Abstract
The chapter looks at the gendered nature of offending and victimisation by examining the profiles of female victims and offenders and their experiences within the criminal justice system. It re-examines the victim vs offender dichotomy through a vicious pathway of victimisation and offending. In reviewing gender disparities in criminal justice processing and sentencing, and the challenges of meeting gender based needs in custodial and non-custodial settings, it calls for a radical reform of current policies and practices for revisiting and subverting patriarchal justice. The analysis is placed within the context of gender stereotyping dichotomised by the madonna-whore myth. A mythical stereotype which, like all other stereotypes, needs deconstruction!
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Vella, M.G. (2023). Madonnas-Whores. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_387-1
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