Gender Risk Perception

BRTT.J. CRJMINOL. VOL 37 NO.
4 AUTUMN 1997
Fear of Crime
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RISK PERCEPTION AND
NEUTRALIZING FEAR OF CRIME
Toward Resolving the Paradoxes
WILLIAM R. SMITH and MARIE TORSTENSSON*
Downloaded from http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/ at UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA on May 19, 2016

Why the least -victimized by violence (e.g., women and elderly) are most fearful is a central paradox
in the fear of crime literature. Four attempts to resolve the paradox are discussed: hidden
victimization of women; greater tendencies of women to recall early life-course experiences, and to
generalize fear from one context to another and from one type of victimization to another;
vulnerability of women; and male discounting of fear. Empirical evidence from a Stockholm survey
is used to argue that the hidden victimization strategem does not seem likely to succeed in explaining
fear levels. Tendencies for women to generalize differently from men across time, space or type of
victimization experience are not found or weak. Results are consistent with the vulnerability
hypothesis, specifically the greater 'ecological vulnerability' of women (Sparks 1982), but there is
also evidence of male 'discounting' of risk and fear. Further research is needed to assess the extent
to which female vulnerability is more important than male discounting in accounting for risk
perceptions and fear of crime.
A central paradox in the study of the fear of crime is that the least victimized by serious
violent crime, the elderly and women, are most fearful of such victimization (Garofalo
1979; Stafford and Galle 1984). Rather than dismiss the relatively high levels of fear
among women as 'irrational', researchers have tried to account for it by four general
strategems. One is to argue that, if the true victimization rate of women were known,
it would be higher than that of men and explain the correspondingly higher levels of
fear among women (Pain 1995; Painter 1992;Junger 1987). A second strategem is more
complex. While women may not directly experience more serious violence than men,
they may experience it in a different manner. Specifically, women are more likely to
generalize across contexts (across time, space and types of victimization experience).
Early life course, geographically removed or different types of victimization experience
are more salient for women than men (Pain 1995; Warr 1984). A third strategem for
explaining the higher levels of fear among women is to argue that women are more
vulnerable to victimization: they are less able to flee or resist physical assault than men
and they have more to lose (Garofalo 1981; Junger 1987). Women are also subject to
* Department of Sociology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina and Swedish National Police Academy,
Stockholm, Sweden.
T I K authors would like to thank Irene Rajiic and Peter Asztalos for making reported crime data available to ui. They also thank
Kentin Johansson, Karin Sranberg, Lan Dolmen and Jenny Soukkan for their assistance with data processing as well as
interpretation of finding!. This research was made possible by support from the Swedish National Police Academy and the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. Neither organization is
responsible, however, for the content or opinions expressed in the paper.
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WILLIAM R. SMITH AND MARIE TORSTENSSON
rape, such that some have suggested that women's fear is fear of rape (Hindelangrt al.
1978; Warr 1984). One form of the vulnerability argument is that women react to the
same levels of risk with more fear than men do. An alternative interpretation is that
women not only are more sensitive to risk, but also perceive risk more often than men
do. The fourth strategem is to argue that women's fear levels are 'rational' but men's
are irrationally low (Stanko and Hobdell 1993; Goodey 1994). Men 'neutralize' their
fears more so than women (Agnew 1985).
While there is support in the literature for these attempts to account for women's
fear of crime (we refer to them as the hidden victimization, generalization of
experiences, vulnerability, and male neutralization hypotheses, respectively), we argue

that all four of the strategems need to be qualified in important ways to fit better with
the observations of our empirical study of fear of crime. We conclude that women may
be more 'ecologically vulnerable' than men are (Sparks 1982): women perceive more
risk in their own living areas and are consequently more fearful in response to specific
environmental contexts than men. Women's fear of specific contexts may be a reflection
of their vulnerability, while some men, particularly those with either low or high
educational achievement, think they are invulnerable, leading them to discount risk.
Defining Fear
In a recent review, Hale points out that in the past 30 years over 200 articles, books,
monographs and papers have been written on the fear of crime (1996: 79). Within this
literature, there are misgivings about what is being measured: is it fear or something
else? (Garofalo and Laub 1978; Hale 1996; Hough 1995; Farraro and LaGrange 1987).
Skogan summarizes the literature well (1984) in differentiating two 'fear of crime'
concepts: an evaluative component (assessing the risk of victimization) and an
emotional component (reacting to the threat of a crime). He alsd discusses a third
concept related to fear, the seriousness of the feared offence (as do others, e.g., Warr
1984). Our approach here is to measure risk and fear separately. By measuring fear in
specific contexts, such as walking alone in one's living area at night, we assume that it
is that fear of serious personal victimization that is being measured.
Note that fear is a variable, and not an attribute of everyone (i.e., fear is not a
constant). Thus, as general surveys show, most people are not fearful, or are only fearful
in some environments and not others. Researchers typically ask respondents if they are
fearful in specific contexts (walking alone at night in their neighbourhood, on a bus,
going to work, and so on), while other researchers ask respondents whether they would
find hypothetical situations to be fear invoking (Warr 1984; Warr and Stafford 1983),
e.g., 'how afraid are you about becoming a victim of a specific crime (burglary, assault)
in your everyday life?'. We take the former approach here.
Gender and Fear: Four Strategems

The most common form of explanation of the gender-fear of crime relationship is that
women are not victimized less than men, as found in most surveys, but equally, or more
so. Since women (and elderly) under-report actual victimization, they only appear to
be less victimized. Thus, women are not 'irrationally' fearful of crime, but rather their
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GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RISK PERCEPTION AND NEUTRALIZING FEAR OF CRIME
fear is due to 'hidden' victimization. Several in the literature have argued that if we take
actual victimization into account, the high levels of fear reported by women and the
elderly would no longer be a paradox (Pain 1995; Painter 1992; Junger 1987).
A second explanation of relatively high fear levels among women is that the cognitive
processing of women and men are not the same. In short, women 'generalize' across
situations more than men do, in any of three ways: temporal, geographic and type of
victimization experience. By temporal generalization it is meant that victimizations
occurring a relatively long time in the past are salient to current fear. Thus, Pain (1995)
argues that 'there is growing evidence that the development of fear of crime in
individuals is a cumulative process taking place over a far longer term'.

As for 'geographic' generalization, fear of violent crime in public places is argued to
be affected by victimization in private places (Pain 1993). Pain claims that 'risk' can no
more be meaningfully conceptualized as limited to particular time periods than to
particular spaces. The nature of crime against women ensures that it has a lasting effect
on personal fears both across time and space. Again Pain states (1995: 594):
. . . experience and knowledge of abuse from known men do not only create concern about further
domestic attacks for a significant minority of women. They can also have the effect of heightening
women's perceptions of their personal risk more broadly, and especially outside the home. (Valentine
1992; citation in original)
A third claimed tendency among women is to generalize across types of victimization

experience. Thus, if a woman experiences burglary in her home, she will be more fearful
of assault in her home. Perhaps the strongest empirical evidence in support of the
'generalization' of fear across crime types is the research of Warr (1984). Measuring
fear associated with vignettes describing hypothetical victimization situations, he
reports that fear of other types of crime largely explains away the gender effect on fear
of any one type crime (1984: 698). Warr concludes that 'a central reason for sex
differences in sensitivity to risk lies in the greater "generality" of fear among women'
(Warr 1984: 698). Citing Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) Warr suggests that 'there is a
"core" fear that underlies many other fears, namely fear of sexual abuse' (1984: 698).
As for the third general strategem, the vulnerability hypothesis, it is argued that
women are not only more physically vulnerable than men, but more sensitive to risk in
their environments because they are susceptible to sexual assault, including rape.
Moreover, women may feel more vulnerable to men because of frequent experiences
of various forms of harassment, which essentially serve as reminders to women of their
susceptibility to attack. As Pain again argues (1995: 168-69):
For those women who have not been victimized—and to put victimization in perspective, it can be
fairly confidently stated that these are a majority—their concern related to their 'tacit understanding
of the likelihood of experiencing male violence and the lack of protection they receive from those
around them". (Stanko 1987: 131; citation in original)
Also, Painter (1992: 168-69) states dearly:
Women experience a range of offensive behaviour directed at their sexuality, which they may perceive
as victimization but which would not necessarily be deemed 'criminal' which, nevertheless, profoundly
shapes women's lives creating a very different social reality for women than for men.
610
Evidence of vulnerability led Warr to hypothesize an interaction effect of gender and

