The Continuing Myth of the Violent Female Offender.

The article stresses that media and researchers are promoting the notion that women are becoming more violent than before by interchanging violence with aggression. There are two central themes in the literature concerning women's violence. The first theme is that women are as violent as men. One of the most common ways to prove that women are as aggressive as men is to enlarge the definition of aggression to include such behaviors as gossiping and stealing boyfriends. The second prevalent theme is that if women were less violent in the past, then at least they are becoming more violent. There is a perception of an increasing number of women criminals in Great Britain. These are young women who espouse and live a lower middle-class lifestyle that values violence and toughness. There are two major types of sources used when exploring the violent criminality of women. The first type of data comes from officials' sources. The second type of source is a single jurisdiction source wherein a researcher conducts a detailed analysis of the arrest records.