11.1 Introduction

At the 2019 American Society of Criminology conference, Meda Chesney-Lind’s address focused on the overwhelming role gender still plays in the criminal justice system, both in the victimisation and criminalisation of women, and the presence of sexism and racism in criminology at large (Chesney-Lind, 2020). Chesney-Lind has been referred to as the “mother of feminist criminology” (Belknap, 2004, p. 2), and her critique stings, especially considering the past 50 years of work by feminist criminologists. Feminist criminology, at its core, highlights issues of inequality and power rooted in patriarchy and the intersecting and embedded oppressions of race, colonialism, class, sexualities, and gender within the context of crime and criminality. As Chesney-Lind (2020) points out, as a discipline, “criminology needs to be more clearly engaged in [feminist] research to undo its history of sexism and racism” (p. 419).

In this chapter, we feature feminist criminology as an important area within the broader discipline of criminology. First, we identify the foundations of feminist criminology, the contributions of feminist thought to existing explanations for criminality, victimisation, and offending, and the issues that brought feminist criminology to the surface. Next, we focus on the treatment of women in the criminal justice system and how intersecting social identities impact women’s experiences of violence and criminalisation. We include the human rights crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women as one example of this intersectionality reflected in the criminal justice system. We end with a summary of historical and contemporary critiques of feminist criminology. Throughout the chapter, we also incorporate the important work of Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) on intersectionality (see Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality), and the work of Black scholars like Angela Davis, Hillary Potter, and Crenshaw to shift feminist criminology’s focus away from primarily White, middle-class, heterosexual women.