Introduction

Chapter One described the difficulties encountered in trying to make sense of female serial killers. Problems associated with the quantitative survey and the typology were noted. It was argued that in lumping together a large number of women from a diverse range of social and historical contexts to construct the ‘typical’ female serial killer, heterogeneity and nuance are lost. At the other end of the spectrum lies the individual case study, which, while rich in detail, is often abstracted from the wider social and cultural contexts in which female serial killers operate. It was suggested that a new approach is needed if better insight is to be developed into why women who kill serially are able to get away with murder for as long as Mary Ann did. This approach should be one that maintains a connectedness to the particularities of a case but enables reflection on both the overarching social structure and the female serial killer’s engagement with this context. In this chapter, intersectionality and institutionalism are introduced, both of which encompass important considerations of relevance to this work. The authors begin by exploring the literature around intersectionality, which better helps to grasp the complexity of the social phenomena that they wanted to examine. Following on from this, the origins and varieties of institutionalism are explored and the endeavours of other criminologists in attempting to adopt an institutional approach are considered. Thereafter, the merits of such an approach in broadening understandings of female serial murder are explored.

Intersectionality: missing pieces in the puzzle of female serial murder

One of the key problems with existing theorising around female serial killers is, as noted above, the tendency of some scholars to aggregate all known female serial killers, obscuring their diversity. These women are being categorised based solely on their gender. This is a troubling issue given the existence of the various social divisions that shape lived experiences. Social divisions have been described as follows: