Reporters describing the offense or the formal social response to it tended to emphasize a whole range of details not directly connected to the crime or the punishment. These indirect details feminize the female offender by highlighting her physical appearance; her behavior; and her performance as mother, wife, and housewife, even when she committed serious crimes. In addition, an offense perpetrated by a women was portrayed as a single, incidental act. Moreover, the numerous stereotypical descriptions minimized the woman's role as a criminal, so that her main status was that of womanhood rather than criminality. These descriptions removed the female offender from the public sphere, kept her in the private arena, and thereby maintained the existing gendered social order. Notes and 59 references (Author abstract modified)