risk: women are more sensitive to perceived risk than men. Equal doses of risk result
in greater fear among women than men (1984). Environments perceived as risky by
women may be defined as safe by men. Warr finds that women more often then men
perceive risk. It may be that the greater vulnerability of women leads them to perceive
risk more often.
Due to increased tendencies to see risk and greater sensitivity to risk, women have
higher fear levels. There may be a 'double interaction effect': gender and environment
may interact to enhance risk perception, and gender and risk perception may interact
to enhance fear. Due to hidden victimization, enhanced tendency to generalize across

time, space and type of victimization experience, as well as greater vulnerability, women
have higher levels of fear than men, and thus their fear levels are 'rational'. Recently a
fourth mechanism to explain the gender difference in fear has been discussed: men
'discount' (Agnew 1985) the risk of victimization (Stanko and Hobdell 1993; Goodey
1994). Part of the difference in men's and women's levels of fear may be due to a greater
tendency on the part of men to neutralize fear. Men are socialized to place relatively
high value on their physical abilities, including fighting, taking punches, ability to flee,
etc. Also, men are taught to believe that they have a protector role to play relative to
women and children. It may be more difficult for men to admit, even to themselves,
that they are fearful, or inadequate as protectors (Messerschmidt 1993; Arch 1993;
Chatterbaugh 1990). In short, men are taught to deny fear, or even to think they are
immune from harm or invulnerable (male machismo).
In the current study we focus on fear of crime (especially assault) in one's
neighbourhood ('living area'). For comparative purposes we also look at fear when using
public transport, and when walking in a central area (using a sample of residents in
Stockholm and the surrounding area in 1994). We will initially address the question of
how direct personal victimization relates to fear, and then explore evidence relevant to
the generalization hypothesis: are women more likely than men to generalize across
time, space, and type of victimization experienced? Then we address the vulnerability
hypothesis by examining the role environmental context plays on fear of victimization,
leading to some summary models that show support for the vulnerability and male
neutralization hypotheses.
The Data
From May to August 1994, data were collected by mail questionnaire in Stockholm and
the surrounding area (Stockholm county). Of 4,993 questionnaires sent out, using a
simple random sampling frame, 3,882 or 78 per cent were returned. The geographic
area was divided into eight sub-areas, corresponding to eight police districts, and
response rates across the eight were quite similar (none departed by more than 6 per
cent from the overall average), suggesting that the non-response was quite evenly
distributed across geographic areas.
In addition to the questionnaire data, officially reported crime incidents for the year
beginningjuly 1994 through June 1995 were collected, as crime data for the first half
of 1994 were unavailable due to reorganization of crime data processing in the
Stockholm area. Thus, the reported crimes available represent a proxy for actual
611
crimes committed in the period of time thought most likely to influence fear levels—the
6rst half of 1994. Crime incident data were aggregated into 60 community police
districts, and respondents' home addresses were also classified according to these
districts.
It should be noted that by studying fear in the Stockholm area, we are studying it in
a society characterized by a relatively low violent crime rate, compared to the US, or
most other Western countries. Fear levels are also considerably lower than reported in
the US. For example, typically about 40 per cent of those in various US surveys say they
are afraid to walk alone at night in their neighbourhood, while the comparable figure
for Stockholm is 21 per cent.

Measuring fear and anxiety about crime
Our measures of fear pertain to specific contexts, such as the respondent's 'housing
area' rather than more generally ('in your everyday life') or narrowly defined fear locales
(home or workplace). For the respondent's living area, we present two measures of fear.
The first is a one-item question of fear: 'How do you feel about going out alone in the
evening in your living area?' (It feels secure or not secure). Secondly, guided by
exploratory factor analysis, we use a two-item composite measure (standardized and
summed), consisting of the first measure mentioned above (fear of walking alone at
night in one's living area) and a second item: 'Are you anxious about being
attacked/battered in your housing area?' (Yes, very often; somewhat often; not often;
never). We measure perceived risk of violence in one's living area also by a one-item
question, 'How do you judge the risk of exposure to violence (assault, battery) in your
living area?' (Very high; somewhat higher; the same; somewhat less or no risk,
compared to other areas in the Stockholm vicinity).
As for fear in other contexts, we use two measures of anxiety while using public
transportation: a two-item scale of fear of using the subway, train or bus system during
the day and a four-item measure of fear while using any of the modes of public
transportation at night, during the week or holidays.
Finally, we use fear of walking alone at night/evening in Stockholm's inner city area
(a mostly commercial, popular area with many bars and an active night life). The
appendix shows a summary of characteristics of the measures of all the variables used
in the analysis. We introduce the independent variables in the narrative.
The direct, personal experience of serious harm

We argue that the impact of victimization has been clouded by a failure to differentiate
serious physical injury from other types of harm or violence, such as harassment,
intimidation, and threats. As a consequence there has been an underestimation of the
importance of the latter relative to the former in discussions of the causes of fear. Several
researchers have argued that women are more fearful than men because they are
victimized more often, but that traditional survey questions do not measure such
victimization (Pain 1995; Junger 1987). We do not try to address all the complexities
involved in the hidden victimization argument. Rather, we make a methodological
point about the rarity of reported violent victimization: they may be too rare to account
612
for much fear in general populations.1 Attempts to correlate the direct personal
experience of harm with fear will be plagued by the 'false negative' problem: too many
individuals will be fearful who have not experienced serious injury.
Table 1 shows the proportion of men and women who report having been exposed
to physical force in the past year such that visible marks or scars were the result. First,
if we define 'less than one in seventy-five' as rare, then serious injury in each of the
seven contexts in the past year is rare (the context with the most frequent occurrence
of serious physical violence is public places with 1.29 per cent of men reporting an
injury resulting in a mark/scar). Secondly, in most contexts (in one's home, other
homes, workplace and other places) there is no statistically significant difference

between the sexes in the proportion experiencing such injuries. However, in public
contexts (public transportation, restaurants, dance halls, or on the street) men are
more likely than women to experience physical violence. Thirdly, although men are
more likely to be exposed to physical force across more contexts, the differences are
rather small (not more than 1 per cent of the sample in any context). Previous research
has shown that women have a higher level of exposure to violence in their own homes
than men (in our study 0.69 per cent versus 0.32 per cent, although the difference is
not significant using the two-tailed test.) Fourth, although differences are small in
magnitude, it should be noted that the odds of experiencing physical violence for men
in a public context are two to three times greater than for women. (Women may
under-report such assaults because the person who assaulted them may be living with
them.)
How reliable are the estimates presented in Table 1 ? According to 'reverse record
checks' (surveys of people known in official records to have been victimized), surveys
underestimate the actual experience of physical force. While there is some exaggeration
of victimization in the past year because respondents 'forward telescope' their answers
TABLE 1 Proportion exposed in the past year to physical force leaving a mark or scar
All areas High official Areas with high levels of

assault rate areas perceived problems with
(top quanilc) fighting, drunks and
harassment (top quartile)
Where physical force was used Men Women Men Women Men Women
In own home 0.0032 0.0069 0.0070 0.0110 0.0044 0.0074
In other home 0.0027 0.0025 0.0047 0.0022 0.0067 0.0037
In one's workplace 0.0043 0.0039 0.0070 0.0066 0.0044 0.0018
On train, bus, or subway 0.0108* 0.0049* 0.0070 0.0088 0.0200 0.0110
At restaurant, dancehall or 0.0113* 0.0035* 0.0047 0.0044 0.0156 0.0055
other entertainment place
On the street, square or other 0.0129* 0.0039* 0.0117 0.0088 0.0200 0.0110
public place
Other places 0.0016 0.0010 0.0023 0.0022 0.0022 0.0037
• Gender difference statistically significant at 0.05 level
1
Doing so puts UJ at risk of appearing iiucmitive to tlic extent of unreponed serious injury. On the contrary, we acknowledge
dial dxrre b considerable unreponed serious physical injury, especially among women, as well as widespread harassment of women.
613
(e.g., recall events that occurred more than a year ago as having occurred within the
past year), there is more non-recall or 'failure to reveal' than forward telescoping. The
failure of respondents to recall or to reveal to an interviewer an assault is perhaps as
high as 64 per cent reported in a six-month recall period (Schneider 1981: 832).
Estimates of non-recall for assault vary from 35 per cent, 49 per cent and 52 per cent
across studies reported by Schneider, who also cites studies involving rape which show
a similar level of non-recall. Backwards telescoping over six or 12-month recall periods
is also a problem (defined as recalling an event as occurring more than a year ago when
it actually occurred within the past year), and a rate of 6 per cent is reported by
Schneider for assault (3 per cent across crime types). In summary, the combination of

