Nitish Banka

    • The One Sided Philosophy of Female Criminality-I

    Women love flowers, women love chocolates, women love all that is pink. Women are kind, caring and gentle. Women are nice and affectionate. This is the hypothesis of my research. The research question is; what brings women to criminality? Here are some very interesting philosophies about the female criminality which appealed the woman in me.

    The theories on female criminality are divided into two broad categories: classical and contemporary. The classical philosophy deals with the biological and the psychological factors and the contemporary theory limits its focus to the sociological factors. According to Lombroso, women are jealous and revengeful. These set the criminality in a woman. He also stated that the female characteristics contributed to make women criminals more ‘terrible’ than males. Thomas, the other philosopher believed that women had varieties of love, and also, variety of desires of love. This desire is more intense than that in males and when they fail to feel to sense the same intense in response; this switches on their criminality. He basically pointed towards the ‘crimes’ of sexual desire.

    Pollock marked about the under reporting of female criminals. He stressed on the fact that the crimes committed by women are not much detected as compared to men and along with this; the police and the court are lenient towards them. Only the few criminals who are actually the worst of all the offenders are subjected to harsh handlings. Another group of philosophers believed that women are mere instigators in crime. They seldom form the class of perpetrators. Alder held that criminality in females was a result of equality between the two genders. He also stated that criminality in females is a result of women liberation movements. The more they desire to compete with men, the more criminal intent they develop.

    When I went through these one sided philosophies, I arrived at a conclusion that I am an inborn criminal. Jealousy and retaliation are the gems of my personality. Even, I crave for love and so do, every woman. In this societal setup every female battles to seek equality with her male counterpart. I am no different. The one sided research work of this philosophy has hence held me guilty.