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Crime and Gender
Book chapter

Crime and Gender

Samantha R Cumley, Karen Heimer and Stacy De Coster
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp.132-136
Elsevier Ltd, Second Edition
2015
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.45003-8

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Abstract

Research consistently finds that females are much less likely than males to engage in illegal behavior. This article summarizes scholarship examining the relationship between gender and crime, which often follows one of three approaches: (1) Macro-level research examines national trends in women's offending compared to men's, emphasizing explanations for changes in the gender–crime gap over time. (2) Qualitative research on women's offending focuses on how social environments influence women's decisions to commit crime. And, (3) Individual-level analyses of survey data center on sociopsychological explanations of why males are more likely than females to break the law.
Crime Delinquency Female offending Feminist criminology Gender

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