The world in which women live and are evaluate a has undergone many important changes, owing in part to an active and highly visible women's movement that has directed public attention to the role of women. Through this focus, the movement has stimulated a search for new ways of analyzing social patterns and has reoriented public and private perceptions of women an men in relation both to one another and to social institutions.
As individuals, women have access to more an different jobs, and thus participate at more and different levels in public life. As a group, they have far greater opportunities to define themselves and their goals. The media are sensitized to the movement's concerns, and the image of women presented in books, magazines, television programs, films, and the press has changed dramatically since the 1950s. The women's movement has also had a strong impact on the direction of academic inquiry. Much research centers on women; new areas of interest have arisen, and established interpretations are being challenged by the perspective of the women's movement.
What of women's involvement un violent offenses? Historically, women's violence has primarily been directed either against lovers or husbands who have betrayed and abused them or against children, especially unwanted babies. The changes that have been occurring in women's lives should reduce their participation in violent crime: their sense of victimization and their desire for revenge will recede as they become more independent socially, politically, and economically. On the other hand, as women's roles become more varied, so will the factors inducing them to commit crimes. The desire for money an power that has started many men on the road to criminal careers will probably also exert more influence on women.