ABSTRACT
There is no denying the fact that female violence fascinates the general public at the same time that it perplexes feminist scholars (White and Kowalski 1994). Certainly, the possibility that women might begin to emulate male violence is a potent, albeit potential challenge to women’s universal domination by men. The fact is, however, that girls’ and women’s violence is a relative rarity. As an example, women killers have accounted for about 10-15 percent of all homicides for centuries (Holmlund 1994:131), and there is even some evidence that the number of adult women killing men actually decreased rather sharply in the last few years (Dawson and Langan 1994; Bureau of Justice Statistics 1998). One estimate of this decline is 25 percent (Holmlund 1994:131).