non-recall and backwards telescoping of assault is more common than forward
telescoping. Thus, in the Stockholm study, which uses a 12-month recall period, assaults
are probably under-reported by a third to a half. It should be noted, however, that in
previous research there are small differences in forward telescoping and non-recall
across gender. Women are more error prone in either way: on the one hand, they are
somewhat more likely to forward telescope, increasing their estimates of victimization;
on the other hand, they are less likely to recall an incident, driving down the estimate
(Schneider 1981).
Let us assume, as seems reasonable, that there is some under-reporting of the actual
experience of physical force for women. Since indices of association or accuracy are
sensitive to the distributions of variables, the rarity of the event will diminish the
possibility for a high correlation with another variable, such as fear (Smith 1996).
Assume as a constant that 37 per cent of the women in our sample express fear of
walking alone at night in their living area. Assume further that about 2 per cent of
women experience a physical injury resulting in a scar or bruise every year
(approximately what we observe). We introduce 50 per cent increments in the
percentage of women who report being injured, and calculate the maximum
correlations that can be achieved with fear (dichotomous measure) under two
assumptions: all those experiencing injury in any context become very fearful and half
become very fearful.2 Figure 1 shows the maximum correlation between being injured
(in the past year, such that a mark or scar was the result) and fear of walking alone in
one's neighbourhood. At the observed injury level, denoted as zero in the graph (or
the 2 per cent reported level of injury for women), the maximum correlation that can
be attained, assuming that 100 per cent of all women injured are fearful, is about 0.17.
If half of the injured do not become fearful, the maximum correlation that can occur
is just under 0.04. If we assume, as some previous research suggests, a 'one third'
under-repotting rate of assaults among women (which is the same here as a 50 per
cent increase in reported injury),3 the maximum correlations rise somewhat to about
0.23 and 0.05, respectively. If we estimate double the reported levels, the correlations
reach about 0.27 and 0.06. If we estimate the injury rate to be four times, or 300 per
cent more than the reported rates, the maximum correlation that can be achieved is
'Actually only 44 per cent of the surveyed women who experienced an injury in die past year expressed fear of walking alone
at night in tlieir living areas. The 50 per cent incrcmcnu in trie observed injury rate are from 0.02 to O.OJ to 0.04, etc to 0.08 (four
lijiies die observed injury rate).
' Tlial is, if the actual true rate were 0.03, and the observed is 0.02, there is a S3 per cent under-reporting rate or a 50 per cent
increase in the observed level to achieve the 'true' rate.
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W1IXIAM R. SMITH AND MARIE TORSTENSSON
0.50
' All injured fear

Half injured fear
0.40

0.10
0.00 I I I
50 100 150 200 250 300
Percent Increase above observed Injury levels
FI c . 1 Hypothetical correlations (phi values)
0.38 and 0.08, respectively. All of these correlations are quite modest, especially in light
of the fact that the latter correlations (assuming half false positives) are more realistic
than the former. In short, one has to assume quite high rates of under-reporting (much
more than found in previous research), and make the unrealistic assumption that
100 per cent of all seriously injured women become afraid to walk alone in their living
areas at night, to achieve a moderate size correlation with fear.
For under-reporting to explain the sex differences in fear as well would require
further assumptions that men's non-recall errors are substantially lower than women's
(contrary to previous research), or that virtually no men become fearful after an injury
experience (we find that 27 per cent of men, and 44 per cent of the women become
fearful of walking alone at night in their living area after a serious injury in the past
year). Of course, we have only examined the situation when both variables measured
are dichotomies. The use of a non-dichotomous fear measure could result in somewhat
higher correlations, as could the count of the number of victimizations (see Table 6
below). Nevertheless, the rarity of the reported use of physical force, in conjunction
with what is known about reporting accuracy in victimization surveys makes the
prospects for success for the hypothesis of'hidden' serious injury of women to be rather
doubtful.
Before drawing conclusions about the importance of the hidden victimization
hypothesis, we evaluate evidence that, as suggested by Painter (1992: 173-7), women
are disproportionately concentrated in 'socially disorganized' neighbourhoods such
that their high levels of fear may be due to higher levels of personal victimization in
these more risky areas. Table 1 shows injury among those living in the top quartile of
615
areas according to officially recorded assault areas (community policing districts)4 and
in the top quartile of areas perceived to be plagued byfights,drunks, harassment, etc.
Unlike what we found across all areas, there are no statistically significant differences
between men and women in the 'bad neighbourhoods' regarding self-reported
experience of physical force in the past year, in support of Painter's hypothesis and in
harmony with her empirical results (1992: 174). At the same time the experience of
physical force by women in these 'risky' neighbourhoods is not generally more common
than that reported by men. The higher levels of fear reported by women, therefore, are
unlikely to be due to the greater frequency of serious physical injury of women, but
rather due to other factors.

Other studies have concluded that about one in ten women have been raped (Hall
1985; Painter 1991), and as many as one in four have been the victim of domestic
violence (Strauss et al. 1980). These lifetime rates underscore the difficulty of finding
empirical relationships between recent, serious forms of injury and fear levels: recent
serious victimization levels are low relative to fear levels. Low victimization levels
proximate in time to the measurement of fear are too rare to account for much fear.5
Other research has shown that the experience of forms of abuse other than serious
physical force is higher among women, especially those living in 'bad neighbourhoods.'
For example, Painter has found that almost three times as many women as men report
'general harassment' (1992: 174). Also, behaviours including being stared at, followed,
approached or spoken to, shouted at or called after, touched or held, or 'kerb crawled'
(followed by a car) are two to four times more likely to be reported by women than men
in low income housing developments (Painter 1992: 175). Similarly, Junger (1987)
reports that about 20 per cent of women in her sample reported 'serious' sexual
harassment, defined as either experiencing the threat or the use of physical violence
and experiences with family members where psychological coercion was present (1987:
368) one or more times in their lives. Overall, however, she notes that the vast majority
of any form of sexual harassment occurred longer than a year ago. Thus, there is little
evidence in her study of widespread, recent serious sexual harassment. We also find
evidence of harassment of women in that 10 per cent of the Stockholm women report
that it is 'somewhat of a problem' in their living areas. Thus, 'less serious' (or what
Junger defines as 'light events') involving visual or verbal contact are more prevalent
(in Junger's study 71 per cent had experienced 'light events' one or more times in their
lives) and may account for high levels of fear among women (although, again, one would
have to assume that there is a relatively long memory of such events, as most of them
occurred not within the past year). The ubiquity of harassment of women may explain
why they feel more vulnerable to crime and more sensitive toriskyenvironments.
In summary, we think it is generally inconsistent with empirical evidence to maintain
that the high levels of fear reported by women is due to their recent and direct
experience of substantially higher levels of serious personal injury than men
experience. The prospects for serious injury being a good predictor are poor, unless
1
Data were made available to iu at the community police district level, and the counts of various crime types were tabulated.
9
Victimization surveys in the US reveal that about 3.2 per cent of the population suffers rape, robbery, aggravated or simple
assault yearly (US Bureau of the Census 1994: 204). It U difficult to compare US results directly with the Stockholm survey, as
methodologies dUTer (we find that 3 per cent of the Stockholm residents report injury resulting in marks or bruises in the past
year). The validity of our argument, however, extends to the US as well as Sweden: recent physical injury is statistically rare.
616
WILLIAM R. SMITH AND MARIETORSTENSSON
new survey techniques are able to uncover far more injury among women than currently
seems the case. The direct personal experience of other forms of violence, as well as
the experience of harassment, however, may help us interpret women's fear, a point we
will come back to later in the paper.
Generalizations across time

