ABSTRACT
Like many discussions of youth policy and juvenile justice, most of the literature thus far on restorative justice in this area assumes a generic rather than a gendered youth population: young women are virtually invisible. The failure to consider gender implies an assumption that the outcomes and the processes will be the same for boys and girls. At this point there is no research that allows examination of this assumption. Nevertheless, a co-ordinator of family conferencing in South Australia, has noted that, 'conferencing with young women does raise many ethical, political and social considerations which differ from those which may arise when dealing with other ... youths' (Jan Kitcher in Baines, 1996: 43).
