ABSTRACT
As was highlighted in Chapter 2, feminism in its various guises has had a tremendous impact both on how understandings of who may or may not constitute a victim of crime and by implication what kinds of crimes they may or may not be victims of. In this section of the book the intention is to explore some aspects of this impact in greater detail, in the first instance by considering how responses to (in particular) violence against women have developed in recent decades and then by considering the wider implications that taking gender seriously has for victimology. All of these contributions have been, and are, differently informed by feminism, and it is to a consideration of the questions that feminism raised that we shall turn first of all.