The rarity of recent, direct experience of serious physical force may be partly
responsible for researchers turning to the second general strategem: women have a
greater tendency to generalize across time. For example, women may not be

appreciably more victimized than men in the past year, but serious victimization
experiences of more than a year ago may be more salient to their present fears than is
the case for men (as Pain has argued, 1995: 591).
There are several problems with the 'lifetime of memory' argument, however. First,
recall the problem with the rarity of injury events. To explain high proportions of fear
direct experience of injury must approximate fear levels. By asking respondents to recall
injury incidents occurring long ago, researchers can increase the proportion having
experienced serious injury and thereby raise the statistical chances of explaining fear.
However, assume that every year a different 2 per cent of the adult female population
is subject to serious assault (i.e., no one is seriously assaulted in more than one year) and,
as we find, 37 per cent of women are fearful to walk the streets alone at night in their
neighbourhood. It would take 18.5 years to have 37 per cent of the adult Stockholm
female population experience serious physical injury first hand. (Note that the injury
can occur anywhere, whereas the fear is more narrowly conceptualized as being in one's
living area.) Assuming that we fail to measure half of the actual injuries to women, it
would still take 12 years for the proportion injured to equal the proportion fearful.0 If
only 44 per cent of the women experiencing injury each year are fearful (as our results
above show) then it would take over 42 years to reach 37 per cent experiencing fear (or,
assuming again 50 per cent underestimation, it would take 28 years). In reality, the
experience of force several years ago is probably much less salient to current fear than
such experiences in the past year. Also, repeat victimization is likely, so that the
population of seriously injured women would grow more slowly than assumed above.
Nevertheless, it is arguable that over their whole lives a high enough proportion of
women will experience serious physical force such that a significant proportion of them
could be fearful as a result of personal experiences of serious physical force.
Furthermore, it is not necessary, of course, for any one explanatory variable to fully
account for variation in a dependent variable, so we should not demand this of the
injury variable.
The more damaging evidence against the hypothesis of generalization across time,
however, is the relationship between age and fear. Presumably, if 'early life-course'
experiences are important, than we would expect to find a strong relationship between
the age of the respondent and fear: the more years of living, the more experiences of
physical threat, and the greater the fear levels. Table 2 shows, however, that the
"Tliu is assuming Uiai 3 per cent are actually injured every year. If 37 per cent are fearful, tlien it would take 12 J yean for 37
per ceiitof the population to be injured.
617
relationship between age and fear of walking alone at night in one's living area is not
monotonically positive for either women or men. Rather, fear is uniformly low for men
until about age 60. Fear for women is greatest among those of 20 to 29, and decreases
somewhat with age, only to rise again among those over 60. Thus, the group
hypothesized (as Pain argues, 1995: 590) to be most influenced by the lifelong
accumulation of knowledge of victimization (elderly women) are less likely to report
high fear levels than those without the opportunity to accumulate such victimization
experiences (young women).
The fact that fear rises after age 60 is in harmony with a vulnerability interpretation
(the elderly are more vulnerable), rather than the 'lifetime of victimization' hypothesis.

That is, fear levels for men and women rise because of the increased vulnerability
associated with advanced age. (As can be seen in Table 2, even assuming that the 'unsure'
and those that 'don't go out' are actually afraid to do so, the results are similar.) At the
same time young women may be more fearful due to higher anxiety over rape than that
found among older women (Junger 1987). In conclusion, there is little evidence of a
'lifetime of memory' for women to accumulate serious victimization experiences such
that it makes them more fearful of walking at night in their living areas.7
Methodologically, such results indicate that it is more reasonable to confine the search
for the effect of the personal experience of physical force to a time period more closely
linked to the measurement of fear.
The generalization of fear across space

Several researchers have argued that women 'generalize' the actual experience of
victimization across spatial contexts more so than men (Pain 1995; Warr 1985). Women
are more fearful of walking alone at night in their living area because they experience
an assault at work, or in the home. While this seems plausible, it is not obvious. For
example, ifwomen truly have a 'general' fear because of such experiences, then we would
TABLE 2 Fear of walking alone at night in one's living area by gender and age (proportions)
Feel unsafe or don't know or don't go

Feel unsafe at night in living area out at night in living area
Age Men (N= 1,574)* Women (N= 1,533)* Men (N= 1,817) Women (N=2,017)
16 to 19 0.107 0.271 0.156 0.344

20 to 29 0.114 0.433 0.212 0.527
30 to 39 0.133 0.364 0.212 0.483
40 to 49 0.143 0.338 0.245 0.471
50 to 59 0.133 0.336 0.229 0.495
60 and above 0.235 0.444 0.417 0.682
•24% of women and 1396 of men answered "don't know1 or "don't go out at night' and are excluded from these
columns
7
Pain (1905: 594) reporu that women over the age of 60 arc least likely to 'avoid certain streets/areas', to be 'watchful as I walk'
and most likely to say they 'don't go out'. She finds that younger women are more likely to avoid certain streets/areas and be "watchful
as I walk'. Thus the idea that responses to Tear of crime increase with age among women b not supported in her study.
618
expect equal proportions of women to be fearful across different contexts. But as Table
3 shows, that is clearly not the case. For example, neither women nor men are often
fearful of riding public transportation in the daytime in the Stockholm area. At night
both women and men are substantially more fearful, but the fear levels vary with the
context: both men and women find their own housing area the safest of the three 'night'
contexts studied here, followed by public transport, and walking alone in downtown
Stockholm, where 59 per cent of the women and 29 per cent of the men are fearful. It
seems clear that the context and circumstances of one's experience of the environment
are very important to the experience of fear. At the same time, there are approximately
twice as many women as men expressing fear across several contexts measured here

(we will call this the 'two-for-one rule'). The two-for-one rule remains to be explained.
Another way of addressing the 'generalizability' of fear is to see if the data can help
us decide whether women generalize fear across contexts more so than men do. Sixteen
measures of fear/anxiety/risk in various contexts were factor analysed separately for
women and men with almost identical results. Four factors emerge from the analysis
(results not shown here): fear while taking public transportation at night, fear over
property crime, fear of violence, and fear while taking public transportation in the
daytime. The fact that four different underlying dimensions of fear emerge, and that
they are the same for men and women, counters the hypothesis that fear of crime is
generalized across space and time (day versus night) differently for women and men.
At the same time, not all places and times are distinct, e.g., anxiety over use of different
forms of public transportation at night are not distinct. It should also be noted, however,
that principal components analysis reveals that the first dimension has reasonably high
factor loadings for most of the fear items (except daytime public transportation use).
Thus, it is at least arguable that fear in specific contexts may be explained by fear of a
general nature. Although we know of no definitive statistical test in exploratory factor
analysis to ascertain the multidimensionality of fear (and we think that theory is lacking
for confirmatory factor analysis), we could have found, for example, only one factor for
women and several for men, but instead we found the factors to be the same for both
genders.
Although the dimensions of fear seem to be the same for men and women, women
may be more likely to generalize fear from one type of victimization experience to
another, e.g., women whose homes have been broken into may fear personal assault.
Due to prior common causes, such as living in a high risk neighbourhood, we expect
to find some relationship, for example, between frequency of victimization for property
TABLE 3 Proportion fearful in four contexts by gender
Context of fear Men (N= 1,808-1,855) Women (N= 1,996-2,027) Difference
Ride underground, bus, or train

in daytime 0.016 0.026 0.010
Walk alone in one's housing area
at night 0.122 0.282 0.160
Ride underground, bus, or train
at night 0.177 0.433 0.259
Walk alone in the evening/night
in Stockholm's inner city 0.287 0.589 0.301
619
crimes and fear of assault. Thus, it is important for our understanding of the generality
of fear across types of victimization experiences to control for these common causes. In
Table 4 we present analysis of covariance results of the relationship between various
types of property victimization in the past year and fear of walking alone in one's living
area at night, controlling for several variables found in previous research to be
important in predicting fear, including age, educational attainment, occupational class,
injury in the past year, andfiveenvironmental factors: (1) the official assault count of
the respondent's community policing area; (2) the perceived general risk of problems
such as fighting, drinking outdoors, etc. (derived from factor analysis results not
presented here); (3) lack of social contact among residents; (4) living in public rental

units; and (5) living in a suburban area.
The effect of various property victimization experiences are shown in Table 4 with
and without adjustments for the covariates. The results for multiple classification
analysis with covariates controlled, show that with three exceptions, there are no
statistically significant increases in fear of walking alone in one's living area as a result
of having a property crime victimization experience (we have excluded property
victimization with 10 or fewer occurrences in the sample). However, for women, having
experienced theft from one's attic, cellar or garage results in a 0.10 increase in the mean
fear level, (i.e., 47 per cent are fearful of walking alone at night in their living area),
adjusting for the seven covariates (58 per cent without such controls). For men, damage
to one's bike or motorcycle results in an approximate doubling of the fear level, to 0.15
above the grand mean, adjusting for the covariates. The only other statistically
significant 'main effect' is for the summary additive index of all property victimization:
for women there is a slight increase in the fear levels (0.03). Overall, however, there is
little support for the hypothesis that women generalize fear across contexts.
As a further test of the generality of fear across types of crime, we used an omnibus
measure of fear (sum of fear items in all contexts except fear of assault in one's living
area), and entered a regression equation as an independent variable, along with all the
TABLE 4 Property crime victimization and fear of walking alone at night m one's living area,
multiple classification analysis
Men, deviation Men, deviation Women, deviation Women, deviation

