Since we are familiar today with prisons, reformatories, and jails and know that confinement within such institutions is now the almost global method of punishing those convicted of crimes, most individuals assume that institutional confinement has always been employed as the usual method of dealing with offenders throughout historic times. As a matter of fact, the use of institutions for the extended confinement of offenders, as the prevailing method of punishment, is a relatively recent innovation and was primarily a product of American influences. Until the latter years of the nineteenth century, the usual method of dealing with convicted offenders was to impose fines or to administer some form of corporal punishment such as execution, flogging, mutilation, branding, a stint in the pillory, or a combination of these. However, are there gender differences with respect to punishment? Real life observation indicates that men and women are treated differently in the context of punishment.
             In order for a comprehensive discussion on the differences of punishment between the genders is proposed, a definition of punishment is required. The word punishment has incurred many different definitions by various criminologists and historians. The role of punishment in modern society is not all obvious, and is a scarcely understood aspect of social life. 'Punishment is taken here to be the legal process whereby violators of the criminal law are condemned and sanctioned in accordance with specified legal categories and procedures'. The criminology of punishment is conceived as the study of penality, a term associated with Michael Foucault which indicates a complex of theories , institutions, practices, laws, professional roles and political-public attitudes which are concerned with the sanctioning of criminals.
             Up until the turn of the century, women were primarily perceived as sexual objects. Women were expected to remai...