Women are violent. It is a myth that women are not the perpetrators of violent crime - women commit the majority of child murders in the US, a greater share of physical child abuse, a quarter of child sexual abuse and an overwhelming share of the killing of newborns. Yet western society makes excuses for women - they are the "victims" of male domination, their hormones, or their abusive childhoods. But, argues Pearson, a Canadian journalist, women cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim to be the "poor victims" of men's aggression and violence when it suits them, and also insist they are able to participate equally in traditional, male-dominated areas. Pearson provides fascinating, if occasionally stomach-churning, evidence of her thesis by examining the stories of female infanticide, husband batterers and serial killers. Compelling.