1/3 isn't a small fraction and women use PROXY violence rather than direct violence because they're not physically capable of it most of the time.
Oh, and I got my numbers mixed up...it's 10%.
Most gangs are about MONEY.
Female gang members actually leave their households to escape sexual violence and end up moving in with gangs, some of them ALL FEMALE
Motives[edit]
Female and male recruits often share similar motivations for joining a gang. Hagedorn found that gangs are almost exclusively found in low socioeconomic neighborhoods, especially those occupied by ethnic minorities.
[10] Most young adults in such areas face poor job prospects, and often the only sources of employment are low-paying and require minimum skills. Survey responses from Hawaiian gang members indicated that youth may find that illegal activities associated with some gangs are the easiest and most profitable sources of income.
[8] Furthermore, the research also implied that hopelessness and boredom stemming from a dearth of opportunities provide incentives to become part of a social unit that faces a similar future.
[8] A gang can become a surrogate family for a child whose parents must work long hours at a low-wage job to be able to provide for the family. Many gang members in the Hawaiian study and Campbell’s study reported fleeing to gangs as a source of protection from dangerous neighborhoods or abusive households.
[8][11] Female gang members are especially likely to grow up in families where they are victims of sexual abuse, and they remove themselves from such situations by living with the gang; in fact, one study found that approximately half of all female gang members had suffered some form of sexual abuse, and that two-thirds of those attacks occurred in the context of the family.
[7]