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Since the first outcries from feminist historians in the early 1970s against the absence of women as historical subjects, tangible progress has been made towards the inclusion of both female and male identities and experiences in historical research. The definition of gender as a 'category of analysis' brought about a small revolution in historical research, especially in social, economic and, more recently, cultural history. 1 Traditional narratives about the marginal economic role of women or their limited participation in the public sphere have subsequently been re-evaluated and new hypotheses about people's gendered experiences have emerged. This growing interest in the formation and influence of gender identities is also increasingly discernible in urban history, where gender analysis has proven to be of particular relevance in understanding men's and women's use of urban space and, vice versa, the ways that the urban environment shaped the construction of people's gendered identities.Initial research on the relationship between gender and urban history tended to focus on women's history and often on capital cities, following the methodological trend established in the 1960s by 'history from below'. 2 Studies showed that men's and women's history differed and that women's experience of the city often followed a different temporal and socio-economic pattern from that of men. However, recent studies show that gender analysis goes further than a simple binary opposition between men and women. 3 We have reached a new stage in research on gender and urban history: as well as re-interpreting traditional narratives on men and women's historical relations, doctoral researchers have also re-evaluated gender theories by challenging their relevance in new and alternative urban settings, including market towns and medium-sized cities; there is also, as we shall see, emerging interest in gendered urban history in China and Africa. Over the past decade, three main trends in

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Recent studies on gender and crime tend to emphasize the differences in the treatment of men and women by the criminal courts. Historians researching western European criminal justice have proved that in many instances women were treated with more leniency than men. For London, between 1780 and 1820, Peter King has shown that the judges and juries of the Old Bailey were more likely to sentence a male suspect to death than a woman and that acquittal rates were higher for women. 1 Deirdre Palk, building on King's findings for the same period, has pointed out that gender may also have played a role in the discretion shown by decision-makers when granting a pardon. 2 Work on female prosecution and sentencing for other countries or cities highlights a similar gender bias towards women: for instance, Renée Martinage and subsequently Virginie Despres have examined the assizes of northern France in the first half of the nineteenth century, noting that when men and women were accused of stealing food, juries were more likely to set a woman free than a man. 3 Shapiro and Ferguson, both working on the Parisian assizes, have highlighted the indulgence shown by juries and magistrates towards women who performed according to gender norms and emphasized their own status as victims. 4 For Italy, Mary Gibson shows that, at the end of the nineteenth century, women accused of infanticide and abortion were treated more favorably by the penal code if they carried out the act in order to "save their own honor." 5 Likewise, Dora Dumont has explained that the Bolognese tribunal at the very start of the nineteenth century was not inclined to prosecute women who took part in rural riots. 6 Similar conclusions were drawn in the Netherlands: Albert Eggens highlights how criminal women from * The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.