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6
The development of feminist
perspectives on crime

Nicole Hahn Rafter and

Frances Heidensohn

Not only did the 1960s mark the beginning of the dominance of
criminology by sociological methods and perspectives, but it was also
significant in being the decade in which feminist academics began to
question the male bias (androcentrism) of criminology. In the extract that
follows, Nicole Hahn Rafter and Frances Heidensohn briefly consider the
histories of both 20th-century feminism and Western academic femi-
nism. They also consider the relationship between the two and the impact
of feminism on mainstream criminology within the academy and outside
it, both in the West and globally. Feminism has raised many uncomfort-
able questions for criminologists, and has been critical of mainstream
criminology for its gender-neutral focus and its exclusion of women.
Significantly, the feminist critique has not just focused on the substantive
concerns of criminology but also on the methods, methodologies and
epistemologies favoured by mainstream criminologists. Thus, feminist
work provides a critique of positivism and emphasizes the importance of
the researchers’ standpoint (see also Gelsthorpe and Morris, 1990, in
Further Reading). Feminist work focuses on the lived experience of
women (and men) as offenders and victims; and has provided a new crimi-
nological agenda that includes many issues not previously considered
(see, for example, Readings 21 and 22). As Rafter and Heidensohn sug-
gest, like other ‘new’ approaches to criminology, feminism is overtly politi-
cal as its primary aim is to improve not criminology but people’s lives.
They also suggest that feminism’s impact has been particularly profound,
a view which is supported not least by the rest of the book from which

SOURCE: From International Feminist Perspectives in Criminology: Engendering a

Discipline, ed. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Frances Heidensohn (Buckingham: Open
University Press, 1995), 1–14.
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 67

this extract is taken. The book includes chapters which focus on the
relationship between feminism and criminology in many parts of the world
but also includes attention to differences other than gender. The extract
we’ve chosen ends with a consideration of the future for academic crimi-
nology and for the place of feminism within it. Although they outline the
questions and concerns that they believe should be central in the future,
Rafter and Heidensohn suggest that these issues will not easily be resolved.

[…] In this [chapter] we trace the trajectories of twentieth-century feminism and

Western academic criminology and then turn to the much-discussed issue of
the results of their encounter, a debate we attempt to reframe and broaden.
Next we identify factors that have fostered the recent globalization of feminist
criminological analyses. We conclude by specifying key issues that those con-
cerned with gender, crime and social control – however far-flung geographi-
cally or diverse in their immediate concerns – are likely to grapple with during
the next twenty-five years.

F EMINISM IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

We begin with Western academic feminism, partly because it has been the inter-
national leader in feminist analyses of crime and criminology, partly because it
is the territory with which we, as American and British academics, are most
familiar. […]
The immediate roots of twentieth-century Western feminism lie in the
liberation movements of the 1960s: the European and American student move-
ments and, in the United States, the civil rights movement as well. Idealistic
young women were shocked to realize that male colleagues in these egalitarian
movements regarded them as no more than secretaries or sexual playmates.
Shock gave birth to indignation, indignation to a resolve to promote the libera-
tion not only of others but of women themselves.
For guidance, newborn feminists turned to The Second Sex, Simone de
Beauvoir’s (1952) analysis of women’s ubiquitous treatment as Other. Beauvoir
made it painfully clear that this was a world in which the chief interpreters of
women were men. Soon the new feminists were producing analyses and mani-
festos of their own (Friedan, 1963; Millet, 1970). And so began a new ‘women’s
movement’ (actually a group of interlocking movements) focused, initially, on
issues that were political (reproductive rights), economic (equal wages), social
(equal household responsibilities) and relational (equal status). Throughout the
Western world, especially in countries with strong democratic traditions, women
challenged discrimination (for example, the assumption that the best jobs would
go to men), exclusion (for example, the assumption of masculinity as normative)
and representation (for example, the lack of women’s history). Simultaneously,
they began campaigning around issues such as abortion rights and childcare. The
personal (as one of their most effective slogans put it) became political.
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68 criminology: a reader

