ABSTRACT
In examining the gender-neutral defences to criminal liability in Chapter 8, Aileen McColgan has demonstrated that female defendants have struggled to obtain access to many of the ostensibly gender-neutral defences to criminal liability. In other words, treating women according to the same rules as men has hitherto failed to ensure justice for female defendants. In this chapter, I intend to show that the opposite ‘difference’ strategy is equally problematic. While female-specific defences potentially allow individual female defendants to escape or reduce criminal liability, and so deliver just results for the women concerned, at the same time, they also resonate with damaging and normalising stereotypes about women’s biology and appropriate social rolehence the title of this chapter.
