Women have traditionally been perceived as “the nurturer’s” in the family unit,
and men as the “bread-winners”. However, the recent battle for gender
equality, and the dissipation of the rigid guidelines of masculinity and
femininity shaped by the politics of gender, in conjunction with a media frenzy …show more content…
Critics have underpinned vast problems with traditional criminology theories
in describing the relationship between gender and crime. Freda Adler
contended that women were becoming more aggressive as they moved from
traditional roles into the competitive marketplace. She believed that women
were undertaking masculine qualities to survive in a male dominated
marketplace, and claimed that the same transformation was being evidenced
in the criminal world, where “a similar number of determined women are
forcing their way into the world of major crimes”, in women’s attempts to
“establish themselves as full human beings, as capable of violence and
aggression as any man”. Rita James Simon also described recent changes in
the types and volume of crime committed by women, but argued that as
women moved from homebound roles, they encountered an array of criminal
opportunities, particularly economic and white collar crimes. Both Adler’s and
Simon’s theories contended that female evolution would result in increased
crimes committed by women. However, both authors differed on their
predictions of the types of crime these newly liberated women would commit:
Adler’s theory suggested a larger proportion of violent