Women's fear of crime: the relevance of a context-focused perspective

Abstract

'Fear of crime' has negative consequences at both individual and community level: even in reasonably safe societies this fear affects mobility and the free use of public spaces, among other impacts; and specifically, women restrict their freedom of mobility due to self-protection. Despite the broad literature studying fear of crime, it has been difficult to deeply understand these fears as context-dependent experiences, as well as to identify in which places and situations fear is triggered. In the last few years new TIC tools allow researchers to collect geolocated information and details related to place and situation. In this work, we state the relevance of better understand the fear of crime experienced by women, being able to establish which setting and moments cause fear and why it happens, and we draw a research line whose aim will be to prevent fear and help designing public spaces where women can feel free, safe and make decisions not restricted by fear of crime.