# Is there any crime or vice women do more often than men? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 15, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938 "2015-08-15T20:10:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/21 "2015-08-16T01:00:07Z")
Maybe this is too hyper-specific, but what about people arrested for carrying Munchausen syndrome by proxy to a criminal extreme? Wiki notes that Munchausen syndrome (non proxy) is more prevalent in men so probably not. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/22 "2015-08-16T01:03:11Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > No, that’s only true of the very broad categories in that specific document. In fact the US Bureau of Justice Statistics states that “[In murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55% of killers](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/mf.pdf)” > > Men are more likely to kill children not their own. Women are more likely to kill their own children. Your cite is from 1994, so I checked to see if I could find a more recent report. [This one](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvs03.pdf) is from 2005 and is the most recent one I could find that focused on family violence. (The full report on family violence is split up into different PDFs, which can all be found [here](http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=828).) If I’m reading table 3.2 correctly, in murders where the victim was the son or daughter of their killer, 61.8% of the offenders were men and 38.1% were women. I’d be surprised if things really changed that much in a relatively short period of time, though. Something may be different in the way things were categorized in the 1994 and 2005 reports. I couldn’t find numbers on this with a quick search, but it wouldn’t surprise me if babies in specific were more likely to be murdered by their mothers than by their fathers, if only because in most families the mother would probably be alone with the baby far more often. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/23 "2015-08-16T02:44:30Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > > [@Jragon](#): > > > > I’m curious how much of it is “women tend to abuse children more” vs “women tend to have custody, and thus opportunity to abuse children more”. > > How are they in any way different? > > This seems like you’re trying to minimise the fact that women commit serious crimes against children. > > Would you also say “I’m curious how much of it is ‘men tend to rape women more’ vs ‘men tend are stronger, and thus opportunity to rape women more’.” > > If you wouldn’t say that, then why apply that sort of minimisation to women? Women are overwhelmingly responsible for abuse of children, that’s a fact. > > I don’t understand what you could mean by “how much of it” is women abusing children. \*All \*of it is women abusing children. None of it is anything else. Is there some doubt in your mind that some of that 40% isn’t “really” women abusing children? Do you harbour the same doubts about “how much” of men raping women is actually rape? I think you’ve misunderstood **Jragon** ’s point. Or at least your understanding doesn’t agree with mine. I interpret him to have been asking: We have a stat that X% of women kill children whereas Y% of men do. Taking those values as given, is there a difference in the percentage of women, and men, who have exposure to children, perhaps as caregivers, or a difference in total lifetime child-exposure hours? If there is such a gender difference in exposure to children, then the original statistic is properly a Bayesian consequence of two factors: (inherent likelihood to kill in a one-off situation) \* (volume of exposure to opportunity & incitement to motive). As a matter of “common sense” (which admittedly often isn’t), there does seem to be a big difference in the second factor between men and women. If so, is that factor large enough to be the determiner of the aggregate difference? IOW, in isolation, given one adult dealing with one child one time, what can we conclude about the kid’s odds of surviving the encounter depending on the gender of the adult? e.g. using extreme made up numbers to demonstrate the point: over the last 10 years women were found to be 10% more likely to be child killers than men were. But women spend 3000 times as much time interacting with children vs. the time men spend. Therefore a particular women is about 1/300 as likely as a particular man is to kill a particular child on any given encounter. From a social perspective, this more detailed question isn’t operational. The amount of exposure to motive and opportunity probably isn’t something we can readily change through legislation or education. But IMO, it is an interesting question. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/24 "2015-08-16T03:13:08Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I think you’ve misunderstood **Jragon** ’s point. Or at least your understanding doesn’t agree with mine. > > I interpret him to have been asking: We have a stat that X% of women kill children whereas Y% of men do. Taking those values as given, is there a difference in the percentage of women, and men, who have exposure to children, perhaps as caregivers, or a difference in total lifetime child-exposure hours? > > If there is such a gender difference in exposure to children, then the original statistic is properly a Bayesian consequence of two factors: (inherent likelihood to kill in a one-off situation) \* (volume of exposure to opportunity & incitement to motive). > > As a matter of “common sense” (which admittedly often isn’t), there does seem to be a big difference in the second factor between men and women. If so, is that factor large enough to be the determiner of the aggregate difference? > > IOW, in isolation, given one adult dealing with one child one time, what can we conclude about the kid’s odds of surviving the encounter depending on the gender of the adult? e.g. using extreme made up numbers to demonstrate the point: over the last 10 years women were found to be 10% more likely to be child killers than men were. But women spend 3000 times as much time interacting with children vs. the time men spend. Therefore