Individual and spatial dimensions of women’s fear of crime

Using insights from criminology and urban geography, this chapter seeks to investigate individual and spatial dimensions of women’s fear of crime, in particular amongst women who declare feeling the most unsafe. This study is based on three waves of data of the Stockholm Safety Survey using exploratory data analysis and binary logistic regression. Informed by an intersectional framework, the study shows how individual attributes, including gender, age, and previous victimization affect women’s perception of safety. Modeling results indicate how the neighborhood context affects women’s behavior in the face of fear (functional and dysfunctional fear). Among the most fearful women, poor social contacts in their neighborhood, rather than fear of crime itself, leads to place avoidance.