The new feminists gave a name to what they saw as the underlying problem:
sexism. As they grasped the consequences of marginalization and negation,
silences became matters to fight against. Through the collective efforts that were
such a striking characteristic of the early phase of the women’s liberation
movement, a crucial distinction was made between sex (often defined biologically,
in terms of female and male) and gender (often defined socially, in terms of femi-
nine and masculine). It became clear that gender subordination was neither
inborn nor inevitable. Once made, the sex–gender distinction enabled feminists
to break free of crippling roles and eventually to imagine cultures in which
sexual and gender identities might be mixed, matched and even multiplied.1
In the United States and to a lesser extent other countries, the movement
carried women on to campuses, where they demanded more opportunities for
female scholars and students, together with courses in women’s studies. Female
students increased in number; in some North American departments, women
scholars became regular faculty members, eligible (at last) for tenure and promo-
tion; and the colleges and universities began to approve subjects such as women’s
history. But the victories were costly, and they remain contested to this day.
Crucial though the contribution of academics was to the development of
feminist criminological analyses, other activists contributed with equal force. In
fact, much of the original impetus for Western scholars to focus on crime issues
came from outside university settings, from grassroots movements to help
battered women, rape victims and prisoners (Rafter 1990). Participants in these
movements would not necessarily have called themselves ‘feminists’. […] As
part of the movement to challenge the gender structures of criminology and
social control we might even include people whose primary agendas have
little to do with feminism – producers of television shows about female cops,
for example, and women who have sued to work in men’s prisons.2 Moreover,
although we know that on various continents women are campaigning against
domestic violence, forced prostitution, political terrorism and other human
rights violations, we don’t know the degree to which these campaigns are
fuelled by feminist concerns (Papanek 1993). Thus ‘feminist’ may not be a parti-
cularly good way to describe efforts by women and their allies to improve the
quality of justice. Arguably, ‘feminist’ trivializes such movements by conceptu-
ally reducing them to the concerns of Westerners who identify as feminists.
Moreover, the meaning of ‘feminist’ is changing. What began as an egalitar-
ian ‘women’s liberation’ movement expanded to include the recognition of
gender as a basic element in social structures throughout the world. The goal of
feminism broadened to embrace an understanding of how gender shapes verbal
interactions, education, identities, organizations and other aspects of culture,
such as crime rates, definitions of crime and social control traditions. What began
with concern about ‘sexism’ grew to include the social construction of femininity
and enlarged again to include masculinity (Messerschmidt 1993; Newburn and
Stanko 1994). Moreover, […] feminists now investigate how multiple dimensions
of power – age, geographical location, race, sexuality, social class and so on –
combine with gender to affect human lives. These investigations have fractured
the notion of gender, turning it into one of multiple ‘femininities’ and ‘masculini-
ties’ […]. Feminism has rendered problematic concepts whose meanings not long
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 69

ago seemed self-evident: gangs, Mafia, rape, victims, violence (even ‘feminism’
itself). It has also challenged the epistemological status of theories of crime.

LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY CRIMINOLOGY

‘Criminology’ too is by no means the straightforward term it may first appear.