from grand mean from grand mean. from grand mean from grand mean.
Property crime victimization of 0.14 adjusted of0.37 adjusted
Theft from one's own house 0.07 0.00 -0.04 0.00
Theft from one's attic, cellar
or garage 0.08 0.03 0.25 0.10
Theft from one's car -0.01 0.03 0.04 0.03
Theft of or from one'i bike
or motorcycle -0.02 -0.02 0.03 0.02
Damage of one's house 0.01 -0.01 0.05 0.03
Damage of one's attic, cellar
or garage 0.18 0.09 0.19 0.04
Damage of one's car 0.03 0.00 0.07 0.02
Damage of one's bike or
motorcycle 0.19 0.15* 0.09 -0.03
Any property crime 0.02 0.00 0.06 0.03
620
WILLIAM R. SMITH AND MARIETORSTENSSON
control variables from the analysis of covariance above. Not surprisingly, it was found
to be a strong predictor of fear of assault in one's area, but, more importantly, the other
variables in the model that were statistically significant remained statistically significant
after controlling for the omnibus measure (this counters the results obtained by Warr
1984). Moreover, the magnitude of the regression coefficients was not greatly reduced
(results not shown here), either for men or women. We conclude from these analyses
that there is little evidence that either men or women generalize fears from property
crime in one context to crimes against the person in another context (one's living area).8
To summarize thus far, we have found that the hidden victimization of women is
unlikely to explain higher fear levels among women. Nor is there much support for the
hypothesis that women have a longer memory than men when it comes to victimization

experiences. Fear levels vary with context, suggesting little support for the
generalizability of fear across space. Nor is there much support for the idea that property
crime victimizations lead to increased fear of walking alone at night in one's living area.
What may account for the higher fear levels among women may be vulnerability.
The vulnerability hypothesis: risk or fear?

There is strong empirical support in the literature for the vulnerability hypothesis in
that those who are most vulnerable (women and elderly) consistently show high fear
levels (e.g., Warr 1984; Junger 1987). The theoretically interesting question is by what
mechanisms does vulnerability translate into fear. Warr has argued in a series of articles
that when men and women have the same levels of perceived risk, women have higher
fear levels due to greater sensitivity to risk. Sensitivity will depend on the vulnerability
of the person, as well as the seriousness of the offence. Thus, given equal 'doses' of
perceived risk, women will display more fear than men. We think Warr's evidence is
persuasive, but it does not tell us about the origins of risk perception itself. Warr finds,
for example, that women perceive risk more often than men (1984: 690). But Warr's
evidence is not based on risk perception of specific locations (e.g., one's living area),
but is more general ('in one's everyday life'). We address the question of whether
perceived risk of the same environments varies across gender. Women may not only be
more sensitive to risk, but perceive more risk in their living areas, possibly due to their
vulnerability and experiences of forms of harassment. To assess these tendencies it
would be ideal to have an 'objective' measure of risky places to determine if women and
men differ in their perceptions of risk. The official count of assaults outdoors (in
community police districts), provides a proxy measure of risky places. (We would prefer
to measure the assault rate in the individual's defined living area, but such data are
unavailable.) In Table 5 the perceived risk of assault in one's living area is shown across
genders by three levels of'objective' risk defined by the official police count of assaults
outdoors (approximate terciles).
Respondents were asked how they judge their risk of becoming exposed to violence
(assault or battery) in their living area. In Table 5 this variable is collapsed into three
" Note, however, that we do not test the Iiypodiesis tiai women arc more likely tlian inen to be fearful of personal assault in their
home after liaving experienced a burglary in their home. We tea whctlier women and men differ in their Fear of assault in their
living areas after experiences of properly victimization in tlieir homes and elsewhere.
621
TABLE 5 Characterization of risk of exposure to violence in living area by official assault rate
and gender*
Areas with low outdoor Areas with medium Areas with high
assault rate outdoor assault rate outdoor assault rate
Perceived personal Men Women Men Women Men Women
risk (N=601) (N=663) (N=655) (N=742) (N=560) (N=605)
Less than the average area 452 (75.2) 398 (60.0) 424(64.7) 383(51.6) 274 (48.9) 208 (34.4)
[457] [393] [434] [373] [259] [223]
Same as the average area 136 (22.6) 249 (37.6) 209(31.9) 314(42.3) 237 (42.3) 334 (55.2)
[151] [233] [206] [317] [225] [346]

Above the average area 13 (2.2) 16 (2.4) 22(3.4) 45(6.1) 49 (8.8) 63 (10.4)
[12] [17] [27] [40] [45] [67]
* Cell values consist of counts with percentages in parentheses computed based on the column marginals. The
expected counts based on a hierarchical loglinear model with main effects and two interactions (women x
perceived personal risk and assault count x perceived personal risk) are in square brackets
categories: above average, average, or below average. The assault count in the
community policing area of each resident (low, medium, high) is presented across the
columns. Caution should be exercised in interpreting these results as the comparison
of one's own living area and the presumably larger community policing district is
necessarily inaccurate. Community policing areas may be made up of heterogeneous
sub-areas. If residents within a community policing area with a high assault rate define
their living areas as safe, they may be accurately perceiving the official assault rate in
their living area (unmeasured here). Nevertheless, we would expect to find some
relationship in Table 5 between the official assault count and the perceived risk of
assault. Indeed, the results show that, as the 'objective' risk of outdoor assault increases,
the percentage of men and women perceiving the risk of assault also increases. We find
that only 2.3 per cent of the men and women in community policing areas with low
assault rates 'misperceive' the risk of assault to be 'above average' (combining the bottom
cells of columns one and two). At the same time, women in 'objectively' safe areas are
less likely than men to perceive 'accurately' their own living area as below average in
risk. Women are more likely than men to see relatively safe neighbourhoods as
representing only 'average' risk.
In general men are more likely to see their living areas as less risky (below average)
than women are: two-thirds of the men in medium assault areas, and half of the men
in high assault areas 'misperceive' the risk of assault as below average. Fewer women
'underestimate' the risk to be less than what official outdoor assault rates indicate. Only
half to a third of the women 'misperceive' their living area as below average when the
official ranking is medium and high, respectively.
Although women are more likely than men to perceive risk (e.g., more women than
men define medium and high assault areas as 'above average' in risk), the difference is
somewhat small (6.1 to 3.4 in medium, and 10.4 to 8.8 in high risk areas).9 More
0
It is also likely that the community policing areas with the lowest outdoor assault rates are more homogeneous than community
policing areas with high assault rates, to it is not surprising to tee a greater correspondence between men and women in assessing
their personal risk within safe (i.e. homogeneous) areas.
622
interesting is the fact that 49 per cent of the men living in high risk community policing
areas perceive their living areas as 'below average', compared to only 34 per cent of the
women in high risk community policing areas. Thus, there is some support for the idea
that women perceive risk of victimization more often than men, especially in high risk
areas. Although the interpretation of the table is somewhat equivocal, it does provide
support for the argument that women perceive more risk than men in similar
geographic areas, but especially in high risk areas. At the same time the gender
differences in risk perception do not seem as great as was found for fear levels (the
'two-for-one' rule).
To show further the importance of gender in risk perception, we conducted a

hierarchical loglinear analysis of variables in Table 5. Using the standard backward
elimination of models, the third order interaction term was rejected and deleted from
the model. One second order term, the perceived risk of violence and sex, was also
dropped. The resulting model with two interaction terms (perceived risk and sex;
perceived risk and official risk) had a likelihood chi square of 8.67 with 6 degrees of
freedom, and a probability level of 0.193. The predicted counts in each cell are
presented in Table 5. Examination of the standardized residuals (not presented)
revealed that none were higher than 1.26, providing further evidence of a reasonably
good fit of the model to the observed counts. If we were to drop the perceived risk and
sex interaction term, the likelihood ratio chi square would increase by 77.64 (two
degrees of freedom). Thus, the cell values of the table vary across sex and perceived
risk categories. Specifically, the gender difference becomes smaller with higher levels
of perceived risk. Thus, it is clear that the perceived risk and gender interaction cannot
be ignored.
Male neutralization of risk and fear

