Outside the Law: Criminal Women in Arizona History Throughout history, men and women have often been stereotyped into specific roles. Men have often been characterized as more forceful and violent than their female counterparts. Men were also often described as adventurous pioneers while women were considered more fragile and delicate. Nowhere has this stereotype been more prevalent than in Arizona's history. In the years before statehood, Arizona's reputation as part of the "Wild West" was legendary. From stagecoach robberies to saloon brawls to the Tombstone shootout, the early days of the Arizona Territory are filled with stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Of course, most of these stories involve the men of Arizona history. Men were generally cast either as mysterious villains who robbed the stage, or as noble sheriffs who fought to enforce the law. Women, when remembered, were often portrayed as virtuous pioneers, struggling to maintain femininity on the harsh Arizona frontier, or as wanton saloon women with few redeeming characteristics. As you might expect, however, most of these stereotypes of women in Arizona history are seriously misguided. It is true that in the nineteenth century women were expected to meet certain standards of "femininity." According to Paul Knepper in his article, "The Women of Yuma: Gender, Ethnicity, and Imprisonment in Frontier Arizona, 1876-1909," these standards were "...the cardinal virtues of submission, piety, purity, and domesticity" ( 241). Women in the Arizona Territory had the doubly difficult duty of having to meet these standards of femininity while at the same time fighting an undeveloped territory where any sign of weakness was avoided. There was a group of women in nineteenth-century Arizona who did not fit this stereotype. of female passivity and decorum. They were women who, for one reason or another, broke the law and were labeled criminals. Some of these women deliberately broke the law with shocking disregard for personal lives or property. Others reluctantly broke the law, trying only to feed themselves or their families. Still others have been victims of unjust moral prejudice against women. When punished for their crimes, some of them received leniency from the court based on their gender, while others were forced to suffer horrific humiliation because the system made no room for female criminals..