ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 starts with the protests from women rights activists in France against the ideas of Lombroso in the late 1890s. It charts the contributions of nineteenth-century feminists to our understanding of the position of women in social life and their more specific experiences of crime and the criminal justice system (whether as offenders or victims), as well as the legacy of these debates on feminism and studies on the construction of masculinit(ies). It challenges the male-centredness of the discipline of criminology that is all too evident in much of the writing covered in the proceeding chapters. In the contemporary period, intersectionality and the work of Black and postcolonial feminists provides a critique of both feminism and concepts of universality, leading to a more nuanced comprehension of the role of exclusion and the various manifestations of structural oppression and inequality and their relationship to crime and the criminal justice system.
