ABSTRACT
It is unusual, in the twenty-first century, for women to be considered a minority group. The lessons of feminism over the last 150 years have reminded us that women are half the population and should be represented alongside men. This realisation has come late to criminology. Writings about women criminals were very rare before the 1960s, and the main schools of criminological thought have had, and perhaps still have, little or nothing to say about women offenders. The statistical evidence is that women are a minority within the criminal justice system. That in itself is an interesting phenomenon, but it has resulted in silence about women’s particular relationship with law and order rather than in interrogation of women as a specific group. Exceptions have been those women whose ‘crimes’ catch the eye, like the small number of women who attack or kill husbands. Media coverage encourages us to see these women as individual wrongdoers. Silence about the location of women to offending has meant that services developed in mainstream organisations like probation do not usually address women as a category. This ‘gender blind’ approach can promote equality, but can also obscure particular practices that advantage or disadvantage women. Alongside mainstream services specific, usually voluntary, agencies have developed to promote and meet the needs of women.
