Verified by 
Would it surprise you to hear that gender is highly correlated with committing murder? That is, males are far more likely than females to commit murder in the U.S. This reality probably comes as no shock to you.
There is an old and pervasive myth which contends that women do not commit murder. This myth is based on traditional gender norms or expectations of behavior in our society that include the idea that females are too passive to kill someone.
In reality, women do commit murder in the U.S. but at decidedly lower rates than do men. When you add race into the equation, white women have lower homicide offending rates than either white men, black men, or black women.
Let us take a look at the facts. The official data over the years reveal that one in 10 murders is committed by a woman. For example, a total of 666,160 people were killed in the U.S. between 1960 and 1996, and approximately 90 percent of those murders were committed by males.
According to Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data collected by the FBI for the years 1980 to 2008, males were seven times more likely to commit murder than females. The data reveal that homicide offending rates for both males and females followed the same general pattern as victimization rates.
Specifically, the offending rate for females declined from 3.1 offenders per 100,000 persons in 1980 to 1.6 offenders per 100,000 persons in 2008. The offending rate for males peaked in 1991 at 20.8 per 100,000 persons and then fell to a low of 11.3 per 100,000 persons in 2008.
Similar to homicide victimization, a white female is the least likely homicide offender of all possible race and gender combinations. The data reveal that she is far less likely than a black female or a male of any race to become a murderer in the U.S. According to my estimates that are based on the UCR data for 2013, females of all races comprised 10 percent of the 14,132 murder offenders that year, and white females accounted for less than 5 percent of all offenders.
The offending rate for white females was .7 per 100,000 persons in 2013. This compares to rates per 100,000 persons of 3.7 for black females, 6.2 for white males and 35.2 for black males. The data for 2013 reveal that the offending rate for black females was five times greater than the rate for white females.
The data further show that black males had the highest offending rate of all. The offending rate for black males was six times greater than white males, nine times greater than black females, and 50 times greater than the rate for white females.
In summary, white women rarely commit murder when compared to other groups.
Despite this reality, or more accurately because of it, some of the most high-profile murder trials have involved an alleged offender who is an attractive, young, white woman. Examples of such high-profile cases include Pamela Smart, Diane Downs (pictured above), Amanda Knox and Jodi Arias (mixed race). The conviction of Amanda Knox has been overturned.
The public becomes concerned, riveted and even outraged when the alleged perpetrator of a grisly murder is a young, white woman. Who can forget the trial of Casey Anthony? Public outrage occurs because such events are unexpected and run contrary to powerful social norms that tell us women do not kill, and they especially do not kill their own children!
The prevailing social norms perpetuated by the media tell us that pretty, young, white females are submissive and passive. More often than not, such women are portrayed as non-threatening sexual objects in advertising, fashion, television, and film. We are socialized to believe that such women need to be protected and cared for.
As such, the behavioral expectations associated with the visual image of an attractive, young woman like Jodi Arias are inconsistent with the grisly particulars of her crime—that is, stabbing her former boyfriend 27 times, nearly decapitating him, and then shooting him in the head. Such actions clearly violate traditional female gender norms.
When a young, white woman commits murder, the case often generates great interest among the public because such events are perceived to be rare, unexpected and exotic. This is particularly true when the circumstances surrounding the murder are especially gruesome or brutal, as in the case of Jodi Arias.
Law enforcement authorities and the news and entertainment media use powerful female archetypes such as “femme fatale” and “vixen” to explain the motivations of female killers and, more importantly, and disturbingly, to sensationalize them. In particular, the news and entertainment media feed the public’s ravenous appetite for graphic images and information.
The media benefit financially by sensationalizing such cases because they draw huge viewing audiences, and large consumer audiences are attractive to advertisers that will pay handsomely to reach them.
By relying on exaggerated stereotypes, the news media unfairly demonize the targets of their hyperbole and condemn them prior to their criminal trials. All of this yields overblown, public spectacles like the trials of Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias that distort reality, and exploit stereotypes about women.
The exploitation of social norms by the news and entertainment media does additional damage. Inaccurate and stylized depictions of attractive, white, female criminals obscure the complex and diverse reality of crime and victimization in the U.S. In the end, the use of negative stereotypes harms all of society by creating alienation and perpetuating inequality and injustice.
Separately, I examine the public’s intense fascination with notorious and deadly serial killers, including David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and Dennis Rader (“Bind, Torture, Kill”) with whom I personally corresponded, in my best-selling book Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers.
Dr. Scott Bonn is an author, professor, public speaker and TV commentator. Follow him @DocBonn on Twitter and visit his website docbonn.com
