Women, Crime and an Informal Economy: Female Offending and Crime for Gain

This paper is about women, crime and rationality, the context is the criminal economy. The discussion seeks to critique and build upon the literature on the informal and criminal economies. In particular the chapter will begin to explore women's contribution to these economies. Definitions of the criminal economy are loosely formulated, tend to be simplistic, mechanistic and limited to studies of male offenders, professional and white collar criminals. These definitions are scrutinized to discover whether they may be extended to include activities in which women engage or whether different definitions from a feminist perspective may be more helpful. Three important themes which the paper will address are: first, women and economic crimes, second, generalisability and 'doing genderdoing difference' and third, rational choice, in particular, rationality and the lure and attraction of unlawful opportunities for women.