Women perceive more risk and are more fearful, but it is tautologically true that men
see less risk and are less fearful. That is, Table 5 can be interpreted to mean that men
'discount risk' more so than women relative to the 'objective' assault rate. Is there
independent evidence of male discounting of risk? We argue that there is such evidence
in the relationship of men's social class background to risk and fear. Although
individual-level data on social class are often unavailable (Hale et al. 1994), in general
class background and fear are negatively related (the affluent and better educated are
less fearful, e.g., Hale 1996: 103; Parker et al. 1993). There are two common
explanations of the negative relationship: a selection effect (the socioeconomically
disadvantaged cannot afford to live in the neighbourhoods where risk is low), or an
empowerment effect—the advantaged have a greater sense of control or mastery of
their environment. We find, however, that there is a curvilinear relationship between
class background and both risk and fear of crime. The shape of the relationship is
different for men than for women. For men both risk and fear follow an inverted
U-shape with educational attainment and occupational class: only men of intermediate
educational achievement and occupational status have high fear levels. For women, on
the other hand, only the highly educated have lower fear levels: lower and middle levels
of education are associated with equally high fear and risk levels. Perhaps for men there
are two avenues to lower perceived risk and fear: empowerment through educational
623
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RISK PERCEPTION AND NEUTRAIJZING FEAR OF CRIME
and occupational attainment, and a subscribing to values of physical prowess

(machismo) among the lower classes. Before discussing this further, however, we will
introduce the summary models of risk perception and fear.
Summary Models
Below we further refine the relationships of risk and fear by modelling risk of assault
separately from fear of assault. With some omissions (see footnote) we use the same
independent variables that we include as covariates in the study of fear across contexts.10
They include age, low and high educational attainment (preliminary analysis for men

revealed a curvilinear relationship with risk and fear; physical injuries (logged),
property victimization (logged), and three 'environmental context' measures: the
number of assaults (logged) occurring in the resident's community policing area,"
living in a suburb, and living in public rental housing. Many of these variables have
been found elsewhere to be important determinants of fear (Skogan and Maxfield 1981;
Garofalo 1981; Hale et al. 1994). A variable measuring lack of communication among
residents in one's living area is also included since social contact is a possible mitigating
factor in fear (or aggravating, as some have hypothesized, e.g., Hunter and Baumer
1982). We refer to all of these independent variables collectively as our 'base model'.
Since risk perception may be 'personalized' ('it could happen to me') or conceived
more abstractly ('assaults are common in my living area'), both personal and general
risk are modelled. Personal risk is the respondent's perceived risk of experiencing
assault and battery in his/her living area. General risk is the respondent's perception
of the prevalence in his/her living area of problems with fighting, alcohol or drug abuse,
young people outdoors making noise, and harassment of women and children. We
differentiate personal and general risk because they are not highly correlated.
Equations 1-4 of Table 6 show the OLS regression coefficients for the four models:
personal and general risk for men and women, respectively.12 Of specific interest are
differences in the unstandardized regression coefficients across gender (for example,
compare columns one to two, and three to four)." Age among women has a negative
effect for general risk and is unrelated to personal risk. Age among men is unrelated
to general risk, while positively associated with personal risk. Thus, controlling for the
other variables in the model, it is older men who perceive personal risk (perhaps due
to their vulnerability), and younger women who perceive general risk in their living
areas (perhaps because younger women are more often harassed, Painter 1992).
As for low educational achievement, it is not associated with general or personal risk
among women, while high educational achievement does have a strong negative effect
10
Low and high occupational status caused mulu-collinearity problems, are conceptually redundant with educational attainment,
and were excluded from further analysis. We initially exclude general risk.
11
Number of outdoor assaults (logged) has substantively the same effects as the number of assaults (indoor and outdoor) across
die models in Table 6.
11
Omitted from presentation in Table 6 are two dummy variables for cases with missing values. Mean substitution was used in
conjunction with the missing value dummy variables, a procedure discussed in Cohen and Cohen (1983). Iistwise deletion produced
similar results.
13
All tlie models pass mulli-collinearity diagnostics as recommended by Bdsley (1991). Examination of outliers and influential
cases revealed one case with a high Cook's D value in the models for men. Dropping the case has no substantive eflect on the results
reported here.
624
TABLE 6 Perceptions of risk and fear: OLS (metric and standardized coefficients) and logistic regression (metric and exponential coefficients)
Equation: 1" 2 3 4 5(log)*»* 6(log)*** 7 8 9(k)g)*** 10(log)«* 11 12

Independent General risk Personal risk Fear of walking alone Assault anxiety Fear of walking alone Assault anxiety
variable
Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women
Constant 0.014 0.112 2.335* 2.582* -1.50* -0.292* -0.393* 0.586* -1.84* -0.554* -0.281* -0.526*
Age 0.001 -0.021* 0.006* -0.000 0.031* 0.006 0.009* -0.002 0.040* 0.012* 0.006* 0.000
(0.00) (-0.08) (0.10) (-0.01) (1.03) (1.01) (0.11) (0.01) (1.04) (1.01) (0.07) (0.00)
Low educational -0.573* -0.034 -0.040 -0.068 -0.636* -0.252 -0.177* -0.114 -0.572* -0.127 -O.108 -0.051
achievement (-O.05) (-0.00) (-0.02) (-0.03) (0.529) (0.778) (-0.05) (-0.02) (0.565) (0.880) (-0.03) (-001)
High educational -0.209 -.474* -0.109* -0.100* -0.794* -0.460* -0.298* -0.232* -0.727* -0.364* -0.212* -0.104
achievement (-0.03) (-0.05) (-0.07) (-0.06) (0.452) (0.631) (-0.11) (-0.07) (0.483) (0.695) (-0.08) (-0.03)
Injury 1.67* 0.756 0.260* 0.189 1.303* 0.308 0.899* 0.603 0.350 0.321 0.615* 0.371
(0.06) (0.02) (0.05) (0.03) (3.68) (1.36) (0.11) (0.04) (1.42) (1.38) (0.07) (0.03)
Property 1.04* 1.45* 0.205 0.245* 0.187 0.796* 0.126 0.456* -0.152 0.587* -0.077 0.118
victimized (0.06) (0.08) (0.07) (0.08) (1.21) (2.22) (0.03) (0.07) (0.859) (1.80) (-0.02) (0.02)
NO Assault count 1.23* 1.28* 0.243* 0.301* 0.762* 0.544* 0.346* 0.427* 0.350* 0.031 0.106* 0.051
(0.19) (0.17) (0.21) (0.24) (2.14) (1.72) (0.18) (0.16) (1.42) (1.03) (0.05) (0.02)
Suburban area -0.902* -1.35* -0.125* -0.221* -0.197 -0.511* -0.131 -0.365* 0.096 -0.075 0.013 -0.052
(-0.10) (-0.14) (-0.08) (-0.14) (0.820) (0.600) (-0.05) (-0.11) (1.10) (0.927) (0.01) (-0.01)
Public rental 1.86* 2.67* 0.163* 0.280* 0.372* 0.751* 0.160* 0.501* 0.061 0.128 -0.081 0.030
housing (0.18) (0.25) (0.09) (0.16) (1.45) (2.11) (0.05) (0.13) (1.06) (1.14) (-0.03) (0.01)
Lack of social 0.261* 0.154* 0.46* 0.035* 0.120* 0.090* 0.044* 0.056* 0.022 0.038 -0.003 0.012
contact (0.19) (0.11) (0.18) (0.14) (1.13) (1.09) (0.10) (0.10) (1.02) (1.04) (-0.01) (0.02)
General risk 0.186* 0.127* 0.078* 0.081*
(1.20) (1.14) (0.26) (0.22)
Personal risk - 1.60* 1.42* 0.592* 0.901*
(4.93) (4.14) (0.35) (0.41)
Adj. Rsquare 0.166 0.185 0.134 0.182 0.082 0.099 0.301 0.334
* Significant at 0.05 level.

