Adler’s Liberation Thesis: Women’s Liberation and Female Crime

Last Updated on September 19, 2026 by Karl Thompson

The liberation thesis is the classic liberal feminist explanation for the long-term increase in female crime in the later half of the 20th Century. It argues that the female crime rate has increased in line with female liberation.

Freda Adler: Sisters in Crime (1975)

Freda Adler proposed that the emancipation of women and increased economic opportunities for women led to an increase in the female crime rate. Her basic idea was that as women attain social positions similar to men, and as the employment patterns of men and women become similar, so too do their related crimes. Adler claimed to have found a cross-national correlation between levels of women’s economic freedoms and their crime levels.

Adler argued that liberation changed women’s behaviour as well as their opportunities. As women took on traditionally male roles they also adopted more ‘masculine’ attitudes, including a greater willingness to take risks and to use violence. On this view we should expect women to commit more of the same kinds of crime that men commit. [VERIFY: against the source list.]

Rita Simon: opportunity rather than aggression

Rita Simon, also writing in 1975 (Women and Crime), agreed that liberation would increase female crime, but for a different reason. For Simon, the change was about opportunity. As more women entered paid work, they gained more chances to commit workplace crimes such as theft from employers and fraud. She did not expect women to become more violent.

The liberation thesis today

The liberation thesis was a response to rising recorded female crime from the 1960s onwards. More recent figures don’t obviously fit it. The female share of people formally dealt with by the criminal justice system in England and Wales fell from 26% in 2017–2019 to 22% in 2023, even though women’s employment and independence have continued to grow (Ministry of Justice, Women and the Criminal Justice System 2023, published January 2025). Women also still commit far fewer serious and violent offences than men: in 2023 men accounted for 84% of prosecutions for violence against the person. See gender and crime statistics for the full picture.

Evaluations of the liberation thesis

One evaluation of Adler is found in the Marginalisation Thesis which states that women’s Liberation has indeed led to increased job opportunities for women, but women are much more likely to be employed in part-time and/or low paid jobs which are unrewarding and insecure. This has led to the creation of a ‘pink collar ghetto’ – with women suffering higher levels of economic deprivation than men.

NB The Marginalisation thesis might not actually contradict Adler’s Liberation Thesis – if you apply Strain Theory.

Steven Box and Chris Hale (1983) found no evidence that women’s liberation caused the rise in female crime in England and Wales. They linked the increase to women’s economic marginalisation, and to a greater willingness by the police to prosecute women.

Meda Chesney-Lind argues that the typical female offender is poor and working-class, not a liberated career woman. Most female crime is minor property crime, such as shoplifting, linked to poverty rather than to new-found freedom.

Pat Carlen (1985) found the same thing in her interviews with female offenders, most of whom had always been poor. See feminist perspectives on crime.

The official statistics may not show a real rise in female offending at all. Changes in the way the police and courts respond to women could explain some of the increase. This links to the debate over the chivalry thesis.

Signposting

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

Other explanations of gender differences in offending include sex-role theory, biological theories, feminist perspectives on crime and Messerschmidt’s masculinities and crime.