a particular women is about 1/300 as likely as a particular man is to kill a particular child on any given encounter. > From a social perspective, this more detailed question isn’t operational. The amount of exposure to motive and opportunity probably isn’t something we can readily change through legislation or education. > > But IMO, it is an interesting question. Yes, my question is, if you randomly select a parent/child pair, is gender relevant to the likelihood the child will be abused? Obviously we know a higher percentage of children are abused by women, but it’s an absolute percentage of cases. We **also** know that a higher percentage of children are taken care of primarily or entirely by women, so even if the likelihood is equal depending on sex or gender, the percentage would still be higher. So is the difference entirely (or mostly) accounted for by the fact that women have custody of children more, or that, even if the caretaking rates were equal, women would still abuse more given current rates. Edit: And it’s seriously just a matter of curiosity. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/25 "2015-08-16T14:22:19Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Yes, my question is, if you randomly select a parent/child pair, is gender relevant to the likelihood the child will be abused? Obviously we know a higher percentage of children are abused by women, but it’s an absolute percentage of cases. We **also** know that a higher percentage of children are taken care of primarily or entirely by women, so even if the likelihood is equal depending on sex or gender, the percentage would still be higher. > > So is the difference entirely (or mostly) accounted for by the fact that women have custody of children more, or that, even if the caretaking rates were equal, women would still abuse more given current rates. > > Edit: And it’s seriously just a matter of curiosity. I found the US Department of Health and Human Services[reports on child maltreatment](http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/research-data-technology/statistics-research/child-maltreatment) (the [American Humane Association site](http://www.americanhumane.org/children/stop-child-abuse/fact-sheets/child-abuse-and-neglect-statistics.html) linked to upthread cited the 2005 report for what percentage of child abuse is committed by the mother), and it looks like it’s child neglect in particular that skews heavily female. Since a child can only be neglected by someone responsible for their care then the greater number of women in caregiving roles must be a factor in this, but the report doesn’t provide enough information to tell whether it’s the _only_ factor. Some forms of child maltreatment where the perpetrator doesn’t have to be the child’s caregiver skew male. Table 5-C on page 65 of the [2013 report](http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2013.pdf) (page 79 of the PDF) has these numbers for selected maltreatment types by sex of perpetrator. The numbers don’t add up to 100% because in some cases the sex of the perpetrator was unknown. Medical neglect: 23.5% men / 76% women Neglect: 36.7% men / 62.7% women Physical abuse: 49.6% men / 48.2% women Psychological maltreatment: 60.7% men / 39% women Sexual abuse: 87.8% men / 8.6% women The actual number of cases for each of these are in the report, but neglect is by far the most common so the 62.7% of female perpetrators for that represents a big chunk of all child maltreatment. And because I foresee this being an issue, I want to be clear that neglect is not a trivial form of abuse. Children die from being neglected. “Of the children who died, 71.4 percent suffered neglect and 46.8 percent suffered physical abuse either exclusively or in combination with another maltreatment type.” (p. 56 of the report, p. 70 of the PDF) The table (5-3) for perpetrators by sex for child maltreatment in general is on p. 72 of the report, p. 86 of the PDF. It has a state by state breakdown, but for the US as a whole 45% of perpetrators are men and 53.9% are women. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/26 "2015-08-16T14:30:30Z")
How about library rule violations; late returns, specifically. That one’s mostly the ladies, right? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/27 "2015-08-16T14:47:36Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > How about library rule violations; late returns, specifically. That one’s mostly the ladies, right? Why do you say that? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/28 "2015-08-16T15:36:58Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > How about library rule violations; late returns, specifically. That one’s mostly the ladies, right? Not that I’ve noticed, but no library I’ve worked at kept track of that sort of information so I don’t really know. Anecdotally I’d say that patrons who cause serious problems are nearly always men, often homeless men. ---
**Author:** ![obbn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/29 "2015-08-16T15:45:19Z")
If recent news is any indication it seems that female teachers are more likely to boink their students. Seems there’s is 20 to 1 female vs male teachers getting arrested in the last few years. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/30 "2015-08-16T15:48:23Z")
Drug carriers/mules are often women, I don’t know about absolute figures… but certainly IME a very large portion have been women. They usually get caught later and get lesser punishments as well. Unless, its a female judge. Society tends not to criminalise deviant behaviour preferred by women as often. