A Field Studyon the Effect of Feminine Gender on the Determination of Criminal Penalties: A Case study of Criminal Courts in Mashhad in 1392

The criminal law is basically an impersonal law. This means that it embraces all individuals and subjects equally. However, advocacy of feminine gender on account of her different creation is regarded as an exception to this principlein the criminal systems of most of the countries. It seems that judicial authorities consider female gender as a criterion for penalty reduction in case of female accusers; in other words, this is a kind of positive and supportive discriminationfor women. In addition, besides biological factors such as the age of the victims—which make children and the elderly more vulnerable—women sexuality plays a role as an intensifying criterion in determiningfemale accusers’penalty due to their vulnerability. This issue is also raised about accusers who choose their victims from among women due to their physical weakness and condition. In most of the countries, criminal law systems pay special attention to these issues that the crime penalties of female accusers can be reduced on account of their gender while the crime penalty of accusers who victimize women is intensified at the same time due to the feminine gender of the victims. Considering these hypotheses, in this field study, we aimed at exploring judicial doctrines advocating this idea in the Iranianlegal system. The examination of the views of Iranian criminal jurists did not yield evidence in support of the abovementioned hypotheses; the reasons for which are doubtlessly unsound.