This article contends that contemporary writings on the representation of offending women provide a simplified outline of ‘available’ representations. To nuance and further complicate our understanding, this study lays bare the most salient media characterisations of women perpetrators in Swedish press. In contrast to much previous research, it covers various offence types and an extensive period of time (1905–2015) and moves away from the focus on mega-cases and cases of extreme deviance. First, the study illustrates that characterisations are contingent and that there is a greater variety in ‘available’ representations than previous research suggests. The characterisations rather tend to move between and beyond the categories of bad, mad and sad. Second, the study makes visible the narrative continuities (across cases and over time) and analyses the social and cultural work of gendered characterisations. While steering attention to sense-making and the construction of familiarity, the article complicates the assumption that women’s deviance primarily or necessarily is represented as otherness.

本文认为，有关冒犯女性代表的当代著作提供了“可用”代表的简化轮廓。为了使我们的理解更加细化和复杂化，这项研究揭示了瑞典新闻界对女性犯罪者最显着的媒体特征。与以往的研究相比，它涵盖了各种犯罪类型和较长的时期（1905-2015年），并且不再关注大型案件和极端偏差案件。首先，该研究表明表征是偶然的，并且“可用”表示形式的多样性比以前的研究表明的要多。这些特征倾向于在坏，疯狂和悲伤的类别之间移动和超越。。其次，该研究使叙事连续性（跨案例和随着时间的推移）可见，并分析了性别表征的社会和文化工作。在将注意力转移到感官和熟悉性的构建上，这篇文章使以下假设变得复杂，即女性的差异主要或必然被表示为其他差异。