Perceived Risk and Fear of Crime: Gender Differences in Contextual Sensitivity

Abstract

Studies have been directed at explaining the ‘gender gap’ in the fear of crime: why do women have higher fear levels than men? Previous studies lead to the tentative conclusion that women are more fearful due to their greater vulnerability in risky environments. Yet, the differential effects of various environments on fear levels of men and women is not well understood. In this paper, theories of gender differences in fear of crime are reviewed, along with various potential fear-invoking contexts. One reason so little is known about context is that statistical software designed to better assess contextual effects — hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) — has only recently become widely available. HLM (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992; Bryk et al., 1996) is used here to model perceived risk and fear of assault among a sample of Stockholm residents. Results show that at the contextual level, women are more influenced by aspects of the environment than are men. We are led to the conclusion that women are especially ecologically vulnerable (Sparks, 1982) whereas men personalize vulnerability.