ABSTRACT
Crime and law enforcement are presently male-dominated worlds and women who enter them threaten the maintenance of the power relationship between men and women (Adler 1987; Edwards 1984; Heidensohn 1985; Smart 1976). Criminality is still assumed to be a masculine attribute and women criminals are therefore perceived to be either ‘not women’ or ‘not criminals’. Many women who break the law also have the attributions of normality which provoke the latter description and thus tacitly collude with attempts to minimize the consequences of their criminality by rehabilitating them within the dominant discourses of femininity.
