Definition
Sexism is the system of beliefs, practices, and arrangements that produces inequality between people on the basis of sex or gender. It includes overt prejudice, the routines of organisations that yield gendered outcomes without explicit intent, and the wider distribution of power, work, and safety in a society.
Feminist scholarship distinguishes the sex/gender system from individual attitudes, treating sexism as a structural condition that shapes opportunities, vulnerabilities, and life chances. In criminology, this lens reframed long-neglected questions about female victimisation, the gendered organisation of crime control, and the historical invisibility of women as offenders and as researchers.
Why it matters
How it works
A sexism-informed analysis asks who experiences which harms, who is held to account, and whose accounts are believed. It tracks domestic abuse, sexual violence, harassment, and coercive control as gendered phenomena requiring distinct conceptual tools rather than gender-neutral crime categories. It also examines how femininity and masculinity shape offending patterns and policing responses.
The framework is internally plural. Liberal feminism foregrounds equal treatment; radical feminism foregrounds patriarchy as a system of male dominance; intersectional and Black feminist scholarship insists that gender cannot be separated from race, class, and sexuality. Each strand has produced reforms in law, policing practice, and victim services.