Girls are getting more into the crime with the number of woman gangsters worldwide swelling up to between 132,000 to 660,000.
The girls in crime made up almost 25 to 50 per cent of organised crime groups in UK and US, according to a latest international study.
Though they may have chosen to go into the frontline of crime, girl gangsters, unlike their male counterparts, still are less trigger-happy.
Instead of going for the guns, when confronted, the girl gangsters still opt for knives, stones and other tools as their weapon of choice, says an independent study carried out by the Geneva-based Institute of International Studies.
The study has come out with some startling figures saying that gangs and armed groups worldwide appear to be getting nearer to militaries and law enforcement agencies in possession of firearms and showing an increased graph "to use guns and to use them for violence".
"Gangs, organised crime and armed groups possess between 1.2 and 1.4 million firearms worldwide currently," the study said, out of a global arsenal of 875 million weapons.
Though the girls were shown having higher offence rates than boys, the study said girl gangsters still committed fewer violent crimes than men.
"They are more prone to engage in crimes dealing in property and status crimes that include defying parental authority, truancy and running away," the study said.
For the first time, the study showed a rise in girl gangs and cited the example of 'Latin Queens of New York'. It said abusive families and sexual violence drove women to life in crime.
It said the majority of woman gangsters still preferred to be part of mixed gender gangs and instead of toting guns chose to act as spies, transporter of weapons in their underwear and food baskets and acting as lookouts.
The survey called 'Gangs, Groups and Guns' launched at the United Nations premises in Geneva also showed a steep jump in what it called 'Horizontal Violence', violence committed by girls against other girls.
It said women gangsters sometimes set up rapes as part of ongoing crime catfights to please their male gangster bosses.
The jump in the numbers of illegal small arms trading has trigged major international deliberations on mechanism to check the illicit market in light weapons, which began in New York on Monday.
The meeting is deliberating to address disproportionate consequences small arms have on women and children. "We are moving to check the trafficking of arms as they disrupt social order and encourage trans-national crime," a UN official said.
