Theories of Female Criminality: A criminological analysis

Abstract

Female criminality is one of the important phenomena in popular media and also in academic discourse of contemporary scholastic arena like sociology, criminology, psychology and anthropology. The changing nature of female’s roles in capitalist system instigate female more to involve in violent and property crimes. The main intent of the study is to review the major theories of female criminality such as masculinization, opportunity, marginalization and chivalry. The authors also tried to shed light on the acceptability and validity of female criminality theories on female criminal activities. This study mainly relies on secondary sources. Data have been collected from journal articles, books, research reports, government documents and so on. Among the theories of masculinization, opportunity, marginalization and chivalry; marginalization theory is the most relevant and significant for analyzing causes of female criminality in contemporary third world societies. On the other hand, masculinities and opportunities theories are sometimes partially applicable to predict criminality of women in first world countries.