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/31 "2015-08-16T16:34:59Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > If recent news is any indication it seems that female teachers are more likely to boink their students. Seems there’s is 20 to 1 female vs male teachers getting arrested in the last few years. I suspect this has more to do with the gross, salacious way stories of female teachers who sexually abuse their students are treated in the media than the actual numbers. It was surprisingly difficult to find real statistics on this, but I did turn up this 2004 report prepared for the US Department of Education, [Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature](https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf). The section on sex of offenders begins on p. 24 of the document, p. 32 of the PDF. Seven studies on this subject are discussed, and while the results varied quite a bit all found more male than female offenders. (See Table 8 in the report.) Studies that looked at public records found far more male offenders (from 80% to 96%). In two studies that involved questioning students themselves, the numbers were closer. Both studies found that 57% of offenders were male and 43% female. FWIW these numbers do include school employees other than teachers, such as principals, counselors, and bus drivers. The previous section of the report indicates that most offenders are teachers and coaches, but I don’t see that it has a breakdown of teacher offenders by sex. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/32 "2015-08-16T16:46:14Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > If recent news is any indication it seems that female teachers are more likely to boink their students. Seems there’s is 20 to 1 female vs male teachers getting arrested in the last few years. IMO young men are more likely to want to boink older women than vice versa. Its impossible to prove because statistics only reflect reported cases. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/33 "2015-08-16T16:55:34Z")
Not a crime but arguably a vice: women are apparently more likely than men to have credit card debt. I vaguely remembered hearing this before, and a quick Google turned up a lot of stories on the subject. This is from a [US News and World Report blog post](http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2015/06/26/the-debt-gender-gap-how-women-can-close-it): > [@](#): > > A 2015 National Debt Relief survey of 1,107 adults with credit card debt revealed some interesting differences between the sexes. In the survey, the main difference between men and women was the amount of credit card debt they carried. For instance, 63 percent of women ages 18 to 24 carried some credit card debt, but only 36 percent of men in that age category had any debt. Similarly, 66 percent of women ages 55 to 64 carried credit card debt, but only 33 percent of men in that age bracket had credit card debt. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/34 "2015-08-16T17:11:59Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > IMO young men are more likely to want to boink older women than vice versa. Its impossible to prove because statistics only reflect reported cases. They may also be more likely to brag about it resulting in the public knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/35 "2015-08-16T17:16:23Z")
One of the most shoplifted items on store shelves is pregnancy tests, I’m going to bet that’s almost all women! ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2015, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/36 "2015-08-16T22:56:43Z")
Cellphones. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2015, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/37 "2015-08-17T00:22:04Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > If recent news is any indication it seems that female teachers are more likely to boink their students. Seems there’s is 20 to 1 female vs male teachers getting arrested in the last few years. “Recent news” is certainly an unreliable way of gathering statistics about this sort of thing. The crime is likely perceived to be more “interesting” and thus more likely to be reported when a woman commits it. Also, the statistics I see indicate that 87% of primary school teachers are female, so even if men and women committed the crime in equal percentages, there would be a more than 6 to 1 ratio of females to males in the arrests. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2015, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/38 "2015-08-17T11:11:22Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Why do you say that? Sorry, just trying to move away from child abuse. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2015, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/39 "2015-08-17T15:06:06Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > If recent news is any indication it seems that female teachers are more likely to boink their students. Seems there’s is 20 to 1 female vs male teachers getting arrested in the last few years. Are these statistics adjusted for the relative percentages of women and men in teaching professions, or are these just raw numbers of arrests? Schoolteaching, in most areas, is already biased toward more women in the classroom anyway, so I would expect there to be more female schoolteacher arrests than male schoolteacher arrests each year simply because there are more female schoolteachers out there. This is the same phenomenon you would encounter if you tried to break down the statistics on arrests of active duty combat troops for mopery. Since the vast majority of combat troops are men, you are going to find out that most of those arrests are going to be men. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2015, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938/40 "2015-08-17T15:20:42Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > One of the most shoplifted items on store shelves is pregnancy tests, I’m going to bet that’s almost all women! Looking at the security measures at my local drug store it appears that razors & corresponding blades are pretty heavily shoplifted too. And much more so the ones marketed to men than to women. Without controlling for cost of the items and for the embarrassment factor of buying a preg test I’m not sure what more we can say. And for those mystified about embarrassment, consider the large number of people who live in small conservative towns where everybody knows everybody else’s would-be private lives. Condoms were behind the counter at the pharmacy back in the 60s for the same reason. Shoplifting was otherwise rampant because of the embarrassment or scrutiny. Especially for folks (i.e. guys) not yet married. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-crime-or-vice-women-do-more-often-than-men/727938.md?page=3)