Pervasive apathy or bad research methodology? Examining how gender is operationalised in criminological and criminal justice research

Criminology has often been criticised for its lack of gender inclusivity and ‘androcentrism’, particularly by feminist and queer criminologists who note that the field rarely uses separate measures of gender and sex assigned at birth or ones that extend beyond the binary. These issues severely limit the applicability of evidence-based, gender-responsive services in the criminal justice system. Several fields (for example, psychology, sociology, feminist studies) have adopted measures of gender that capture multiple identities and acknowledge the complexity of gender. It is unclear whether criminology has heeded calls for inclusivity. Using a gender and intersectional theory perspective, the current study analysed 566 articles from four American criminological and criminal justice (CCJ) journals published between 2011 and 2020 to explore the published studies’ gender operationalisations. Findings indicate that quality gender measurements are lacking, gender and sex assigned at birth are often conflated, and author, as well as publication type, are significant with regards to the inclusion of quality gender measurements.