In Italy, […] criminology has long been a ‘clinical’ speciality. In Eastern Europe, […]
criminology was until recently a tool for extolling socialism’s ‘crime-free’ socie-
ties. Australian criminology […] continues to be heavily influenced by law
and lawyers; the same is true of criminology in some European nations […]. In
South Africa […], Great Britain […] and the United States […], the 1970s brought
critiques of traditional criminology, variously called ‘critical’, ‘neo-realist’,
‘progressive realist’ or the ‘new’ criminology. [...]
These diversities notwithstanding, it is still possible to generalize about
mainstream Western criminology. This academic discipline was ripe for inter-
vention and change at the time of its first encounters with feminism. Having
flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by the 1970s the
field had become stagnant. Mainstream or official criminology remained insis-
tently positivist in its methods, intent on mapping a straightforward world ‘out
there’, dedicated to measuring crime and criminals. Because the vast majority
of crimes were committed by men and men constituted over 90 per cent of all
prisoners, criminologists felt justified in ignoring women. On the rare occasions
on which they mentioned female offenders, they treated women’s low crime
rates as the phenomenon to be explained. ‘It was women’s lack of criminality
that was seen as the intellectual problem’, Robert Connell (1993: x) quips. Men
were taken as the norm and women as departures from it: ‘deviants from the
deviance, so to speak’. Moreover, as Messerschmidt (1993: 15) observes, ‘While
criminological theory and research have concentrated on men and boys as the
normal subjects, the gendered man and boy, like women, has been notoriously
hidden from criminological history’ (emphasis in original). In addition, crimi-
nologists slighted the offences most likely to victimize women: domestic
violence, incest and rape. Even labelling theorists and critical criminologists,
the self-appointed progressives of the 1960s and 1970s, ignored women.
In fact, late twentieth-century mainstream criminology was the most
masculine of all the social sciences, a speciality that wore six-shooters on its
hips and strutted its machismo. Political science had to acknowledge women
because they could vote. The history profession might not welcome women’s
history, but it could not deny that women had existed in the past. Even law –
another highly gendered field – paid more attention to women, perhaps
because they constituted more than a tiny fraction of potential cases. But the
gatekeepers of criminology and criminal justice apparently assumed that
sexism was inherent in their field.
Unpersuaded, three fledgling feminists began questioning criminology’s
androcentrism (Bertrand 1967; Heidensohn 1968; Klein 1973). Working separately,
in three different countries, they none the less raised related issues. What moti-
vated Bertrand, Heidensohn and Klein to produce those foundational texts?
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70 criminology: a reader

Marie-Andrée Bertrand (1994) reports an evolution through the 1960s, from an

initial awareness of the sexual double standard in delinquency proceedings,
through her Berkeley dissertation critiquing ‘the biases of statistics and the sexism
of the criminal law’, to her more explicitly feminist work of the late 1960s. Dorie
Klein (1994) recalls that she was inspired by the student and other liberation
movements of the 1960s. Frances Heidensohn began her researches into women
and crime in 1965, before she was influenced by American feminism. Initially she
was interested in the criminological questions of why female crime rates are lower
than male rates; given this, why conventional criminology had not been inter-
ested in this topic; and finally, why this lack of interest was so widespread. But all
three pioneers were involved as academics in the study of criminology – Klein as
a student at Berkeley, Bertrand as a staff member of the University of Montreal
while doing her PhD research at Berkeley, Heidensohn as a lecturer at the London
School of Economics – and their work reflected growing feminist interests.
By the mid-1970s, several book-length studies of women and crime had
been published (Adler 1975; Simon 1975; Smart 1977). It was becoming possi-
ble to talk of a feminist criminological agenda. The agenda’s authors, moreover,
had passed through their pioneering stage and were now entering a second
phase, ‘consolidating and expressing key ideas more confidently’ (Heidensohn
1994: 1013). Developments occurred most swiftly in the United States, where
feminists with degrees in criminology or related topics were joining the academy,
doing research on women and crime, and developing the first courses in
this area. Courses called for texts; collections of articles on women and crime
began appearing (Price and Sokoloff 1982; Rafter and Stanko 1982). Publishers,
recognizing a new market, added studies of women and crime to their lists.
Simultaneously, more women were entering the traditionally male domains of
policing, guarding male prisoners and court work, thus providing new data for
researchers (e.g. Martin 1980; Zimmer 1986). And a powerful new branch of
feminist work, victimological studies, was starting to flourish (e.g. Dobash and
Dobash 1979; Russell 1982; Stanko 1985, 1990).
As yet we know next to nothing about the social organization of criminol-
ogy on an international scale, but research in this area might help us understand
the diffusion of feminist ideas in academic criminology as well as variations
in their acceptance. How does criminology’s location in the academies of
various nations encourage or block the acceptance of feminist analyses of crime
and social control? In countries where criminology is an adjunct of law or
another entrenched discipline […], criminological studies may be relatively weak
and feminist criminological studies more marginal still […]. Where criminology
is part of a sociology department (as is often the case in the United States), there
is apparently more room for it and, within it, for courses in women and/or gen-
der and crime. In sociology departments where there is great demand for crime-
related courses (and again this is often true in the United States) gender-related
studies may be particularly likely to thrive. We can hypothesize that depart-
ments in which students can take a wide range of crime-related courses without
restriction are those in which feminist work is most likely to flourish. These
matters call for investigation, but it may be that diffusion and receptivity are
even more strongly affected by other factors, such as the general strength of
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 71

