This volume places female criminality within its everyday context. It reveals how their socio-economic and cultural contexts provided women with 'agency' against a range of European backdrops, despite a fundamentally patriarchal criminal justice system, and includes in-depth analysis of original sources to show how changing living standards, employment, schooling and welfare arrangements had a direct impact on the quality of life of working class women, their risk of becoming involved in crime, and the likelihood of being prosecuted for it.
This book focuses on how dramatic changes in living conditions affected key parts of the life course of ordinary citizens: marriage and divorce. This comparative volume draw on newly available micro-level data, as well as qualitative sources such as war diaries.