Male Dominance in Society and Male Predominance in Criminal Behavior by University Students in Thirty-two National Settings *

This article presents rates of criminal offending in the life history of male and female students at universities in 32 nations who participated in the International Dating Violence Study. The measure of criminal behavior has acceptable coefficients of reliability in most of the national settings, and there is evidence indicating construct validity. National differences in the percent of male students who committed two or more offenses ranged from 17% to 55% (median =32%) and for female students from 5% to 35% (median = 17%). Thus the average rate of offending by male students was 1.9 times greater than for females. Male predominance was greatest for violent crimes. For property crimes, the rate for males was 1.7 times greater than for females, and for violent crime the male rate was 3.5 times greater. Cross-national analyses found that national contexts with more social and economic equality between men and women tend to be more equal in rates of violent crime.