feminist movements within a geographical area or linguistic traditions (English

being the dominant language of academic feminist criminology).3
The long-term health of Western criminology as both an academic special-
ity and a tool for social improvement may well lie in its willingness to open its
boundaries to feminist analyses, postmodernist ideas and interdisciplinary
endeavours (Rafter 1990). Academic specialities are always in a state of flux, but
today many are experiencing particularly rapid change: new cross-disciplinary
fields are emerging and less flexible specializations are becoming backwaters.
For some time the most interesting theoretical developments in the under-
standing of crime and social control have been occurring in other areas: episte-
mology, gender studies, history, legal theory. In some countries criminology
may be able to assimilate (at least partially) the new currents flowing around it;
elsewhere it is likely to remain a rock in the stream, impervious to change. In
either case, feminist work on crime and social control will probably continue
unabated, for its primary aim has always been to improve not criminology but
people’s lives.

ANALYSING THE IMPACT

Feminist criminological studies have multiplied remarkably over the past two
decades, becoming more sophisticated, extending their range and depth,
developing new methods and recognizing diverse standpoints. How has this
work affected mainstream criminology?
Feminists divide in their answers to this question. A discouraged response
has been given by Americans Kathleen Daly and Meda Chesney-Lind (1988: 498),
who argue that ‘With the exception of feminist treatments of rape and intimate
violence’, criminology ‘remains essentially untouched’ by feminist thought. It is
true that whereas feminists began their criminological critique with the neglect of
women as offenders, their greatest achievement has been in developing new theo-
ries about and policies for women (and children) as victims. But other evidence
contradicts Daly and Chesney-Lind’s pessimistic conclusion. As they themselves
show, by the early 1980s feminists working in Australia, Canada, Great Britain
and the United States had raised two central criminological issues. One was the
generalizability problem: can supposedly gender-neutral explanations of offending
apply to women as well as to men, and if not, why not? Today, the burden of
explaining why a theory cannot be generalized to both sexes falls on the theorist;
to ignore the female case is usually no longer acceptable. The second key issue,
which Daly and Chesney-Lind call the gender ratio problem, asks why females are
less involved than males in nearly every type of criminal behaviour. Feminist
work has moved this issue, too, to centre stage in criminological inquiries.
A second and more positive assessment, this one by British sociologist Pat
Carlen (1990), holds that feminists’ achievements include: putting women on
the criminological map; critiquing traditional criminology’s essentialist and
sexualized view of women; promoting justice campaigns for women and
other victims; exploring the possibilities of founding a feminist criminology;
challenging the preoccupation with women as offenders; and investigating the
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72 criminology: a reader

potential of feminist jurisprudence. Like Daly and Chesney-Lind (1988),

Carlen describes an international endeavour which, while conducted mainly
from the English-speaking world, includes Scandinavia and other parts of
Europe. Carlen does go on to explore arguments against feminists studying
women and crime, but these […] may be a particularly British concern.
To answer the impact question we might compare feminism’s influence
with that of some other body of thought that has affected criminology. The
most obvious candidate is the critical or ‘new’ criminology of the 1970s. Both
reform efforts have objected to official criminology’s claims to neutrality and
objectivity; both have presented a new vision of equality and social justice; and
both are overtly political. But as the comparison reveals, feminism’s impact has
been more profound. Feminists have produced a greater volume and range of
work; this work has demonstrated greater staying power; and whereas
so-called critical criminologists made no mark outside the academy, feminism
has transformed criminal justice practices.
Throughout the world, […] feminists have challenged other’s pronounce-
ments about the nature and causes of crime. They have questioned some basic
concepts of the discipline and revitalized others. […] Although much of their
work is empirical, feminists have replaced a threadbare positivism – the
scientistic belief in objectivity,4 reliance on unproblematized concepts such as
‘race’ and ‘crime’ – with new methodologies. These emphasize the importance
of the researcher’s standpoint, stress epistemological issues and sometimes
merge victimology with criminology […].
Moreover, feminists have developed a new criminological agenda that
includes child abuse, domestic violence, sex and gender offences, fear of crime
and the causal role that prior victimization may play in offending. They are
researching the involvement of women in social control through studies of
policing (Heidensohn 1992), judging (Rush 1993) and prison management
(Zimmer 1986; Hawkes 1994). Some feminists are now reconceptualizing the
meanings of criminal justice itself: taking a leaf from feminist legal theorists
(Minow 1990; Guinier 1994), they are looking for ways to move beyond simplis-
tic either/ors in which one party wins and the other loses, searching instead for
third-type solutions that maximize benefits for all and minimize social costs. For
example, the emerging battered women’s defence (Browne 1987) would give
women the right (one men have had for centuries) to choose self-protection as an
alternative to tolerating severe physical abuse or facing homicide charges. The
interest in developing new conceptions of justice is evident as well in studies of
sentencing leniency for ‘familied’ defendants (Daly 1987) and arguments for
differential sentencing of defendants with dependent children (Rafter 1989). […]

