Introduction

This chapter outlines the existing literature which explores the dominant ways in which female offenders and co-offenders are represented in media, legal discourse and criminology more broadly. It also considers the ways in which gendered constructions, such as ‘bad mother’ (Barnett, 2006), ‘evil manipulator’ (Jewkes, 2015) and ‘mythical monster’ (Heidensohn, 1996; Jewkes, 2015) permeate media representations of female offenders/co-offenders. The chapter highlights the ways in which gender role expectations and patriarchal values infiltrate the social construction and criminological understandings of female offenders.

The dichotomies of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and malestream criminology

The categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are viewed as being in opposition to each other within academic disciplines, such as criminology, the natural sciences, psychology and sociology, but this is also applicable to western societies more broadly. For example, women have historically been defined by their nature, yet men continue to be defined as ‘rational and cultured’ beings (Sydie, 1987). This distinction has led to hierarchical social relations characterised by subordination and domination between men and women which, in turn, are seen to be natural, inevitable and unchangeable (Sydie, 1987). Such historical sex segregation has led to the pervasive view that women are inferior and defined by their ‘natural’ biology, whereas men are classified predominantly as reasonable and rational knowers (Russet, 1989; Sydie, 1987).

Such distinctions between the ‘reasonable’ man and the ‘pathologically deficient’ woman has led to the development of additional, pervasive dichotomies between the sexes. For example, it is often presumed and asserted that men are active beings and knowers, whereas women are subjective and passive (Sydie, 1987). Within the context of criminology, from the nineteenth century onwards, due to the birth of natural sciences, biology and Darwinism, positivism became the universal explanation of crime. This led to further biological based distinctions between women and men. According to Russet (1989), the most influential principle of ‘sexual science’ with regard to criminology during this period was biogenetics and its associated concept of atavism. Atavism ‘described a situation in which an individual member of a species could be identified as a throwback to an earlier genetic period’ (Walklate, 2001: 22).