Last Updated on September 19, 2026 by Karl Thompson
Do biological differences between men and women explain why women commit much less crime than men?
Biological Theories explain the higher rates of crime in terms of biological differences between males and females. The most obvious example of such a theory is that men have higher testosterone levels than women and thus have higher levels of aggression which is related to higher levels of violent crime.
Biological explanations are the oldest explanations of gender differences in crime. They are not a sociological perspective, but you need to know them because most sociological theories of gender and crime, such as sex-role theory, were developed as a reaction against them.
Lombroso and Ferrero: The Female Offender
The earliest biological theory of female crime comes from Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero, whose book The Female Offender was published in English in 1895. They argued that women were naturally more passive than men and less evolved, which is why fewer women committed crime. The few women who did were seen as biologically abnormal, with ‘masculine’ physical characteristics.
Feminist criminologists have since pointed to Lombroso and Ferrero as an example of how sexist assumptions shaped early criminology.
Otto Pollak (1950) also relied on biology. He argued that women were good at hiding their crimes because they were used to concealing pain and discomfort during menstruation. See the chivalry thesis for more on Pollak.
Testosterone and male offending
Dabbs and Morris (1990) analysed archive records for 4,462 US military veterans. Higher testosterone went with a range of antisocial behaviours, from trouble at school to drug use. The relationship was much weaker among men of higher socioeconomic status, which matters: the same hormone level went with different behaviour depending on a man’s resources and background.
Dabbs et al. (1987) measured testosterone in the saliva of 89 young male prisoners. Those with higher levels had more often been convicted of violent offences, and the pattern was sharpest at the extremes: 10 of the 11 men with the highest levels had committed violent crimes, compared with 2 of the 11 with the lowest.
Dabbs et al. (1995) repeated the exercise with 692 adult male prisoners. Men convicted of sexual and violent offences had higher levels than men convicted of burglary, theft and drug offences, and those with higher levels broke more prison rules, particularly rules involving open confrontation.
Dabbs et al. (1988) ran the same study on 84 female prisoners. Testosterone was highest among the women convicted of unprovoked violence and lowest among those who had reacted violently after being attacked. Whatever testosterone is doing, it is not only doing it to men.
Evaluations of Biological Theories…
- There is no difference between non-criminals and men with convictions for non-violent crimes.
- Finding a high correlation between violent men in prison, does not distinguish between cause and effect. Prison, is not the safest place to be, so raised testosterone might have been an effect of being in prison. It is equally likely that a violent lifestyle leads to high testosterone level.
- In general the studies on testosterone and human aggression reach the conclusion that testosterone is involved but is not a prime factor.
- Biology can’t explain change over time. The female share of people dealt with by the criminal justice system in England and Wales fell from 26% in 2017–2019 to 22% in 2023 (Ministry of Justice, 2025). Hormone levels don’t change that quickly, so social factors must be doing at least some of the work. See gender and crime statistics.
- Dabbs’s own findings on women cut both ways. If high testosterone is linked to violence in women too, biology may explain differences within each sex as much as the gap between them.
- Most men don’t commit violent crime despite having higher testosterone than women. Messerschmidt argues that the differences between men are better explained by the different ways they ‘accomplish’ masculinity.
- Feminists argue that biological theories are deterministic and sexist. They treat female offenders as abnormal and ignore the patriarchal controls on women’s behaviour which Heidensohn emphasises.
Signposting
This post is part of the gender and crime topic in the crime and deviance module, usually taught in the second year of A-level sociology.
Other explanations of gender differences in offending include sex-role theory, Adler’s liberation thesis, the chivalry thesis, feminist perspectives on crime and Messerschmidt’s masculinities and crime.
Sources
Dabbs, J. and Morris, R. (1990) Testosterone, social class, and antisocial behavior in a sample of 4,462 men. Psychological Science, 1(3).
Dabbs, J. et al. (1995) Testosterone, crime, and misbehavior among 692 male prison inmates. Personality and Individual Differences, 18(5).
Ministry of Justice (2025) Women and the Criminal Justice System 2023.