Are "Sisters in Crime" Finally Being Booked? The Coverage of Women and Crime in Journals and Textbooks

Abstract

Much recent criticism of criminology textbooks has centered on the lack of space devoted to women, both as criminals and as victims of (see Wilson and Rigsby 1975; Balkan et al. 1980; Gibbons 1982; Schur 1984). Few authors, however, provide substantial empirical evidence to support their criticisms; Balkan et al. (1980, p. iii), for example, simply assert that material on . .. has been neglected in conventional [criminology] texts. Gibbons (1982, p. 374) merely cites seven texts published between 1964 and 1978 which he claims generally overlook the subject. The most thorough investigation of the issue is an article by Wilson and Rigsby (1975) which examines the actual page coverage of women and crime topics in 17 criminology texts published from 1952 to 1974. Wilson and Rigsby conclude that criminology texts largely omit and topics; they attribute this omission to the dearth of empirical research on and crime. This paper reexamines Wilson and Rigsby's findings by comparing coverage of and in 1) sociology journals published from 1956 to 1960 with coverage in journals published from 1976 to 1980; and 2) coverage in criminology texts published from 1956 to 1965 with coverage in texts published from 1976 to 1985. The data show that despite impressive recent increases in the publication of research on and crime, criminology texts show little improvement in the coverage of and crime. I conclude by discussing several possible reasons why many authors of criminology textbooks ignore these topics.

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