«Una giuria di ginecologi». La criminalità femminile tra sapere medico e scienza penalistica in Italia tra Otto e Novecento

This article examines the emergence, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of a medico-legal paradigm that interpreted female criminality through biological and sexual categories. It argues that medicine, psychiatry, and especially gynaecology gradually shifted from auxiliary disciplines to operative tools in determining criminal responsibility. Particular attention is devoted to the theories of Luigi Maria Bossi, the systematization proposed by Muzio Pazzi, and the legal reformulation advanced by Benedetto Fera, supported by Enrico Ferri, all of whom contributed to transforming sexual difference into a technical criterion of imputability. Drawing on trials, scientific controversies, and doctrinal writings, the study shows how gynaecological expertise came to shape judicial truth by redirecting attention from the criminal act to the biological constitution of the accused woman. So-called « gynaecological criminology » thus emerges as a disciplinary formation designed to render female deviance governable through bodily diagnosis. The article ultimately situates this framework within a broader history of the technical governance of femininity, highlighting how the scientific naturalization of sexual difference functioned as a juridical and social regulatory device that persisted beyond the decline of positivist criminology.