It is interesting to note that up until the 1970s, the occasional violent acts committed by women were generally ignored by law enforcement authorities world-wide. During the '70s a new mythology emerged that linked the women's movement to a new wave of violent offending by women. White, adult women, as leaders of the women's emancipation movement, were identified as causing the surge in serious criminal offending by women. Although the facts clearly do not support such contentions, many have concluded that more women and girls are committing offences because of the influence of some women's desires to be equal to men. Furthermore, the breakdown of the family (also perceived to be a consequence of women's desire for emancipation) is believed to have resulted in girls not having their fathers around to help socialize them. The juvenile justice system has a long history of paternalism, such that young women who defy authority, particularly if they defy parental authority and run away from home, tend to be sanctioned more harshly than their male counterparts.

American author Meda Chesney-Lind calls this the "liberation" hypothesis. She furthermore states that in the 1990s we were in the midst of a second wave that causally links women's equality with girls'-especially poor, minority girls-participation in gangs. Nevertheless, throughout both "waves" of the women's movement, there have been no substantiated significant changes in the levels and patterns of girls' violent and aggressive behaviour in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Chesney-Lind 1998). There are, however, marked differences in external responses to violent or aggressive actions, especially those perpetrated by youth.

The development of so-called zero-tolerance policies has resulted in increased policing and prosecuting of all forms of violence committed by boys and girls. Proportionately, because the overall number of young women charged with violent offences remains relatively low, the increased numbers create more substantial percentage increases in the statistics for girls than they do for boys.

In addition, there has been an increased criminalization of young women's survival skills. In the past, it was relatively easy to institutionalize or enforce social controls on young women if they ran away, missed curfew, engaged in sexual activity or displayed behaviour that might be defined as "unfeminine" or, worse yet, unmanageable. Under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act, a young woman could be imprisoned in a juvenile home for such activities. The introduction of the Young Offenders Act (YOA) in 1982 was supposed to end the arbitrary detention of young women for such activities. However, the way the YOA is being implemented by police and judges belies its legislative intent. We fear that the new Youth Criminal Justice Act will not rectify this situation if only the law, and not the practices, change.

Indeed, Ann Campbell and others have challenged us to consider whether it is morally or ethically appropriate for women and girls who need to use violence and aggression as a means to survive should relinquish these tools. She maintains, that:

Secure in our relationships and relatively protected from physical harm, most women do not need to use aggression as a tool to keep the world at bay. But when the ties that bring women close to others are destroyed, what do they have to fear in aggression? They cannot fear the loss of what they do not have. And the indisputable law on the street is fight or get beaten.... Whereever women face lives of brutal exploitation that destroys their faith in the value of trust and intimacy, they will be driven to it. We cannot demand that women desist from its use when their survival requires it. (1993: 140).