Feminist Approaches to Victimology

Abstract

Understanding the plight of victims has long been a focus of feminists in the field of criminology. Feminists have made a number of contributions to the study of victims, and here we highlight the contributions that coalesce around three central themes: (1) the gendered nature of criminal victimisation, (2) the relationship between women’s victimisation and offending and (3) violent victimisation of women (and threat of victimisation) as a means of informal social control. In this chapter, the authors trace the development of these themes, highlighting both early feminist work and modern instantiations, paying particular attention to how theoretical developments in the field of feminist victimology have contributed to the understanding of these themes. The authors conclude by discussing the contested nature of ‘feminist victimology’, examining whether such a thing can exist given the androcentric foundations on which the broader field of victimology is based.

Citation

Clay-Warner, J. and Edgemon, T.G. (2020), "Feminist Approaches to Victimology", 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. 35-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-955-720201005