Although fear of crime is a concern for people of all genders, studies consistently find that women around the world tend to have much higher levels of fear of crime than men, despite the fact that in many places, and for most offenses, men's actual victimization rates are higher. Fear of crime is related to a perceived risk of victimization, but is not the same; fear of crime may be generalized instead of referring to specific offenses, and perceived risk may also be considered a demographic factor that contributes to fear of crime. Women tend to have higher levels for both perceived risk and fear of crime.
In women's everyday lives, fear of crime can have negative effects, such as reducing their environmental mobility. Studies have shown that women tend to avoid certain behaviors, such as walking alone at night, because they are fearful of crime, and would feel more comfortable with these behaviors if they felt safer.
Causes
Social scientists have differing views on the causes of women's fear of crime. Some have argued that women's heightened fear of crime is due to women's higher levels physical vulnerability compared to men, although feminist work generally resists this generalization and often tries to relocate the cause to larger societal factors.
Social factors
Most women are aware of the pervasive cultural view that women are more vulnerable than men, which may make them think they are more likely to be victimized and therefore contribute to their fear; in this way, it would be perceived vulnerability and not an actual vulnerability that is the cause of women's fear. Some research has also suggested that women are in fact not much more fearful about crime than men, but that dominant cultural ideas about masculinity may make men reluctant to talk about their fear or report it in surveys.
One study has shown that women may have higher levels of fear of crime, not because they are scared of being victimized themselves, but fear of their children being victimized. Women are more likely than men to see their relationships with others as an interdependent relationship. This interdependent relationship makes women more scared of crimes being committed against their loved ones than themselves. This distinction of relationships cause women's fear of crime to be higher than men's fear of crime, because men do not see their relationships as interdependent. This study argues that women's fear of crime is caused by traditional societal gender roles.
Feminist theories
Feminist discourse on fear of crime tends to explain women's higher levels of fear with the unequal gender structure in most societies, which places women beneath men within the power structure and thus puts them especially at risk for victimization by men. This theory refers to the oppressive social control of women, arguing that some crimes against women (such as rape) and the socialization that women receive to feel vulnerable and fear male violence are used by the patriarchy to assert male dominance and "keep women in their place." Some feminist researchers argue that the questions that are being asked in studies of women's fear of crime do not adequately represent their actual fear. These researchers argue that abuse by men in close personal relationships is not adequately measured by typical questions on surveys, because those typical questions ask questions about crime outside of the home. They argue that women's victimization by people in their close personal relationships is not being used as a factor in measuring women's fear of crime.
Rape fear
As rape is by far the most gendered crime by victimization, some feminist scholars have suggested that fear of rape is the most important and most unique element of women's fear of crime, or even that women's fear of crime is in fact a generalized fear of rape. Proponents of this theory, often referred to as the "shadow of sexual assault hypothesis," often note that women tend to fear that rape will co-occur with other crimes, such as burglary, a fear that is not found among men.