ABSTRACT
This chapter explores psychiatrists' perspectives on female sex offending. It begins by tracing the social context of psychiatric work, analyzes the occupational culture and how this culture constructs sexual offending. The chapter then examines psychiatrists' constructions and representations of female sex offenders. The analysis reveals the ways in which psychiatrists employ a gendered lens when assessing cases involving a female perpetrator and ultimately transform and deny sexual offences by women. Once in place, this denial appears to be maintained and reproduced through the dialectical process whereby the three carriers of culture simultaneously construct, articulate and reproduce the culture of denial with regard to female sex offending. Giddens' concept of the duality of structure becomes relevant to understanding the complex relationships within the dialectical process.
