Feminism: Criminological Aspects

Feminist perspectives in criminology developed in reaction to silences and gaps in mainstream criminology. According to the critique that feminists began to mount in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mainstream or traditional criminology was inadequate in five key respects: (1) it focused almost exclusively on male offenders; (2) it was androcentric in its understandings and interpretations of crime; (3) it paid little attention to crime victims; (4) it ignored sex differences in criminal justice processing; and (5) it disregarded the dynamics of gender and power. Although criminology claimed to be an objective social science, the field itself (feminists charged) was deeply biased and implicated in the maintenance of male domination. Feminist criminologists have aimed at including women in analyses of crime, taking power differentials into account, and contributing toward the elimination of inequalities based on gender and other personal characteristics.