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

Domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape – these issues cut across national bounda-
ries. Sharing fears of male violence, women around the globe are already bound
by strong ties. But recent years have witnessed an internationalization of
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 73

women’s concerns about crime and justice. More than a recognition and
acknowledgement of mutual interests, this phenomenon is self-consciously
feminist. And it aims explicitly at creating transnational and transcultural
alliances that will respect diversity.
One factor encouraging globalization is the collapse of old political orders
in Eastern Europe […], the Balkans and South Africa […]. In country after
country, patriarchal regimes that silenced dissent have been overthrown. Out of
the rubble are emerging a host of new minorities – ethnic, feminist, nationalist –
contending for participation in the new regimes. Internationalization has also
been fostered by the trend toward postmodernism – the fragmentation of old
explanatory structures and acceptance of multiple perspectives. Interest in
discourses, identities, representations: these facets of postmodernist thought
have all contributed to a renewed interest in the origins and effects of cultural
difference. Globalization has been further promoted by the simple fact that,
throughout the world, feminists and their allies have entered work in crimino-
logy and criminal justice, creating a critical mass capable of giving voice to
women’s concerns. Throughout the world we now find crusades against domes-
tic violence and other forms of victimization of women. Participants in these
movements now constitute an international audience for information on gender,
crime and social control.
Much as international conferences solidified the global women’s move-
ment during the 1980s, a conference on Women, Law and Social Control drew
feminists together in the early 1990s, internationalizing concerns about crime
and justice. Held at Mont Gabriel, Quebec, in 1991 and organized by an inter-
national team,5 the meeting brought together over sixty delegates from eighteen
countries (Bertrand et al., 1992). Follow-up meetings were held at the 1993
British Criminology Conference in Wales and the 1994 American Society of
Criminology meeting in Miami. Facilitating the exchange of feminist concerns
and agendas across national lines, the conferences also challenged assumptions
of an uncomplicated, uniform ‘sisterhood’.

COMMON THEMES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

[…] Within academic criminology, what can we expect in the years ahead? […]
[T]hree issues will be particularly important. First, is a ‘feminist criminology’
possible or rather a contradiction in terms? This question is raised in part by femi-
nists’ mistrust of positivism and of state crime control programmes, which all
too often have been thinly disguised women control programmes. The question
stems as well from current feminist efforts to keep gender on a par with other
aspects of social location and experience, such as race and sexuality. If we aim
at ‘feminist criminology’, are we not giving preference to gender over other
dimensions of power? Why not instead label our goal ‘anti-racist’ or even ‘multi-
cultural’ criminology? In fact, few feminists would be surprised or distressed if
their project lost its current identity by spilling over into others. Inclusiveness
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74 criminology: a reader

