Are women more law-abiding then men? Why or why not?
By Tayla Batten

In most societies of the past and present, women are perceived as being inferior and passive. Women are biologically seen to be emotional, docile, nurturing and quite dependent on the male partner, while men are seen to be aggressive, arrogant, dominant and independent. (Lombroso, 1998) Cesare Lombroso, one of the earliest theorists of female criminality based his theory purely on a strict biological point of view. Lombroso stated “females are less inclined to commit crimes because women are more conservative, they are less exposed to society since their duties are mainly in the household, which gives them less of an opportunity to commit crimes, and because their brains are less developed than males, which causes them to act more primitive.” (Lombroso, 1998) When a female commits a violent and brutal crime, it come’s as a shock to society because women are not expected to be criminals, and therefore they are labeled ‘mad not bad’ according to Lee Bryant, author of ‘Feminism and Crime’. Lee Bryant argues, “The perception that women may be ‘mad’ because they ‘dared to go against their natural biological givens such as ‘passivity’ and a ‘weakness of compliance’ ‘appears to originate from the view that women who conform as pure, obedient daughters, wives and mothers benefit society and men”. (Bryant, 2000) Lombroso’s theory looks at that characteristics of the offender and determines that the female offender often is masculine and her skull is more like a man’s size rather than normal women’s skull size. This essay looks at three key features that distinguish the facts that women are more law-aiding then men by looking at the key characteristic of female offenders, specifically from the earliest theorist of female criminality Cesare Lombroso, statistics in regards to the overall population of