Feminist Theories of Crime and Deviance - Adler | A Level Sociology

welcome to this tutor to you sociology topic video looking at feminist theories of crime and deviance focusing on the work of frieda adler and the liberation thesis up until the late 1960s criminology was perceived to be a mail stream area of study that is male sociologists studying male criminality there was limited discussion of female

criminality and where there was such as the work of cesare lombroso it was centered on biological rather than social differences between males and females however with rising female criminality in the late 1950s and the wide array of social changes throughout the 1960s and 1970s there was a growth in female criminology alongside the rise of second wave feminism

feminist approaches have contributed greatly to our understanding of crime and deviance in the years since but one of the first theories to explore rising female criminality was freed at adler's liberation thesis in 1975 prior to the rise of second wave feminism informal and formal social controls on women limited their criminality one of the

ways this was achieved was through social expectations of women to remain within the domestic sphere that is to act as a wife and mother performing unpaid domestic labor for the family and providing emotional support now this limited both their legitimate opportunities that is gaining employment and having a career and their illegitimate opportunities

that is the ability to commit criminal and deviant behaviors now this changed with the social changes that occurred in the post-world war ii era the employment of females increased as social attitudes to women's employment changed as women became more vocal in expressing their dissatisfaction with being cast into a stereotypical role of housewife