Feminist criminologies

Beginning in the 1970s, then, feminist criminologists drew attention to gender biases in criminological theories and research, and to widespread sexism in the discipline and in the criminal justice system with regard to offenders and victims, as well as academics, professionals and practitioners. Feminist criminologists have sought to redress this exclusion and discrimination in varied ways, explaining criminal offending and victimization, along with institutional responses to these problems, as fundamentally gendered, and emphasizing the importance of influencing public policy to alleviate discrimination and oppression. One focus of liberal feminist criminologists has been explaining gender differences in criminal offending. Radical feminist criminologists have focused less on women as offenders and more on women as victims, seeking to understand the causes and consequences of violence against women and the failure of the criminal justice system to protect women from men’s violence.