Female Criminality: Beyond Biological Determinism

Historical Theories and Their Flaws

As with the general cultural perspective permeating academics and the life sciences in the early 20th century, theories on female criminality are pointedly sexist in nature and descend from an aggressively patriarchal viewpoint. As we find in biologically driven models proposed by figures such as Lombroso, there is a proclivity to view female criminals through a completely different lens specifically informed by abnormalities or variations in femininity. According to Hamilton (1999), Lombroso described criminal women as biologically dysfunctional. He believed that female deviants lacked maternal instincts, exhibited atavistic characteristics, and bore more masculine physical features, such as an excess of body hair.

Taking this notion yet a step further, Freud argues that women prone to crime are abnormal not just in their deviation from femininity but in their penis envy. The view that female mental disorder descends from the desire to be male is, of course, unspeakably chauvinistic and unscientific. A similar lack of empiricism is found in Pollock's notion that female criminals are made so by the difficult emotional conditions resulting from the female hormonal system. These early frameworks share a common epistemological flaw: they pathologize femininity itself and treat deviation from rigid gender norms as evidence of biological or psychological dysfunction, rather than examining the actual social conditions that might drive criminal behavior.

The Case for Sociological Understanding

A recent news item underscores the degree to which these theories fail in their relevance by suggesting a core sociological—as opposed to biological—motive for criminal action. The story by Hedeen (2012) tells of a woman recently incarcerated for threatening to kill President Obama. While the woman's backstory reveals previous evaluation for mental competency, it also denotes that social services had revoked her custody of her children. This condition, one that is specifically implicated by sociological conditions such as poverty and broken homes, is what led to her irrational criminal behavior. There is little to account for the sociological pressures that led to her criminal act in the above-delineated theories.

The two sources here combine to offer a thorough understanding of the gradual evolution of perspective in female criminality. Indeed, the notion which perhaps emerges from the combination of these sources as most important is the need for balance. While female criminality and corrections must be treated as a distinct phenomenon from male criminality because of its relatively less frequent occurrence, it is also essential to determine that differentials in treatment are checked against the inherency toward patriarchal institutional thinking. As Harris (1998) indicates, it is against this broader background that new and richer understandings of views about female criminality and the history of women's treatment in the penal system have emerged. It is now clear that differences in treatment between women and men within the judicial systems often have harmed rather than helped women. This is a point which is taken to drive the resolution here that a common starting point of sociologically-driven evaluation must impact criminal theory regardless of gender. A failure to find this objectivity has generally been the greatest flaw in historical thinking on female criminality, as is wholly demonstrated by the two sources in question.

Toward a Gender-Neutral Framework

Here, a new theoretical framework is proposed: the Theory of Gender Neutral Social Deviance. This assumes that female criminality exists within a social context that is at once distinct from but shared with its male counterpart. Therefore, the assumption is that independent of the controlled variable of being female, there are a set of sociological variables—such as poverty, exposure to violence, sustained abuse, drug addiction, and others—which are likely to increase the proclivity of the subject toward criminal behavior.

This framework is informed by Becker's Labeling Theory, which finds that the deviance exhibited in criminal behavior is produced by social grouping. Core concepts such as deviance and specific sociological variables must be elaborated for this model. The underlying principle of the model finds that while certain psychological conditions will likely be present in those tending toward criminality, a sociological theory that accounts for conditions specific to women and general to criminal proclivity is appropriate. This approach avoids the reductionism of earlier biological theories while acknowledging that gender may create distinct pathways to and experiences within criminality.

Conclusion

This paper has examined the fundamental flaws in early criminological theories of female offenders and proposed an alternative framework grounded in sociological analysis. By rejecting biological determinism and patriarchal assumptions, criminology can better understand the true causes of criminal behavior across genders and develop more equitable and effective approaches to prevention and correction. Future research must prioritize social variables over gender stereotypes to advance both theoretical understanding and institutional practice.