Gender patterns in crime, including why women appear to commit less crime, the chivalry thesis, explanations of female and male offending, and gendered patterns of victimisation.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain the gender gap in crime: why women appear to offend less, whether the statistics are biased (the chivalry thesis), the control and liberation explanations, and why men commit more crime. The examiner expects both halves: an account of low female offending and an account of high male offending.

The gender gap and the chivalry thesis

Official statistics show men commit far more recorded crime than women (men make up the large majority of convicted offenders, and the gap is widest for violent and sexual crime). Two explanations of the gap:

• The gap is real (women genuinely offend less).
• The gap is partly an artefact of how the system treats women, the chivalry thesis.

Evidence is mixed. Some self-report and sentencing studies support leniency (women more likely to be cautioned than charged). But others (Heidensohn, Carlen) find women are treated more harshly when they breach gender norms, suffering "double deviance" (punished for the crime and for being "unfeminine"), so the chivalry thesis is contested rather than proven.

Why women may offend less: control and class deals

Heidensohn uses control theory: patriarchal society controls women more than men in three spheres, at home (the domestic role, "bedroom culture" for teenage girls), in public (fear of male violence and concern for reputation) and at work (male supervision and the "glass ceiling"), which reduces both the opportunity and the motivation to offend.

Carlen, in a study of working-class women offenders, argues women conform because of two "deals": the class deal (material rewards for working in respectable jobs) and the gender deal (the emotional and material rewards of family life). When these deals break down (poverty, abusive or absent family), the incentive to conform collapses and crime becomes more likely.

The liberation thesis and male offending

Adler's liberation thesis claims that as women become more equal and "liberated", female crime rates will rise and become more like men's, including more violent and "white-collar" crime. Critics note that the rise in female crime predates or outpaces liberation, and much female crime remains linked to poverty, not new freedom.

Winlow's study of bouncers in the night-time economy shows how, as traditional manual jobs decline, some men use violence and the body as a way of being masculine and earning, an example of how masculinity and crime adapt to economic change.

Gendered victimisation and evaluation

Women are disproportionately victims of certain crimes (domestic violence, sexual offences, stalking), which are often under-reported and under-recorded. Overall, the topic shows that crime is gendered both in offending and in victimisation. The strongest answers combine an account of women's lower offending (control, deals) with an explanation of men's high offending (masculinity), while questioning how far the statistics can be trusted.