Assess explanations for apparent gender differences in involvement in crime. (21 marks)

Since the 1970s many feminist have criticised criminology for being male orientated, where by women are invisible in both theoricatical consideration and empirical studies.
Patterns of offending by men and by women are notable both for their similarities and for their differences. Both men and women are more heavily involved in minor property and substance abuse offenses than in serious crimes like robbery or murder. However, men offend at much higher rates than women for all crime categories except prostitution. This gender gap in crime is greatest for serious crime and least for mild forms of law-breaking such as minor property crimes. You can also draw upon offender information from the National Crime Victimization Survey, and on findings from surveys on self-reported crime, from studies of criminal careers and delinquent gangs, and from case studies that provide a wealth of qualitative data on the differing contexts of male and female offending.
There have been many sociological arguments put forward to explain the why women are underrepresented in crime. In 1977 carol smart argues that follow reasons to help explain why women tend to be invisible in criminology. She argued that sociology tend to be dominated by men a. She went on to argue that unlike men, women tend to commit new crimes and this crimes that women commit tend to be trivial. This supported by evidence from the official statistics that indicate that women in all group appear to commit far less crimes than men. However Pollack argued that official statistics on gender and crime underestimate female criminality. He argued that female crime tend to go unreported, he argued that this is because argued that female offenders are treated more leniently because male offences tend to adopt a ‘chivalrous’ attitude