Women who commit hate-motivated violence: Advancing a gendered understanding of hate crime

Abstract

Prior research has noted that women have played an important role in both organized hate groups and organized racial violence. Most hate crimes, however, are not committed by hate groups and very little research has examined the role of women in more common, otherwise unorganized, forms of bias-motivated violence. This omission has resulted in a disconnect between our understanding of women's involvement in organized bigotry relative to more common forms of bias-motivated violence. Following this, the current research explicitly considers the role of women in hate-motivated violence using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), 2010–2016. Results demonstrate that, while women are indeed less likely to be involved in bias-motivated violence relative to men, there is significant variation in this pattern, such that women are more likely to be involved in racially motivated violence than other offenses, but especially unlikely to be involved in violence motivated by sexual orientation bias. Further, results from multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate significant differences in incident characteristics according to both female involvement and bias motivation, suggesting that the nature of violence varies by both gender and bias motivation. The results suggest the importance of considering gendered differences in hate crime offending.