Feminist criminology

The feminist school of criminology is a school of criminology developed in the late 1960s and into the 1970s as a reaction to the perceived general disregard and discrimination of women in the traditional study of crime. Proponents assert that the patriarchal domination of the field of criminology has led to the field being inherently biased and androcentric. This, they argue, leads mainstream criminology to either generalise or ignore criminological inquiry relevant to women in an effort to support the male dominated status quo.

The feminist school of criminology was closely associated with the emergence of the Second Wave Feminism and it speaks with multiple viewpoints developed from different feminist writers. The feminist school emphasises that most violent crime is caused by aggressive forms of masculinity and that crime is a result of inequalities within society. Politically, there is a range from Marxist and socialist to liberal feminism addressing the "gender ratio" problem (i.e. why women are less likely than men to commit crime) or the generalisability problem (i.e. "adding" women to male knowledge, whereby the findings from research on men are generalised to women).

Criminology is the study of crime and criminal justice, and it covers a multitude of topics, but according to those of the feminist school of criminology the principal theories of criminality have been developed from male subjects, have been validated on male subjects, and focus on male victimization. This 'sexism' in criminology also influences the sentencing, punishment, and imprisonment of women who are not expected to be criminals and, if they are, they may be described as 'mad, not bad'. The attribution of madness to women flows from the entirely outdated construct that women who conform are pure, obedient daughters, wives, and mothers who benefit society and men. If they dared to go against their natural biological traits of 'passivity' and a 'weakness of compliance', they must be mentally ill: a classic androcentric view which has been held by few academics in decades. Feminism operates within the existing social structures to examine the social, political, and economic experience of women and to devise strategies for achieving greater equality (via inequality) in women's roles.This involves considering how women came to occupy subservient roles, the nature of male privilege, and the means whereby the discourses that constitute the power of patriarchy can be redirected to transform society.

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