Criminologists agree that the gender gap in crime is universal: Women are always and everywhere less likely than men to commit criminal acts. The experts disagree, however, on a number of key issues: Is the gender gap stable or variant over time and across space? If there is variance, how may it best be explained? Are the causes of female crime distinct from or similar to those of male crime? Can traditional sociological theories of crime explain female crime and the gender gap in crime? Do gender-neutral or gender-specific theories hold the most explanatory promise? In this chapter we first examine patterns of female offending and the gender gap. Second, we review the “gender equality hypothesis” as well as several recent developments in theorizing about gender differences in crime. Third, we expand on a gendered paradigm for explaining female crime first sketched elsewhere. We conclude with recommendations for future work.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2083439.pdf

Gender and crime: Toward a gendered theory of female offending.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to gaps in our knowledge about patterns of female gang participation and its causes and consequences. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a panel study that overrepresents adolescents at high risk for delinquency, are used to compare gang participation and delinquent involvement of female and male adolescents. We then examine the role of theoretical variables associated with both female and male gang membership. The results lead us to conclude that, for females as well as males, involvement in gangs is associated with substantially increased levels of delinquency and substance use. There is also some similarity in the factors associated with gang membership for both sexes, although lack of school success emerges as a factor of particular salience for female adolescents. The results suggest that theory and intervention need to address the phenomenon of female gang membership as an important component of urban youth problems.

Gender differences in gang participation, delinquency, and substance use

Attempts to understand women's participation in violence have been plagued by a tendency either to overemphasize gender differences or to downplay the significance of gender. The goal of this research is to reconcile these approaches through an examination of the experiences of female and male street robbers in an urban setting. Based on in-depth interviews with active offenders, the study compares women's and men's accounts of why they commit robbery, as well as how gender organizes the commission of the crime. The research suggests that while women and men articulate similar motives for robbery, their enactment of the crime is strikingly different—a reflection, in part, of practical choices women make in the context of a gender-stratified street setting.

Up it up: gender and the accomplishment of street robbery*

Although there is some evidence to suggest that classic strain theory is applicable to both male and female delinquency, several theorists have argued that a distinct version of strain theory may b...

Relational Problems with Peers, Gender, and Delinquency:

In 1999, Schreck extended Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) self-control theory to explain victimization and the victim-offender overlap. His analysis of college students revealed that low self-control was significantly associated with victimization. We build on Shreck's work by assessing whether low self-control contributes to victimization among a sample of female offenders while controlling for routine activities/lifestyle behaviors. We advanced two research questions: (1) Can self-control theory account for variations in victimization? (2) Do risky lifestyle behaviors mediate the effects of self-control? The results were consistent with the hypothesis that low self-control is a risk factor for victimization, even after lifestyle behaviors were controlled.

Integrating the general theory of crime into an explanation of violent victimization among female offenders

This paper explores the capacity of alternative theoretical perspectives to explain the self-reported criminality of black and white young adult females. When criminal involvement is regressed on the theory operation-alizations separately by race, a key difference emerges: For white women, significant effects are clustered in the social-psychological theory groups (bonding, attitudes, and maturation), but for the black women the social-psychological variables have only scattered and inconsistent eflects. Instead, for black women structural indicators emerge as the important predictors of criminal involvement.

Women, race, and crime *

Reviewed by: The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview by André Padoux Ella M. Crawford (bio) and J.M. Fritzman (bio) The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview. By André Padoux. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2017. Pp. xvi + 219. Paper $32.00, ISBN 978-0-226424-09-5. André Padoux (1920-2017) was among a small number of scholars, including Harvey P. Alper and Lilian Silburn, who introduced the study of Tantra to Western scholars. He authored such important works as Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras and Tantric Mantras: Studies on Mantrasastra. Padoux's 2017 Hindu Tantric World: An Overview is a significant revision of his 2010 Comprendre le tantrisme: Les sources hindoues. Padoux seeks to discover what constitutes Tantric Hinduism by investigating its essential notions and its numberless practices. These are bound together, "since there is no practice without a theory that gives it meaning and explains it" (p. xvi). He discusses the Tantric body, as it "is a fundamental element because, except for the abstract thinker, there is no Tantrism (or any creed) without its being experienced, lived, in the body--or, more exactly, in an indivisible body-mind totality" (p. xvii). Tantric Buddhism is not discussed, as it is significantly different from Tantric Hinduism. The Hindu Tantric World is divided into three parts: "The Hindu Tantric Domain," "The Tantric World," and "Tantra Today." The first part has four chapters. In "The Hindu Tantric Field: Terminology and Attempts at Defining a Tantric Domain," Padoux writes that Tantra's pervasive influence on Hinduism and Buddhism is frequently unrecognized. Hinduism's worship (pūjā) comes from Tantra, for example, not from the Vedas. While Tantra is not present in the Vedas, Tantra originated early in India's history. Tantra is a set of beliefs and practices that are lived and experienced in the body. The Sanskrit word tantra comes from verbal root tan, which can mean "to expand," "to spread," "to spin out," "to weave," "to display," "to put forth," or "to compose" a verse, system, or doctrine. There is no single Sanskrit term for all Tantric phenomenon just as there was no single Sanskrit term for Hinduism before the presence of Islam in India. Although tantra refers to text, not all texts called "Tantra" are Tantric, and not all Tantric [End Page 1] texts are called "Tantra," especially in Tantric Buddhism. Tantric texts are primarily Śaiva, frequently in its nondualist traditions, which hold that everything is Śiva's manifestation. Tantric texts present themselves as the revelation of a divine being who brought them down, and so there is a descent of Tantra (tantrāvatāra) to humans. By asserting that doctrines progressively ascend (uttarottaravaiśiṣṭya), Tantra claims to encompass and supersede the Vedic tradition. Tantra maintains that the Brahmanical teaching and rules which are based on the Vedas are valid only at a lower level: they provide guidance for social life and salvation, but not liberation. Tantra claims that it is more effective than the Vedas in obtaining liberation in the present dark age (kaliyuga) where passion and desire (kāma) prevail. While the adjective "Tantric" (tāntrika) comes to be opposed to "Vedic" (vaidika), Kullūka Bhaṭṭa (fifteenth century) refers to both as revelation (śruti). Knowledge of Tantra is continually developing. Many texts have been discovered since 1950, and texts are still being found. Padoux accepts David Gordon White's distinction between a hard-core transgressive Tantra tradition and a soft-core tradition that is found generally in Hindu thought and practice. However, the importance of Tantra is "its pervasive interpenetration of brahmanical elements" (p. 15). Tantra may lead to power, but its aim is liberation. Tantra is transgressively heterodox, to varying degrees. The point of Tantric transgressions is for its practitioners to experientially recognize that the world is the Deity's manifestation, and hence that everything is equally pervaded by the divine. Tantra has continually changed and developed, so that what is regarded as its main features is actually a synthesis that does not wholly correspond to any historically or actually existing Tantra. Nonetheless, Tantra generally maintains that the world emanates from the Deity through a primordial vibration or... 

Elizabeth M. Crawford

Papers

Women, race, and crime *

The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview by André Padoux (review)