why women are adept at hiding crimes and lying. Self-report studies have also backed up Pollaks view that authorities are more lenient on women. In 1981, Anne Campbell wrote that women were more likely to be just cautioned for offences, than be prosecuted. This statement is also supported by statistical data from 1996. Of male offenders, 35% were cautioned and 65% were convicted compared starkly to 56% of women cautioned and only 44% convicted. Hillary Allen in 1989 shows how statistics showed that 73% of women were given fines in motoring offences compared to 54% of men, because the men faced harsher penalties. Roger Hood also commented that white women were 34% less likely to receive custodial sentences than men were. However these studies to have their critics who suggest that courts are not more lenient, in fact some suggest that courts can be harsher on women, for example in rape cases, and manslaughter.
So it is clear that saying women do not commit crime is obviously not viable in answering the question due to the large evidence in favour of the statistics getting the figures wrong. So when do women commit crime and why do they?
Although the figures are low in the statistics, women do commit all the same crimes as men. Jones in 1980 stated that women tend to murder husbands and lovers while men tend to murder strangers and friends. This puts sexuality at the forefront of reasons why women are criminal. Jones also said that ‘women tend to murder in their own homes and they tend to use kitchen implements. Bringing up another gender issue, that women commit crime within and because of the domestic sphere. Further research shows that women murder in anger or self defence. This all however, is subject to societies views of women as passive and are unable to defend themselves or attack, that is why they commit crime.
Some sociologists have suggested reasons why women commit crime. A very contentious reason is biology. Freud argued that women’s desire to be men because of their discontentment at being wives and mothers caused them to commit crime. Lombrosso and Ferrero in 1895 commented that criminal women had weak maternal instincts. It is clear these theories try to see criminal women =, as monsters, neither male nor female to justify their actions. This had led to stereotypes of the female offender. Marsh in 1981 carried out a study that showed how 80% women commit more crime around the time of their period of menstruation. Pollak stated this was because their period reminded them of their inferiority to men and therefore they acted out. However it is more likely that this is just used as an excuse of women to act criminal.
Mental illness is also out forward as a theory why women are criminals. While men tend to blame others for their problems, women internalise it and suppress it. Edwards and Cook also give good examples of how women tends to commit crime on a necessity basis than through impulse, stating benefit fraud and prostitution as an example.
It is also apparent that women do commit significantly less crime than men do. There have been many explanations for this mostly concentrate on women’s upbringing and circumstances. Stephen Box wrote that ‘girls potential autonomy is hedged in by parental close supervision’. He is stating that women have less ability to be criminal due to their protection by parents, employment in safe, riskless jobs such as nursing, teaching etc. To enhance and further develop this theory, Heidensohn added that ‘marriage and domesticity provide powerful controlling mechanisms’, i.e. motherhood and household demands leave little chance or opportunity for deviant behaviour.
Employment also plays an important role, as Box mentions. Simon argued that women are less likely to engage in corporate crime such as fraud as men take up all the top jobs in industry.
Social roles of the genders also contribute to the woman being less criminal according to Smart and Oakley. They suggest that males are socialised to be aggressive while female’s passive. Criminal behaviour can often be determined as masculine behaviour. These reasons all make a clear case for why women commit crime, but why do men, what makes them different to female criminals?
Messerschmidt in 1993 argued that ‘normative masculinity’ is the reason for male deviance. This refers to societies belief in what a real man is and how to be one. For example a male boss will exert power over female employees. All men aspire to this and some struggle to achieve it which leads to criminal behaviour by those of less powerful to attain certain masculine attributes i.e. wealth, social and sexual success.
So men may be criminal to assert themselves as men, yet Katz in 1988 came up with a different view. Katz claims that we fail to see the pleasure in committing crime. He says we need to see how we get a ‘transgression’s pleasure from doing evil, i.e. the thrill of shoplifting. He sites an example as robbery where the criminal exerts force and power over the victim.
In conclusion it is clear that the gender differences in the crime rates have very complex and valid arguments. I believe that women are compelled to not be criminal through sheer lack of opportunity and they are socially
constructed not to be. I find it very hard in this modern period to believe that authorities, no matter how far, can be lenient to criminals due to their gender. I also believe that men commit significantly more crime also because socialisation of the genders. You only have to look at young men in poor areas to see that they commit crime to assert their masculinity, something they cant do through employment because the opportunity it not there. It is clear however that official statistics are limited, so I think it falls to the authorities to find ways of cataloguing criminal behaviour in women more.
