Which women traveled as convicts or family members?

What could cause a woman to be sent to Australia, and did every woman aboard travel as a convict?

Women could receive transportation sentences for their own offenses, including sex work, while some wives and children accompanied transported men without themselves being convicts.

Women could receive transportation sentences for their own offenses, with sex work given cautiously as one reason women were sent to Australia. Other women traveled as wives of convicted men, and children could accompany transported fathers. Female passengers therefore included prisoners and free family members with different legal positions aboard the fleet. The children and some of the women were accompanying family members rather than sentenced prisoners.