# Why are female muggers/burglars uncommon?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 20, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979 "2021-01-20T16:02:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@joesnowden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joesnowden)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/1 "2021-01-20T16:02:37Z")
Or dare I say it, non-existent? My best friend who is a woman was shopping at the supermarket on the weekend and someone tried to open her rear car door. She said that it was a teenage boy. He got scared and closed the door.
Now that didn’t surprise me at all. What I find weird is why in most cases muggers, thieves, and burglars are almost always men.
I know that testosterone greatly influences risk-taking and men have 10 to 20 times the amount that women do. Also women are much weaker and less likely to engage in physical altercations with men because they’d be certain to come out with injuries.
But when it comes to mugging/burglary/ especially of women, I don’t get why more females desperate for cash don’t resort to it. They are after all of equal strength.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/2 "2021-01-20T16:22:11Z")
Maybe they’re just so good at it, they never get caught.
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### Author:  [@Astrid1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astrid1)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/3 "2021-01-20T16:38:28Z")
Came to Italy (big cities) and see how many women make it everyday to live. They are often Gipsy people, less often drug addicts.
How exactly do you know what you said about testosterone?
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### Author:  [@CoconutPete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoconutPete)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/4 "2021-01-20T16:41:58Z")
Women can also use sex to get money, that’s not an option for most men. But there are plenty of stories about female hookers stealing money from people but it’s usually not through direct violence. I believe instrumental violence is more common among sociopaths and such and sociopathy is more common in men.
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### Author:  [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/5 "2021-01-20T17:05:32Z")
There are plenty of female sociopaths, they simply specialise in other forms of crime that can also cause untold emotional and psychological damage to their victims.
Smaller, less fit and less physically confident men are also poorly suited to crimes that require intimidating physical strength.
So they go for confidence tricks, fraud, sneak theft and they can be quite prolific.
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### Author:  [@FriendlyCurmudgeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriendlyCurmudgeon)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/6 "2021-01-20T17:39:31Z")
> [@joesnowden](#):
>
> But when it comes to mugging/burglary/ especially of women, I don’t get why more females desperate for cash don’t resort to it. **They are after all of equal strength.**
Is that sarcasm ?
I’m sure the top tier female UFC fighter can kick most guys assess on here including mine but on average they are not. That’s just biology, not sexism.
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### Author:  [@CoconutPete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoconutPete)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/7 "2021-01-20T17:42:01Z")
I think the OP meant females robbing/mugging other females.
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### Author:  [@FriendlyCurmudgeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriendlyCurmudgeon)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/8 "2021-01-20T17:43:08Z")
Ok that makes more sense, thanks.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/9 "2021-01-20T17:49:48Z")
I’m not sure the OP is clear about the distinction between muggers and burglars.
Muggers are criminals who take money directly from their victims by violence or the threat of violence. Women would probably have a more difficult time working as a mugger because I feel many of their victims would refuse to take their threats seriously. This would mean that a female mugger would have to either break off the crime or resort to actual violence. Even if the female mugger is successful in using violence, the results are going to make the legal system devote more resources into stopping her.
Burglary, on the other hand, is not intended as a confrontational crime. Burglars are people who break into a business or residence to steal things. (Technically, burglary is any crime where you break into a place to do something illegal but theft is overwhelmingly the most common illegal act that’s committed.) So there’s no reason I see why men and women can’t commit burglary on an equal footing. I’ve heard of female burglars so there are definitely women doing this.
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### Author:  [@CoconutPete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoconutPete)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/10 "2021-01-20T17:49:50Z")
I think there all kinds of reasons honestly, women are probably less likely to put themselves in danger being alone at night in the kinds of areas where muggings and such happen. A female mugger could be stopped by pretty much any average guy that happened to come along.
A woman out looking to mug another woman may herself become a victim of a male mugger or rapist that comes along.
Guns are kind of an equalizer for physicality but you still don’t see as many females committing armed robberies and such, they just don’t have aggressiveness or hostility all things being equal that men do.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/11 "2021-01-20T17:59:16Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#):
>
> Smaller, less fit and less physically confident men are also poorly suited to crimes that require intimidating physical strength.
>
> So they go for confidence tricks, fraud, sneak theft and they can be quite prolific.
I would say more intelligent men (and women) would go for tricks, fraud, etc. Even if you were physically superior, fraud and heists tend to be lower risk as you aren’t engaging with your mark in direct physical confrontation. You never know if the target is armed, an undercover cop, off duty Navy SEAL Krav Maga instructor or if there are police nearby. Fraud usually presumes some ability to conceal the fraud or be somewhere else when it is discovered.
I wouldn’t say women committing fraud is uncommon.
> [@CoconutPete](#):
>
> I think the OP meant females robbing/mugging other females.
