Washington ? When an arrest is made, it is becoming more common for the handcuffs to be on a woman, according to an FBI report Monday that also found the number of crimes reported to police was virtually un-changed last year.

Arrests of men and women in 2002 are part of the FBI’s annual look at serious crime. It showed a slight increase — less than one-tenth of 1 percent — to about 11.9 million murders, rapes, thefts, robberies, burglaries, aggravated assaults and vehicle thefts.

Men still accounted for the vast majority of adults arrested for these and other crimes — about 77 percent of the total. But women are gaining ground, with the 1.9 million arrested in 2002 representing 23 percent. That was a 14 percent increase from 1993.

An even larger jump occurred between 1986 and 1995, when arrests of women rose by almost 38 percent.

During that period of time, women were being placed in custody more frequently for almost all crimes, including violent offenses such as murder, robbery and aggravated assaults.

Between 1993 and 2002, women’s arrests for murder, robbery, burglary, theft and arson have begun to fall. Increases for women are most notable for such crimes as embezzlement (80 percent higher), forgery and counterfeiting (19 percent), drug abuse (50 percent), vagrancy (42 percent) and liquor law violations (49 percent).

Arrests of women for aggravated assault climbed nearly 25 percent over the decade. During that same time, aggravated assault arrests for all offenders fell by 21 percent.

Kenneth Land, a professor of sociology at Duke University, attributed the rise in female arrests to societal changes over the past 30 years in which more women have entered the work force and generally have achieved a status on a par with men.

“You’re more likely to have situations where they can be involved as motivated offenders due to the role changes over the past decades, as compared to men,” Land said.

The FBI’s annual crime statistics are drawn from reports to 17,000 city, county and state law enforcement agencies. A stable picture emerges from the 2002 numbers, with no major upticks in any category but no marked declines, either.

The total number of crimes represents a drop of 4.9 percent since 1998 and 16 percent since 1993, the last big year of a wave of violence traced to the crack cocaine epidemic, experts say.

Overall, the 1.4 million violent crimes reported in 2002 represented a drop of just under 1 percent. Murders rose by about 1 percent to 16,204, still a third lower than a decade ago.

Burglaries, thefts, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts remained essentially flat from 2001 to 2002. The FBI estimated that the total dollar loss from these property crimes last year was $16.6 billion.