https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20986527 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 1–24 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20986527 journals.sagepub.com/home/ijo Article Gender Equality and Female Offending: Evidence From International Data Sources Doris C. Chu 1 , Bill Hebenton 2 , and Albert Toh 3 Abstract This paper examines the nature of female offending patterns in relationship to societal gender equality using cross-national analysis of 27 European countries for the year 2006. Importantly, our analysis uses a conceptually innovative indicator (the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index) to determine relative levels of gender equality. Results show that countries with a narrower gender gap in the Global Gender Gap indexes of political empowerment were likely to have a higher female prosecution rate, and that political empowerment was also significantly associated with female conviction rates as well as rates of property offending. The pattern of results generally supports the liberation thesis. Finally, limitations and suggestions for future study are addressed. Keywords gender equality, female offending, World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index Introduction That men commit significantly more offences than women is one of the most stable findings of criminological research (Smith, 2014), and it is more than four decades since the publication of Sisters in Crime, where it was noted that trends in the gender gap in crime rate had become smaller (Adler, 1975). The gender gap trope remained 1 National Chung Cheng University, Minhsiung, Chia Yi, Taiwan 2 University of Manchester, UK 3 University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, USA Corresponding Author: Doris C. Chu, Department of Criminology, National Chung Cheng University, 168 University Road, Minhsiung, Chia Yi 62102, Taiwan. Email: doriscfchu@gmail.com 986527IJO XX X 10.1177/0306624X20986527International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyChu et al. research-article 2021