has long been a feminist goal, one actively advanced by insistence on the
embrace of multiple standpoints and the value of crossing boundaries. […]
Second, in the years ahead how will feminists deal with the anglo- and ethno-
centrism of current work on crime and justice? For historical and economic reasons,
feminism and criminology are both strongest in Western nations, particularly
English-speaking countries (Margolis 1993). As a result, problems have tended
to be stated in anglocentric and ethnocentric terms. In other parts of the world
women often face more serious crime and justice problems, including genital
mutilation and widespread sexual slavery. In some places conditions for
women are deteriorating […] owing to cutbacks in welfare services and the
growth of inequality and violence. In theory at least, white Westerners seek a
more heterogeneous feminism and would welcome a decentring of their own
traditions. But the alternatives are not yet clear, especially as sex-equality
movements elsewhere are often weaker and more fragmented (Margolis 1993).
What directions will or should feminist efforts in criminology take in future?
Third, in the years ahead feminists will have to confront the question: to
what degree are criminology and crime control policies implicated in the construction
of hierarchies based on gender, race, class and sexuality? Traditional criminology has
mainly asked how to achieve crime control. Feminists have asked how crime
control achieves gender – how control systems contribute to the maintenance
of ‘female’ as inferiority. And feminists have tended to view criminology itself
as a tool for reinforcing inequality. […] Continuing to turn positivism on its
head, feminists will doubtless continue to explore how criminology and crime
control policies contribute to and reinforce structures of power and hegemony.
These are difficult questions – harder than many posed by mainstream
criminologists. They demonstrate the conflicts and contradictions, the differ-
ences and divergences that characterize contemporary feminisms. But they also
illustrate the magnitude of the feminist criminological enterprise. Ultimately,
this is a project of self-obsolescence, for if the discipline were engendered and
crime control policy transformed as feminists recommend, they could retire
from the field. But then, the field itself as we now know it would no longer exist.

NOTES

1 For more on the criminological history and significance of the sex–gender distinc-
tion, see Heidensohn (1994: 997–8) and Messerschmidt (1995: ch. 10). However, the
sex–gender distinction is being challenged.
2 Zimmer (1986) discovered that US women who sued and otherwise struggled to be
hired as guards in men’s prisons did so primarily because the jobs offered conve-
nience and/or good pay, not out of a sense of feminist mission.
3 Piers Beirne and Jim Messerschmidt contributed ideas to this discussion of diffusion
and receptivity.
4 For a critique of the myth of objectivity, see Daly and Chesney-Lind (1988). Feminists
are certainly not monolithic in their attitudes towards objectivity, however.
5 The Mont Gabriel conference on Women, Law and Social Control was organized by
French-Canadian Marie-Andrée Bertrand and two Americans, Kathleen Daly and
Dorie Klein.
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 75

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STUDY QUESTIONS

1 In your own words, detail the ways in which academic feminism has offered a
challenge to Western academic criminology? In your answer, refer to political,
substantive and methodological critiques.
2 Rafter and Heidensohn argue that the primary aim of feminist work on crime
and social control ‘has always been to improve not criminology but people’s
lives’. From your reading of this piece, what examples of this can you identify?
Look back to Reading 4 by Young and consider the similarities and differences
between feminism and realism which also grounds its research and analysis in
experience, practice and policy?
3 What are the challenges for academic feminist criminology in the twenty-first
century?
4 Many different theoretical approaches have been considered in this Part I. Using
a large piece of paper, see if you can represent the historical development of
these ideas pictorially or diagrammatically, indicating influences and overlaps
between theories. Also consider the relationship between ‘theory’ and other
explanations of crime and deviance in society: i.e. lay, media and political dis-
courses.

FURTHER READING

The whole of the book from which the above extract is taken is worth reading
both for its global focus and its attention to the politics of gender and other
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the development of feminist perspectives on crime 77

issues of difference: Hahn Rafter, N. and Heidensohn, F. (eds) (1995)

International Feminist Perspectives in Criminology, Buckingham: Open University
Press. Furthermore, Heidensohn, F. (2000) Sexual Politics and Social Control,
Buckingham: Open University Press, considers contemporary concerns of gender,
law and order; and Naffine, N. (1997) Feminism and Criminology, Cambridge:
Polity Press, provides an historical review of the history of criminology and
argues that, historically, gender has been considered as a specialist topic rather
being integral to analyses of crime. Both Walklate, S. (1995) Gender and Crime: An
Introduction, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall/Harvester; and Heidensohn, F.
(1996) Women and Crime, 2nd edn, Hampshire and London: Macmillan, focus on
theories and issues relevant to the study of women within the criminal justice
system; and Gelsthorpe, L. and Morris, A. (eds) (1990) Feminist Perspectives in
Criminology, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, is interesting because of its
focus on issues of theory, method and epistemology and because of the links
made between these issues and empirical research and policy.