Violent Crime - Gender Differences In Violent Crime Offenders

Violent crime is very much the domain of men. Men are responsible for most criminal acts and they are the victims more often than women. This is true even in the acutely tragic cases of the murder of a child. Of murder victims aged 5 years or under, most are males and most are killed by a man.

The graph presents homicide offender rates for men and women. Rates charted are the number of homicide offenders, by gender and year, for every 100,000 people in the population. Men murder on average 8 times for every murder perpetrated by a woman. The homicide rate "gender gap" hasn't closed over the years. In fact it has increased, and this despite a decline in number of homicides. In 1976 the ratio of male murderers to female was 5 to 1. By 1999 it was 9 to1 and at its peak, in 1995, it reached a surprisingly high 11 to 1 ratio.

Homicides can be broken into four categories by gender of offender and victim. Here is the breakdown for murders committed in 1999:

Male offender /Male victim	65.1%
Male offender /Female victim	22.4%
Female offender /Male victim	10.1%
Female offender /Female victim	2.4%

Murder is, of course, the most extreme of violent crimes. Is the gender gap for all violent crimes as large as it is for homicide? No. Based on the average annual number of offenders reported by victims during the five-year period 1993-97, the following gender breakdown by type of violent crime was found.

Average Number of Violent Crimes Committed Annually, 1993-1997

Offenses	Female Offenders	Male Offenders	Women as % of Violent Offenders
Homicide	Total	1,468	14,196	9
Sexual Assault	10,000	442,000	2
Armed Robbery	157,000	2,051,000	7
Aggravated Assault	435,000	3,419,000	11
Simple Assault	1,533,000	7,187,000	18
Total	2,136,468	13,113,196	14

With more than 2.1 million violent offenses committed annually by women, one must not confuse a lower rate of violent activity with no violent criminal activity. However, women do commit violent acts at a substantially lower rate than their male counterparts, once for every 7.15 times that a man commits a violent act.

Female offenders differ from male offenders in a number of ways. Women are less likely than men to use a weapon such as a blunt object, knife, or firearm in the commission of a crime: 15% of women do while 28% of men do. Women are more likely than men to have had a prior relationship with their victims, 62% versus 36%.

In the case of murder, the offender gender difference is even greater. Of the 59,996 murders committed by women between 1976 and 1997 just over 60% of the victims were intimates or family members of the murderess. Among the 395,446 victims murdered by men during this period, only 20% were family members or intimates. Of course, that means that about 36,000 people lost their lives at the hands of a female family member and about 80,000 were killed by a male family member.

In conclusion, women are less violent than men. When they do act violently, they lash out against those they know and either love or once loved.

Victimization rates by gender is our next subject.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Homicide Trends in the U.S.," a series of statistical tables and graphs published online, January 2001, available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm. Greenfeld, Lawrence A. and Tracy L. Snell, Women Offenders, December 1999, pp. 1, 2, 4.