Page 29 - June July 2017

Female Criminality in India
FEMALE CRIMINALITY: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

The early researchers attributed female criminality to biological or sociological antecedents. Although crime, as
a behavioral or social problem, is complicated and not easily understood, the criminality of women is seen more
complicated, less understood and subject to easy control. Women are considered as turning crime as a perver-
sion of feminine role whether their causes are biological, psychological, social or environmental.

C Innate Criminals/ Biological Viewpoint

A
P Ceasar Lombroso’s contribution is considered as the beginning of scientific study on female crime. He viewed,
“female deviance as rooted in the biological make up or as inherent feature of the female species”. He observed
I female criminals to be more terrible than the male criminals because her cruelty was much more ‘refined’ and
T diabolic. Lombroso thought women shared many traits with children and they were morally deficient and their
A lack of intelligence was the reason of their relatively small participation in crime

L In nineteenth century, Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) wrote a book called, “The Female Offender”. Their theories
were based on atavism; a belief that all individuals displaying anti-social behavior were biological throwbacks.

P The born female criminal was considered to have the criminal qualities of men and the worst qualities of wom-
en.
U
N Otta Pollak explained the influence of hormonal changes over menstruation, pregnancy and menopausal stage.

I He said that in the pregnancy and menopausal phase, the psychological characteristics such as emotional chang-
es of moods, abnormal craving and impulses and temporary impairment of consciousness point in the direction
S of criminal causation.

H
M But, in the present age of information technology and impersonal relations at the threshold of the 21st century,
such theories seem to be unreasonable and unscientific. All these theories depict crime as an inherent human
E trait which does not amply describe the phenomenal variations in the nature of crime being committed these

N days, when crime has risen upto the status of career for many, involving highly advanced professional skills and
T typical scientific techniques.

Psychological Viewpoint

Freudian hypotheses hold that women who are not passive and content with their traditional roles as mothers
and wives are maladjusted. Women who accept traditional roles as mothers and wives are “adjusted ones” and
are different from the maladjusted women, who refuse or fail to internalize the values associated with the role in
the society. He also said that women who do not internalize the traditional roles and values of the society, attend
institutions for higher learning, take up professions outside the four walls of their homes, join feminist move-
ments or commit crimes. He maintained that all females experience some degree of jealousy of males but ‘nor-
mal’ women manage to accept and internalize societal definitions of femininity, centered around single-minded
interest in motherhood.

The limitations of an attempt to explain crime strictly in psychological terms are partly conceptual which fail to
appreciate the significance of social factors in generating the deviant behavior.

Sociological Viewpoint

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