Gender and Crime: Sex-Role Theory

Last Updated on September 18, 2026 by Karl Thompson

Sex Role Theory explains gendered differences in offending in terms of the differences in gender socialization, gender roles and gendered identities. The norms and values associated with traditional femininity are not conducive to crime, while the norms and values associated with traditional masculinity are more likely to lead to crime.

Female socialisation, traditional female roles and low female crime rates

Parsons and Bales (1955), in Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, argued that because females carry out the ‘expressive role’ in the family which involved them caring for their children and looking after the emotional needs of their husbands, that girls grew up to internalise such values as caring and empathy, both of which reduce the likelihood of someone committing crime simply because a caring and empathetic attitude towards others means you are less likely to harm others.

The child caring role also means that women are also effectively more attached to their families and wider communities than men – It is traditionally women who keep in touch with relatives and get to know their children’s friends families and thus bond local communities together. In terms of bonds of attachment theory, part of Travis Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory, women are thus more attached to wider society and thus less likely to commit crime.

Similarly, because traditional female gender roles involve women being busier than men, especially since they have taken on the ‘dual burden’ and ‘triple shift’ in recent decades, this reduces the opportunities for women to commit crime.

Masculinity and the high male crime rate

It has long been theorized that the early socialization of boys into traditional masculine identities is at least partly responsible for the higher male crime rate. Boys are encouraged to be tough and to take risks, while girls’ behaviour is more closely supervised from an early age, and those differences carry through into adult offending.

Talcott Parsons (1947), in ‘Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World’ (Psychiatry, 10(2)), argued that masculinity was then internalized during adolescence, which led to boys engaging in more delinquent behavior than girls, and sub cultural theorists Cloward and Ohlin (1960) proposed that in gangs, younger members learn through contact with older males that traits such as toughness and dominance are necessary in order to assert a strong masculine reputation.

Albert Cohen (1955), in Delinquent Boys, applied the same assumptions to girls. He argued that girls did not form delinquent subcultures because their status came through their relationships with males rather than through achievement, so they did not experience the same status frustration as boys. Female delinquency, on his account, was mostly ‘sexual delinquency’. The argument says as much about the gender expectations of the 1950s as it does about girls.

Sex-role theory and biological explanations

Sex-role theory is usually presented as the social alternative to biological theories of female crime: it is socialisation, not hormones, that makes the difference.

Critics argue it doesn’t fully escape biology, however. Parsons assumes that women are naturally suited to the expressive role because they bear and nurture children, so a biological assumption sits underneath the social explanation.

Evaluations of Sex-Role Theory

One possible criticism of sex-role theory is that it is less relevant in today’s society because of the decline of traditional gender roles.

The theory is based in the functionalist theory of the family, so many of the same criticisms apply here.

Carol Smart (1976), in Women, Crime and Criminology, attacked the whole existing body of work on female criminality, including the sex-role tradition, for resting on biological and stereotypical assumptions about women and for ignoring women’s position in the social structure. Frances Heidensohn (1985) develops this into a control theory of female conformity: women commit less crime because men control them at home, in public and at work, not simply because they have been socialised to be caring.

James Messerschmidt (1993) criticises sex-role theory for treating socialisation as something done to people. In his view, men actively ‘accomplish’ masculinity in different ways depending on their situation, which explains why most men don’t commit crime and why those who do commit very different kinds of crime. See Messerschmidt’s masculinities and crime.

The theory is deterministic. It struggles to explain why some women do commit crime, or why the female share of offending has changed over time, which is the focus of the liberation thesis.

Sources

Cloward, R. and Ohlin, L. (1960) Delinquency and Opportunity.

Cohen, A. (1955) Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang.

Hirschi, T. (1969) Causes of Delinquency.

Parsons, T. (1947) ‘Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World’, Psychiatry, 10(2), pp. 167–181.

Parsons, T. and Bales, R. F. (1955) Family, Socialization and Interaction Process.

Smart, C. (1976) Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique.

Signposting

This post has been written primarily for students of A-level sociology. The gender and crime topic is studied as part of the second year crime and deviance compulsory module, usually taught in the second year.

For the patterns sex-role theory is trying to explain, see gender and crime statistics.

A related topic is Adler’s Liberation Thesis on the (Long Term) Increase in the Female Crime Rate.

Other explanations of gender and crime include the chivalry thesis, feminist perspectives on crime and Messerschmidt’s masculinities and crime.

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