•• Metric OLS coefficients (standardized), except for equations 5, 6, 9 and 10
*** Logistic regression coefficients (exponentiated in parentheses)
on general and personal risk. For men, both low and high educational attainment are
negatively associated with general and personal risk, respectively. This supports the
hypothesis that males with low education discount risk: they do not perceive the
problems of fighting, outdoor drinking, and harassment in their living areas. Perhaps
a machismo orientation among lower class men inhibits the perception of problems in
their neighbourhoods. Also, males living in such areas may themselves be participating
in such activities and thus unlikely to identify their own behaviours as deviant. Higher
status men (and women), on the other hand, tend to discount risk, perhaps because
their educational achievement is empowering, but we cannot rule out selection effects:
the better educated may be able to afford living in areas with lower risks. If selection

processes are operating, however, then men with low educational attainment should be
selecting less desirable living areas. Such selection makes the negative effect of men's
low educational achievement on general risk even more striking.
As for the effect of victimization experiences, although the effects are small (see
standardized coefficients), property victimization affects women's perceptions of
general and personal risk (consistent with evidence from Maguire and Bennett 1982:
129-34), while injury affects men's general and personal risk perceptions. Thus, there
is some support for women's generalization of fear from property to personal
victimization, as well as for a vulnerability interpretation of male risk perception:
recently injured males perceive morerisk.Men's generalriskperception is also affected
by property victimization. The official assault count has similar effects on general and
personal risk for men as for women. Note that in terms of standardized effects, the
official assault rate has the largest effects (for men and women) of any of the variables
in the analysis, providing some support for the idea that perceptions of risk are
grounded in objective behaviours.
As for environmental effects, among women, living in a suburb and in public rental
housing have almost double the effects on personal risk than they do for men. These
same factors also have substantially higher effects on the perception of general risk for
women than for men. Thus, there is evidence that women are more 'ecologically
vulnerable' than men (Sparks 1982). Somewhat surprisingly, lack of social contact has
more of an effect on general risk for men than women. Men who report fewer social
contacts report more general and personal risk than do women with few contacts.
In summary, whether risk is conceptualized in terms of personal risk or more
generally as the prevalence offighting,drinking, etc., the pattern offindingsis similar.
Women's risk perception is influenced more by age (negatively), features of the
immediate environment, and property victimization, while men's is affected by age
(positively) and injury experiences. Thus, there is some support for a vulnerability
interpretation of risk perception: elderly and previously injured men perceive more
personal risk, while women are more influenced in their perceptions of personal risk
by environmental factors, such as living in a suburban area or in public rental units.
(Men's fear is also influenced by such factors, but less so.)
Turning now to models of fear (5-12 in Table 6), we distinguish between fear of
walking alone at night (dummy variable) and anxiety over being assaulted in one's living
area (two-item index) to determine if the results are robust across measures of fear and
regression methods. Equations 5 and 6 show the results of logistic regressions for men
and women, respectively. We present logistic regression coefficients (which represent
the change in the log of the odds of being afraid to not being afraid to walk alone at
626
night in one's living area), as well as (in parentheses) the exponentiated values (the
change in the odds of being afraid to not being afraid). For example, living in a public
rental unit increases the log of the odds of men being afraid to their not being afraid
by 0.372, or a 45 per cent increase in the odds ratio. Living in a suburban area reduces
the odds of fear to non-fear for women by 40 per cent. The results show a generally
similar pattern to what is found for the models of risk: women's fears are more
influenced by living in a suburb and in public rental housing, while men are more
influenced by age and injury. Low and high educational achievement are both
associated with lower fear levels for men; for women only high educational achievement
is associated with less fear of walking alone in one's living area. The official assault count

has a stronger effect for men than women, and the effect of lack of social contact is quite
similar across gender.
The results in OLS models 7 and 8 of assault anxiety are similar to the earlier
models: men's fears are more influenced by age, injury, and intermediate levels of
educational attainment. Highly educated women are less fearful, and women in
general are influenced more than men by living in the suburbs, and in public rental
units. Both genders' fears are increased by lack of social contact and the official assault
count.
Thus, the models of risk and fear examined thus far, 1-8, reveal a similar pattern.
We conclude that across genders the variables that affect risk and fear are somewhat
different, yet within gender the factors that affect risk also affect fear. For men, there
is evidence that the vulnerable (older, recently injured) perceive more risk and more
fear. Low educational attainment for men is also associated with lower risk and fear
(providing support for the male discounting hypothesis). For women, there is evidence
that their ecological vulnerability extends to both risk and fear. As for educational
attainment, it is the well-educated woman who feels empowered and perceives less risk
and fear, or perhaps through selection processes, lives in a safer neighbourhood.
The similarity within genders of the results of models 1-8 suggest to us that risk may
mediate the effects of the various factors in the base model on fear. Indeed, equations
9 and 10 along with equations 11 and 12 show that perceived personal risk of assault,
and, to a lesser extent, perceived general risk (the dependent variables in equations
1-4) are among the strongest predictors (for men and for women) of fear of walking
alone at night and of assault anxiety in one's living area. Moreover, the tworiskvariables
reduce the size of the effects of most of the other variables in the equations: compare
equations 5-8 with 9-12, respectively. However, when personal and general risk are
controlled, the age effects are not appreciably affected (age, however, has a statistically
significant positive effect for women in equation 10). High educational attainment also
remains a strong predictor of fear, while low educational attainment for men is
negatively associated with fear of walking alone at night, perhaps indicative of a male
discounting of fear. The effects of living in a suburb and in public housing are no longer
statistically significant for either men or women. Injury does not affect men's fear of
walking alone at night, but it affects their anxiety about assault. Property victimization
for women still has a significant effect on walking alone at night in one's living area,
and injury still affects men's assault anxiety. The effects of the official assault count are
reduced substantially for men, and to statistical insignificance for women. Social
contacts no longer have an effect for either men or women. In summary, there is rather
strong support for the hypothesis that risk perception mediates the effects of
627
environment on fear. There is some evidence, however, that age and prior injury still
predict fear for men when controlling for risk, in support of a vulnerability
interpretation. For both men and women environmental effects on fear are largely
accounted for by risk perceptions for both men and women. Women's fear of walking
alone at night in their living area is predominantly due to their perceptions of risk,
although high educational attainment and number of property victimizations also have
small effects. As for assault anxiety among women, personal and general risk are the
only factors accounting for it. As for gender differences, however, the results speak to
the similarity in the mediating role risk perception plays in fear production. Both men
and women's fears are affected similarly by risk perceptions, and the magnitude of the

effect of risk perception is roughly the same for women as for men. A one unit increase
in personal risk for men results in almost a quadrupling of fear of walking alone at night
in one's living area, and a tripling of this fear for women. For anxiety of assault, the
effect of personal risk is somewhat higher for women than men, 0.901 to 0.592. These
are the strongest effects in equations 11 and 12. These results suggest that there are
many similarities in the relationship ofriskto fear among men and women. At the same
time, it should not be forgotten that what helps generate the higher levels of risk
perception for women is living in the suburbs and in public housing. That is, women
see more risk in publicly owned housing and urban environments than do men. In
short, there is evidence of a double interaction effect of gender-environment on risk
perception, and gender-risk on fear. Thus we can expand on Warr's observation (1984)
that women are more fearful because of greater sensitivity to risk: they more often
perceive risk in their living areas.
Conclusion
In summary, the results in Table 6 lead us to conclude that women respond to similar
environments differently than do men. Specifically, they see more risk in urban and
public housing contexts, than do men. Women and men's risk perceptions influence
their fear, and seem to mediate much of the environmental effects on fear. Women may
not only be more sensitive to risk than men are, but they perceive some places as risky
which men do not (or men 'deny' risk).
While the difference in fear levels between men and women can be partly explained
by the differential response to urban and public housing environments (whether we
interpret these results as women's perception of greater risk, or men's discounting of
risk), the question remains as to why do women perceive a greater risk in these
environments? Research by Pain (1993) shows that most women have experienced
forms of harassment such as being followed, leered at, or receiving unwelcome sexual
comments, while about a third have been flashed at, or touched/groped (see also Painter
1992: 176). Such incidents may make women more sensitive to the dangers that lurk
in specific environments. Thus, women who live in public rental apartments, for
example, or in areas that are perceived to have problems associated with the harassment
of women, are more fearful than women in other contexts because of the threats that
harassment represents. This interpretation is in harmony with Warr (1985), who argues
that hostile and abusive behaviour directed towards women makes them fearful of
sexual assault
628
Our results also show the importance of neighbourhood factors in explaining fear
(Reiss 1986; Maxfield 1984; Taylor et al. 1984; Smith 1989; Wikstrom 1995). The fact
that public rental units instil more fear than other forms of housing is in harmony with
British Crime Survey results, as reported by Smith (1989: 203), where 41 per cent of
those living in rental units expressed fear of'walking alone in this area after dark*. In
Stockholm over half the women (55 per cent) and almost a quarter of the men (21 per
cent) are afraid to walk alone at night in their living area if they live in public rental
units. This can only partly be attributed to the physical design (typically, multi-story
apartment buildings), as such designs are common among privately owned buildings,
but is more likely to be due to such factors as the kinds of tenants in public rentals, or
to community dynamics in these living areas. For example, 39 per cent of those in the

