Hi In addition to points already made about crime statistics, most observational and laboratory studies of physical aggression also show marked gender differences. Average effect size is about .5 in various meta-analyses.
Nonetheless, it is certainly possible that biases could result in violence perpetrated by women being less likely to be acknowledged by society, including police and the courts. It appears likely, for example, that the "effect size" for gender differences in violent crimes is much greater than the male propensity for violence in the general population. Is this due to bias? Or is the difference between general and criminal violence accounted for by the fact that modest average differences can result in huge disparities between populations in the extremes of the distribution, assuming that violent crimes represent the extreme upper end of propensity to violence? Given the magnitude of the gender difference in criminal violence I would expect this to not be the whole story. I just did a simple simulation of 500,000 males and 500,000 females with a .5 sd difference. You have to go to an extremely high cut-off of 4sd above female mean to get proportions like those in the crime statistics; the number of males >4 sd was 168 and the number of females was 19 (females only 10%). If you add greater variability for males, as is done in some domains, then imbalance becomes quite marked at lower levels. Given stereotypes of males and females, it would perhaps be surprising if there was not some resistance that needed to be overcome to recognize vile acts performed by women. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> <sbl...@ubishops.ca> 16-Sep-09 9:17:20 PM >>> MIke Smith asked whether there was a bias in the legal system that women were less capable of vile acts than men. I said "Because it's true?" On 16 Sep 2009 at 21:27, Don Allen wrote: > > Well no actually. In a previous life I spent about ten years as a > prison psychologist. I worked in both male and female federal > and provincial correctional centres so I have a fair amount of > experience to draw on. I can assure you that women have > committed acts that were as heinous (and more) than did their > male counterparts. Interesting, but not the point, or perhaps I misunderstood the question. Women are certainly capable of exceedingly vile acts. If the question is merely whether somewhere there is at least one woman who has committed a crime as savage as any committed by a man, well, sure. But that's not very useful information. But the probability that the perpetrator of a horrendous act will turn out to be a male rather than a female is very high. Physical violence is as common as dirt for males; for women, not so much (wish I had some statistics to quote, but I don't, but I'm sure they exist). Our prison population of violent offenders is mostly male, and I doubt the reason is an unfair legal system (more below). Don's mistake may be in thinking that his observations on a prison population are representative of the general population; they're not, of course (isn't this the availability heuristic?). If you only look underwater, you'd tend to think most life forms were fish. OK, a quick google turns up a New Zealand review of the evidence: /www.nzfvc.org.nz/PublicationDetails.aspx?publication=14144 They say, with references: "Men*s rates of general violence consistently exceed those of women by a large margin. International research suggests this holds true across countries, across time and in relation to different forms of violence. Despite the differential rates of reporting and recording violence in different countries and sectors of society, most reported violence is perpetrated by men. The only exceptions to this are closer parity (though not equality) between African American men and women, and child abuse in the home" "The authors of an international literature review concluded that women committed far less violent crime than men, that violent offending constituted only a small percentage of women*s offending, and that the types of offences committed by women tended to be less serious than those committed by men" Of course, all of this may be explained by a world-wide bias in justice systems. Seems far-fetched to me, especially as legal systems are dominated by men, and so would be more likely to have a bias in favour of their own sex. Unless someone can show otherwise, the statistics appear to be unassailable facts. But the interpretation that they are caused by a world-wide legal conspiracy against men requires a bit of evidence. no? (and thanks, Martin B., for your post along the same lines, which arrived just as I was polishing this up). Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
