ABSTRACT
‘Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society’, writes Caroline Criado-Perez (2019, 1), showing how in many fields of social life the female perspective is overlooked, ignored, or (sometimes even unintentionally) neglected. It is difficult not to apply this insight to the issue of crime as well. Danielle Marie Carkin and Paul E. Tracy (2017, 612) point out that most criminological research on crime fails to address the most vital demographic factor—gender—and focuses instead on differences such as age, ethnicity/nationality, and social class, which are actually much less relevant. Both crime and deviant behaviour by women are sometimes lost in male patterns, and only by examining the acts committed by women can they be better understood and analysed. This also applies to a long-term perspective. Another key point is that when writing about female delinquency, we should refer not so much to biological sex as to cultural gender, for it is cultural gender that influences the functioning of women in society to a much greater extent than biological sex. The cultural gender is made up of a constellation of social, historical, and cultural influences, which have a profound impact on both life and social institutions.