survey who live in public rental units report not being born in Sweden. Immigrants in
Sweden have been associated with lower levels of educational attainment, income, and
higher likelihood of receiving welfare (Wikstrom 1991; Martens 1995).
In conclusion the results here speak to the importance of gender in our
understanding of fear of violence. There is little support for the 'hidden victimization'
explanation. Nor is there much support for women having 'longer memories' than men
such that fear is increased from recall of early life-course victimization experiences. We
see litde evidence of generalization of fear from one context to another or from one
type of victimization to another, aldiough there is some evidence that women are more
fearful of assault after experiencing a property victimization. In short, future attempts
to make fear of crime more 'rational' might focus on exploring the two general
explanations in harmony with our overallfindings.The first is that women's 'ecological
vulnerability' leads them to perceive more risk in their neighbourhoods and to report
fear more often, which itself is reinforced by experiences of harassment in many
contexts over the course of their life. The greater vulnerability of women may itself
account for higher levels of risk perception: if one is vulnerable, one 'notices' various
problems in one's living area. A second interpretation, not necessarily in conflict with
the first, is that men may discount risk more than women, possibly through the use of
neutralization devices, such as discussed by Agnew (1985). It seems plausible that male
discounting of the risks associated with committing crimes (Hill and Atkinson 1988;
Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Tiby 1990; Janson 1995) extends to discounting of the
risk of victimization. Further research is necessary to determine whether the
vulnerability or male neutralization hypothesis provides a better explanation of gender
differences in fear levels.
629
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RISK PERCEPTION AND NEUTRAUZING FEAR OF CRIME
APPENDIX
Variable Table(s) Description Mean SD Range
Experience of physical force 1 Have you yourself In the past year

In various contexts been exposed to physical force
resulting in visible marks or scars?
(proportion)
in own home 0.005 0.072 0-1
in other home 0.003 0.051 0-1
at one's workplace 0.004 0.064 0-1
on train, bus, or subway 0.008 0.088 0-1
at restaurant, dancehafl, or other

entertainment place 0.007 0.085 0-1
on the street, square, or public place 0.008 0.090 0-1
other places 0.001 0.036 0-1
Women all proportion 0.52 0.50 0-1
Official assault rate 1.6 Number of reported assaults in 327.7 329.0 50-
community policing reporting districts 2263
(top quartile used in Table 1, natural
log in Table 6)
Perceived general risk 2 Perceived problems In living area:

(top quartile in Table 2) -5.76
Sum of standardized items -0.03 4.53 to
13.93
(1=big problem, 5=no problem)
drunk persons outdoors 3.78 1.25 1-5
quarrels and fights outdoors 4.05 1.28 1-5
alcohol and drug abuse 3.79 1.24 1-5
young ruffians 3.65 1.32 1-5
harassment of women 3.87 1.15 1-5
harassment of children 3.83 1.10 1-5
Age 2,6 Age in years 42.0 14.6 16-83
Fear of walking alone at 2,4,6 How do you feel when you walk alone
night in one's living area in the evening in your living area?
feel secure (proportion) 0.609
not secure 0.209
don't go out 0.099 _ _
dontknow 0.084
Fear of riding subway, bus 3 Rather or very often anxious 0.02 0.14 0-1
or train in daytime
Fear of riding subway, bus 3 Rather or very often anxious 0.31 0.46 0-1
or train at night
Fear of walking alone In the 3 Rather or very often anxious 0.45 0.50 0-1
evening/night in Stockholm's
inner city
630
Theft victimization In various 4 Have you or someone in your

contexts household been exposed to stealing in
the past year? how often?
fen your house 0.02 0.14 0-10
from your attic, cellar, garage 0.11 0.45 0-5
from your car or on your car 0.10 0.68 0-30
of a bike, moped, or motorcycle 0.11 0.42 0-5
Damage victimization in 4 Have you or someone in your

various contexts household been exposed to property

damage In the past year?
of your house 0.02 0.25 0-10
of your attic, cellar, or garage 0.04 0.27 0-5
of your car 0.12 0.75 0-30
of your bike, moped or motorcycle 0.23 0.23 0-5
Any property victimization 4 Any property damage or theft in the 0.34 0.47 0-1
past year (In any of the contexts
mentioned above plus in any free
standing buildings at one's home, car
theft/damage, or In another area
Outdoor assault rate 5 Official outdoor assault rate 102.6 142.1 12-
1137
Perceived personal risk of 5,6 How do you Judge your risk of 2.40 0.79 1-5
assault exposure to violence (assault, battery)
in your living area?
(1=no risk; 5=Wg risk compared to
other areas in Stockholm)
Low educational 6 Individuals with primary school only 0.17 0.37 0-1
achievement
High educational 6 Gymnasium (high school) or higher 0.42 0.49 0-1

achievement
Injuries resulting In mark or 6 Number of Injuries resulting in a mark 0.04 0.24 ^0-4
scar In past year or scar In the past year
Property victimization in past 6 Number of property victimizations at or 0.14 0.50 0-10

year (home, cellar, attic, around one's home
garage, free standing
building)
Suburban area 6 Lives in any of the following police 0.40 0.49 0-1
reporting districts: Udingd, Ekero,
Norrtalje, Rlmbo, Hallstavfks,
Vallentuna, Vaxholms, Akersberga,
Ostra Jafafla, Vastra JarfaOa,
Upplands-Bro, Sigtuna, Upptands
Vasby, Saltsjo-Boo, Rsksatra/Saltjo-
badens, Varmdo, Tyresfl/Alta,
Handens, Vastemanlnge,
Nynashamns, TuIBnge/Tumba, Varby,
Huddinge, Skogas/Transund,
Jama/Nykvam
Public housing rental 6 Rents publicly owned apartment 0.24 0.43 0-1
631
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RISK PERCEPTION AND NEUTRAUZINC FEAR OF CRIME
Lack of social contact 6 Additive index of four standardized 0.00 3.13 -4.67
items: Oo you know other people in to 8.83
your living area? Are there others in
your living area that you are In the
habit of borrowing from? Is it common
In your living area for neighbors to talk
with each other when they meet? Do
you yourself frequently visit with others
in your neighborhood?

Assault anxiety 6 Additive Index of two standardized -0.06 1.78 -1.38
items: Are you anxious to be attacked/ to 4.95
battered in your living area? and how
do you feel about walking alone In the
eveinlng in your living area? (not
secure)
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634

Gender Risk Perception

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BRTT.J. CRJMINOL. VOL 37 NO.

WILLIAM R. SMITH and MARIE TORSTENSSON*

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Gender and Fear: Four Strategems

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A third claimed tendency among women is to generalize across types of victimization

Also, Painter (1992: 168-69) states dearly:

Evidence of vulnerability led Warr to hypothesize an interaction effect of gender and

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The direct, personal experience of serious harm

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All areas High official Areas with high levels of

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' All injured fear

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FI c . 1 Hypothetical correlations (phi values)

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Generalizations across time

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The generalization of fear across space

Feel unsafe or don't know or don't go

16 to 19 0.107 0.271 0.156 0.344

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TABLE 3 Proportion fearful in four contexts by gender

Context of fear Men (N= 1,808-1,855) Women (N= 1,996-2,027) Difference

Ride underground, bus, or train

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Men, deviation Men, deviation Women, deviation Women, deviation

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The vulnerability hypothesis: risk or fear?

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Male neutralization of risk and fear

and occupational attainment, and a subscribing to values of physical prowess

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Equation: 1" 2 3 4 5(log)*»* 6(log)*** 7 8 9(k)g)*** 10(log)«* 11 12

* Significant at 0.05 level.

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Variable Table(s) Description Mean SD Range

Experience of physical force 1 Have you yourself In the past year

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Women all proportion 0.52 0.50 0-1

Perceived general risk 2 Perceived problems In living area:

Age 2,6 Age in years 42.0 14.6 16-83

Variable Table(s) Description Mean SD Range

Theft victimization In various 4 Have you or someone in your

Damage victimization in 4 Have you or someone in your

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High educational 6 Gymnasium (high school) or higher 0.42 0.49 0-1

Property victimization in past 6 Number of property victimizations at or 0.14 0.50 0-10

Variable Table(s) Description Mean SD Range

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HINDELANC, M., GOTTFREDSON, M. and GAROFALO, J. (1978), Victims of Personal Crime: An

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You might also like

Equation: 1" 2 3 4 5(log)» 6(log)* 7 8 9(k)g)* 10(log)«* 11 12