Feminist Perspectives in Criminology: Early Feminist Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the early history of feminist explorations in criminology in the UK in particular, but with reference to developments elsewhere. The chapter discusses the achievements of early feminist perspectives in criminology and assesses their impact in terms of ‘transforming and transgressing’ the criminological enterprise. In particular, the author focuses on the case for transformations in traditional research methodologies and looks at the different ways in which feminist writers in criminology grappled with the question of how to produce good quality knowledge. The chapter takes a chronological approach, identifying developments pre-1960s in a phase which might be described as an ‘awakening’ and then describing initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s. The discovery that ‘woman’ was a conceptual term which could be incorporated into the criminological framework really took off in the 1970s with the publication of Carol Smart’s pioneering work. Notwithstanding faster developments in other disciplines, slowly, mainstream criminology took stock of feminism’s early claims.

Citation

Gelsthorpe, L. (2020), "Feminist Perspectives in Criminology: Early Feminist Perspectives", Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., Maher, J. and McCulloch, J. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of Feminism, Criminology and Social Change (Emerald Studies in Criminology, Feminism and Social Change), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 17-33. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-955-720201004