I don’t want to mug someone of equal strength. I want to mug someone I can easily overpower. Uh…hypothetically.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/12 "2021-01-20T20:24:05Z")
Fraud has another advantage, it generally attracts a lower prison term than violence against the person, and its likely to make more money.
Look at the prison population of almost any nation and you’ll find women are at least 4 times less likely to be imprisoned, and the more serious the crime, the greater the difference.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/13 "2021-01-20T22:00:27Z")
In addition to the points made by others, women are more likely to be able to support themselves to sustenance level via social safety net programs and/or support from male breadwinners (who may themselves be burglars or muggers).
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### Author:  [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/14 "2021-01-21T03:17:10Z")
> [@CoconutPete](#):
>
> they just don’t have aggressiveness or hostility all things being equal that men do.
Keep telling yourself that.
And then make the mistake of messing with one of my babies.
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### Author:  [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/15 "2021-01-21T03:34:45Z")
> [@CoconutPete](#):
>
> Guns are kind of an equalizer for physicality but you still don’t see as many females committing armed robberies and such, they just don’t have aggressiveness or hostility all things being equal that men do.
Evolution plays a part in it, because due to evolution men have been basically forced to take risks to prove they are worth procreating with, while women do not. A man may ‘have’ to rob, join gangs and fight for status to prove he is valuable as a mating partner, while women do not.
But regarding aggression, I don’t think its that cut and dried. My understanding is women are almost if not as likely to abuse their spouses and children as men are. Women are far less likely to engage in violence against society at large (less likely to murder, commit armed robbery, engage in gang violence, etc), but when it comes to violence at home with family it was my understanding women are pretty close to being as violent as men.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/16 "2021-01-21T04:23:19Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> You never know if the target is armed, an undercover cop, off duty Navy SEAL Krav Maga instructor or if there are police nearby.
Or the parents of some kid who’s going to grow up and start wearing a bat costume.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/17 "2021-01-21T04:39:54Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> Or the parents of some kid who’s going to grow up and start wearing a bat costume.
Is that you, Joe Chill? 😃
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/18 "2021-01-21T11:49:40Z")
> [@casdave](#):
>
> Look at the prison population of almost any nation and you’ll find women are at least 4 times less likely to be imprisoned, and the more serious the crime, the greater the difference.
In the UK less than 1 in 5 arrests are of females and women make up just 1 in 20 of the prison population.
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### Author:  [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/19 "2021-01-21T12:05:05Z")
> [@joesnowden](#):
>
> Or dare I say it, non-existent?
Not quite.
These are FBI statistics from Wikipedia. As I understand the FBI definitions, mugging as the OP uses the term is classified as robbery whereas stealing from someone (which some might call robbery) is classified as larceny-theft.
For burglary, 85% are male. Robbery is 87.9% male.
The percentages are clearly skewed towards males, but female robbers and burglars are far from non-existent.
Larceny-theft is only 57.3% male and embezzlement is only 51.3% male.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2021, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-female-muggers-burglars-uncommon/930979/20 "2021-01-21T12:15:17Z")
If the OP wants some real reading, start here then transition to the see also and references section. This is not an unstudied topic.
> **[Sex differences in crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime)**
>
> Pages for logged out editors learn more
>
>
> Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology (the scientific study of criminal behavior), sociobiology (which attempts to demonstrate a causal relationship between biological factors, in this case biological sex and human behaviors), or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way t...
This might be informative too, although not about “street crime” = muggings / robberies:
> **[Serial killer | Female](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer#Female)**
>
> Female serial killers are rare compared to their male counterparts. Sources suggest that female serial killers represented less than one in every six known serial murderers in the United States between 1800 and 2004 (64 females from a total of 416 known offenders), or that around 15% of U.S. serial killers have been women, with a collective number of victims between 427 and 612. The authors of Lethal Ladies, Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington, state that "th Kellehe...
An interesting observation from this last article is that women represent about 1 of 6 serial killers. Yet ref @DemonTree just above, women are roughly 1 in 20 UK convicts, and the first article I cited says in the US women are roughly 1 in 10 convicts yet 1 in 5 of those convicted for violent crimes.
So while women collectively are clearly less criminal and less violently criminal than men, once we cross the line into criminality, the worse the crime, the relatively _greater_ the participation of women. Color me surprised.
At least as convicted, though maybe not as perpetrated. That may represent more leniency by victims, police, or courts on minor offenses by women. Or may just represent a much reduced female propensity for minor crime. As noted above, the ready availability of female prostitution as a means of generating income may be preventing a lot of the shoplifting, breaking into parked cars, and minor drug dealing that the corresponding male lowlifes do to support themselves.
I’m no expert, but I have to suspect a lot of the minor property crimes, vandalism, graffiti, etc., are far more a product of young male mentality than young female mentality.
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