ABSTRACT
Gender issues have nevertheless broadened the field of criminological enquiry, opening up opportunities for the examination of female criminality but at the same time the useful possibility of an examination of masculinity, male power and violence drawing upon broader feminist debates. Pat Carlen (1992) – although critical of what she describes as the anti-criminology and libertarian, gender-centric and separatist tendencies of contemporary feminist ‘criminologists’ – also recognises the benefits of a feminist perspective to an understanding of women, law and order. She advocates the recognition of women’s crimes as those of the powerless, of the stereotypical notions of femininity integral to women’s oppression and observes the active contributions of some feminist writers to campaigns around women and crime and the influence of these can be observed in the ‘left realism’ that is the focus of Chapter 16.
