Abstract
Women's criminality keeps marginal, atypic, and paradoxical, in the department of Herault as on a national level. « Marginal » because women only squares with five sixths of the accused. Herault is not an exception ,with its fifteen per cent of female accused. « Atypic » in relation to the supposed female crimes..Although some crimes seem more specifically feminine because they are linked with motherhood and conjugal life, the women's contribution to any other crime allow the concept of « women's criminality » to be softened. In Herault,even though the woman is rather absent from criminality, she is over-represented concerning child murder, abortion, or poisoning. However, her contribution to breaches against properties ( robberies), and to people ( assault and battery) moderates the existence of a specific female criminality. So the outcome is that female criminality is « paradoxical » because « weak » women, meant unable to commit violent crimes (their social part protect them from killing), commit the crimes which are ranked among the most abominable. The contradiction consists in the leniency of the punishments against women who have committed such crimes too. It is difficult to admit that each sex would have propensity to such or such a crime. Criminality is more the result of factors which depend on sociological, economical, psychic and biological circumstances, common to both sexs.