Girls and Violence

Abstract

After decades of girls’ violence taking place in private places and being shrouded in darkness, girls who fight have become the subject of widespread public concern, of academic research, and of policy debates. As the chapters in this volume make abundantly clear, scholars have shone much light into the dark place that is girls’ violence, and the result has been tremendous progress in our understanding of girls and aggression. As much as we have learned, though, any account of girls and aggression will be a never ending story, for several important reasons. First, scholarship on this topic has moved rapidly from a paucity of data to an overwhelming amount of new information, sometimes in the absence of theoretical frameworks for integrating and understanding results. The story of girls’ violence will quickly become even more rich and complex. Second, because girls are violent often in the context of relationships and because women are primarily responsible for rearing children, violent girls may become inept or even violent mothers, and transmit violence and aggression to their children. Third, because so few girls and women engage in serious violence as compared to boys, gender specific interventions are in the very early stages of development. Experts are unsure as to how to help the minority of women who behave violently, thus their behavior and its heart-wrenching consequences will likely continue.