ABSTRACT
Risk management and risk taking are an important part of young people’s identity formation within late modernity (Mitchell et al 2001). ‘Youth’ is contemporaneously constructed as a period of dangerousness and deficiency (Muncie 2004). That said, whereas young men are more likely to be referred to as ‘troublesome’, young women are represented as ‘troubled’ (Green et al 2000). In other words, young women are more often portrayed as the passive victims of risk rather than as active risk seekers. This is clearly demonstrated in the literature on women and violence, which tends to focus on women’s victimization, or explains their offending as a response to an abusive situation or past abusive experiences. The disadvantages of this approach are that it contributes to the falsehood that young women who actively seek risks are in some way abnormal or bizarre; it denies young women any agency or choice in their lives; and it leaves us with little understanding of the meaning of risk-seeking behaviour from the point of view of young women.
