The Structural Sources of Urban Female Violence in the United States: A Macrosocial Gender-Disaggregated Analysis of Adult and Juvenile Homicide Offending Rates

The present study departs from previous prior macrolevel research on homicide—which has targeted either total homicide rates or male homicide offending rates—by (a) disaggregating the homicide crime rate across U.S. cities by gender and age, (b) examining the effects of structural disadvantage variables on the homicide offending rates of adult women and juvenile girls, and (c) comparing the effects of the structural variables on females' homicide rates with those for adult males and juvenile males. Among adults, the authors find that structural disadvantage robustly affects female as well as male rates; whereas, among juveniles, the effects are large on adolescent male rates but much smaller on female juvenile rates (i.e., their rates are only weakly influenced by structural disadvantage). Apparently, the contexts for homicide among juvenile females are less shaped by adverse economic conditions and conditions of social disorganization than is the case among the other age-sex subgroups.