Female Aggression

"This book represents a truly fantastic addition to the literature on female aggression. It covers a whole host of aggressive crimes from a very thoughtful and gender-informed perspective. This book is an absolute necessity for professionals working with or researching women who have offended. I've no doubt that this book is a landmark text which will springboard important future research and practice in this area."
--Professor Theresa A. Gannon, University of Kent
 
"Helen Gavin and Theresa Porter have written a brave and uncompromising book, one that is scholarly, firm, careful, and a bit daunting. They challenge our most cherished feminist beliefs about women as the more compassionate, cooperative, 'maternal,' and non-violent of the genders. Clearly, they are not only writing about teenage 'mean girls'; the authors are weighing the research on women, including mothers, who abuse and neglect children; batter their partners, both male and female, sexually assault (or join in group sexual assaults) of women, kill their babies, kill other adults. They refuse to minimize the importance of female aggression only because men are more violent and, to their credit, Gavin and Porter critique others for doing so. And why? Because the authors have treatment goals in mind, ways of helping anti-social mothers and/or of rescuing their children. An entirely laudable endeavor. This is a serious work and demands that the reader drop many preconceptions in order to benefit from the material presented. Brava for taking on this painful, difficult and important subject."
--Phyllis Chesler, Author of Women and Madness and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman