ABSTRACT
Lower rates of female criminality were thus attributed to women in general having fewer anomalies – or variations – than men and this was explained by their being close to the lower forms of less differentiated life. Cesare Lombroso proposed that women are inherently passive and conservative because their traditional sex role in the family inherently prepares them for more sedentary existence, although he did propose a biological basis for this passivity as being related to the nature of the sex act between men and women. Women can successfully plead such imbalances even in the most serious cases where they kill another human being. Biological positivism has been extremely influential and enduring in explaining female criminality, with policy implications of treatment and mitigation being central to such initiatives. The policy implications of positivism for women are clearly highly problematic.
