Last Updated on July 1, 2025 by Karl Thompson
The Chivalry Thesis states that women are let of relatively lightly by predominately male police and judges. It is one explanation for why official statistics on gender and crime report so few female crimes compared to male crimes. It could also explain why there are so few female prisoners than male prisoners.
The key idea of the Chivalry Thesis is male police are less likely to arrest and prosecute female criminals compared to male criminals, even if they are caught committing similar crimes. Similarly, male judges will give female prisoners more lenient sentences compared to males for the same offences.
The first person to coin the term ‘Chivalry Thesis’ was Otto Pollak, in 1950.
Otto Pollak: The ‘masked’ female offender
Writing in 1950, Otto Pollack argued official statistics on gender and crime were misleading. He claimed statistics underestimated the extent of female criminality.
Pollak analyzed statistics from several countries and claimed to have identified certain crimes that are usually committed by women but which tend to go unreported.
- nearly all offences of shoplifting and criminal abortions were carried out by women. Both of these often went unreported to authorities.
- Female domestic servants were in a position to commit theft from properties, which often went unnoticed.
- In the case of prostitution Pollak saw the female prostitutes as committing criminal acts, but not the male clients.
- Women’s domestic roles gave them opportunities to get away with poising their husbands and abusing their children.
Pollack argued the police, magistrates and other law enforcement officials tended to be men. Brought up to be chivalrous, they were usually lenient with female offenders so fewer women appeared in the statistics.
However, according to Pollack, the chivalry thesis only explained a small part of the low female offending rate in the official statistics. A more significant factor was that women were very good at hiding their crimes. This Pollak attributed to their biology. Women were good at deceiving men because they were used to hiding pain and discomfort which due when menstruating.
Criticisms of Pollack
Heidenshon (1985) criticises Pollak’s work for being based on unfounded, stereotypical assumptions about women.
Stephen Jones (2009) pointed out that Pollak provided a lack of evidence to back up his points. He had no actual evidence that female domestic servants committed crimes against their employers, for example.
Despite the obvious sexism in Pollak’s theory, he is important as he was the first person to raise the possibility of ‘chivalry’ being a factor in explaining gender differences in the official crime statistics. The Chivalry Thesis has been taken a little more seriously by criminologists!
Evidence supporting the Chivalry Thesis
Historical self report studies have shown a difference in the reported rates of offending by males and females. These differences are NOT as great as the imprisonment statistics.
For example the 2006 Offending, Crime and Justice survey 12% of males admitted to committing more serious offences compared to 8% of females.
Criminal Justice Statistics from 2021 suggest that women are treated slightly more leniently by the courts compared to men.
When offence type is controlled for women receive 4.5 years less than men.
However this does not factor in the precise details of the offence, plea or previous convictions.
Evidence against the Chivalry Thesis
The latest trends from Women in the Criminal Justice System shows that women are receiving more harsher punishments compared to previous years. Thus catching up with men.
This could be linked to the fact that there are proportionally more female police and judges today than ever before.
Feminist criminologists argue that far from being chivalrous towards women the criminal justice system is in some ways biased against women.
Signposting
This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module, usually taught as part of second year A-Level sociology.