The feminization of the female offender: Israeli newspaper reports of crimes committed by women

This paper examines the construction of the female offender's image through an analysis of reports published in one major Israeli newspaper over the period 1987-1989 and in another during 1994. The study reveals that, while describing the offense or the formal social response to it, reporters tended to emphasize a whole range of details not directly connected to the crime or the punishment. These indirect details feminize the female offender, highlighting her physical appearance, her behavior, and her performance as mother, wife and housewife, even when she committed serious crimes. An offense perpetrated by a woman was portrayed as a single, incidental act. The numerous stereotypical descriptions minimize her role as a criminal, so that her master status is of womanhood rather than criminality. These descriptions remove the female offender from the public sphere, keeping her in the private arena and thereby maintaining the existing gendered social order.