ABSTRACT
Feminist criminology as a body of scholarship has emerged over the past 30 years, largely a development of the Anglo-American scholarly community and spurred by the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Feminist criminologists believe that research subjects should be understood in context, valued, worked with collaboratively, and empowered. The principle of universality is closely linked to the concepts of rule of law, human dignity, and non-discrimination and has been called by the UN the cornerstone of international human rights law. States have the responsibility to uphold and protect human rights no matter what their political, economic, or cultural system. International human rights broaden and globalize feminist criminology by introducing concepts and principles that go beyond offenders, victims, and criminal justice actors within a given state. Feminist criminology, like most criminology, is mainly a domestic enterprise that is national in scope, but linking it to universal human rights means the inevitable internationalization of the discipline.
