Abstract
One of the most consistent predictors of fear of crime is gender, whereby women are more fearful of crime than men, despite their lower rates of victimization. An often-cited explanation for this apparent paradox is the “shadow” of sexual assault, which has received overwhelming support in studies among college students. However, this work has been largely quantitative and rarely comparative in nature. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with 70 undergraduates attending a suburban and an urban university, the focus of the current study was to understand if and how gender shapes students’ fear of crime and perceptions of risk on campus, as well as whether the influence of gender varies across contexts. Consistent with the shadow hypothesis, this study found that students attending university in the relatively affluent suburban setting were most concerned about the sexual assault and rape of their female peers, especially by non-student outsiders. Yet in the less advantaged urban context, the shadow was missing from students’ remarks. Instead, participants believed they were most likely to be robbed and generally knew someone who had been a victim of the crime, had they not been robbed themselves. The findings from this study have theoretical implications for the role of context in the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis, as well as methodological implications for how scholars examine gender and students’ fear of crime.
Fear of crime affects the lives of more people than crime victimization itself (Ferraro, 1995; Lane et al., 2014; Warr, 2000), impacting decisions about where we live, work, and pursue education; when and where we spend leisure time; and how we behave when we leave our homes. Women, in particular, report higher levels of fear than men, despite having lower rates of victimization. One of the leading explanations for this gender-fear paradox is the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis. Given growing recognition that crime on college and university campuses has become one of the nation’s most pressing social problems (Sloan & Fisher, 2011), combined with Ferraro’s (1995) finding that younger women have very high fear of rape due, in part, to educational transitions that often place them in unfamiliar environments, it is important to examine students’ fear of crime and victimization on campus.
The shadow hypothesis, which has received support among survey samples of adults in community settings and students on college campuses, argues that women’s fear of sexual assault is so strong that it overshadows their fear of other types of crime, such that they fear that any crime against them could ultimately lead to sexual assault or rape (Dobbs et al., 2009; Ferraro, 1995; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Lane et al., 2009; Riggs & Cook, 2015; Wilcox et al., 2006). However, studies testing this hypothesis have mainly used quantitative methods and have rarely been comparative, prompting conclusions that the theory applies universally across context. The present qualitative examination of students’ gendered fear and perceptions of risk in two different settings seeks to complicate these discussions, as it suggests that the shadow is variable, and that context does indeed matter.
Literature Review
Gender and Fear of Crime
Ferraro (1995) defined fear of crime as “an emotional response of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime,” either against themselves or others (p. 4). In order for a situation to produce fear, an individual must perceive it as posing a potential danger, which Ferraro defined as perceived risk. Importantly, he viewed these two terms as conceptually distinct, asserting that the emotional and physiological response of fear does not always follow an individual’s cognitive perception that the risk of victimization exists in a given situation.
Gender has consistently been identified as one of the most important predictors of fear, such that women are more fearful of crime than men, despite having lower rates of victimization (Britton et al., 2017; Dobbs et al., 2009; Ferraro, 1995; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Stanko, 1992; Warr, 1984). To explain this paradox, some have pointed to “hidden” forms of victimization that are not captured in official statistics and that are more likely to affect the lives of women, including being victimized by family members in the home or being catcalled, stalked, touched, or harassed in other ways outside of the home (Britton et al., 2017; Hollander, 2001; Lane et al., 2014; Madriz, 1997; Pain, 1997; Stanko, 1992; Wesely & Gaarder, 2004). Others have adopted the vulnerability perspective, which predicts that those who perceive themselves as having little or no control over a situation and as being socially or physically vulnerable and unable to defend themselves will be more afraid (Hollander, 2001; Lane et al., 2014; Stanko, 1992; Wesely & Gaarder, 2004). This perspective’s assumptions about women’s and men’s perceptions of self are strongly rooted in their gender socialization, as well as the ways they are rewarded for “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Related to this, some have argued that the gender gap in fear exists because it is not socially acceptable for men to admit their fears to researchers on surveys and during interviews (Cops & Pleysier, 2011).
While the gender gap in fear has historically been attributed to socialization processes, and particularly to essentialist assumptions about women’s and men’s behaviors and emotions, recent work has attempted to identify the sources of women’s higher fear. Most relevant to the present study, one of the leading explanations that has emerged is the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis, which states, “Sexual assault may ‘shadow’ other types of victimization among women. Rape may operate like a ‘master offense’ among women, especially younger women who have the highest rate of rape, heightening fear reactions for other forms of crime” (Ferraro, 1995, p. 87). Scholars have theorized that rape is a “perceptually contemporaneous offense” for women, such that rape and sexual assault are perceived as crimes that will accompany or follow other offenses (Ferraro, 1995; Warr, 1984). Thus, the theory suggests that women believe any crime against them will culminate with sexual assault, which overshadows their fear of all other crime and renders them more fearful than men.
Gendered Fear and the Shadow of Sexual Assault on Campus
Like studies conducted among adults in community settings, attempts to understand the gendered nature of fear on campus have also turned to the shadow hypothesis to determine if it can account for college women’s higher fear. Previous research has uncovered evidence of the shadow among students on campuses, finding that women’s fear of rape predicts their fear of other crimes at all times of day (Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Hilinski et al., 2011) and better than any other factors (Hilinski, 2009), with some arguing that fear of sexual assault can even account for men’s broader fears (Lane et al., 2009). Others have suggested that the relationship between the potential victim and offender plays a role in the intensity of the shadow on campus. Wilcox and colleagues (2006), for example, discovered that fear of both stranger- and acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assault increased and exhibited shadow effects on women’s fear of other crimes; however, they found that it is typically strangers that women fear most. Such findings add to the discussion about the shadow of sexual assault on campus, especially when considering the fact that acquaintances pose the greatest threat to college women’s safety.
Importantly, the vast majority of studies investigating students’ gendered fear of crime on campus have used quantitative methods by relying on survey and questionnaire data, with only two exceptions that were conducted within the last 10 years. One of these studies relied on open-ended survey responses to two very specific questions about participants’ crime-related fears, which did not allow researchers to probe for further detail (see Hilinski et al., 2011). The second study utilized in-depth interviews with students attending one university, thus limiting its ability to make the contextual comparisons that the present study aims to make (see Jacobsen et al., 2020). Due to recent developments in quantitative research on this subject, and particularly attempts to account for students’ gendered fear of crime on campus, it is important for studies to continue investigating this topic using different methodological techniques and a more diverse range of campus settings.
The Role of Context in Evaluations of Risk and Fear
Interestingly, while previous research has highlighted the significance of location and context on residents’ fear of crime in their communities, studies conducted on college campuses have been less attentive to the ways in which context may shape students’ fear and perceptions of risk. Research within community settings has revealed that those living in more densely populated, urban areas are more fearful than those in suburban and rural areas, due to higher crime rates, past victimization experiences, and the presence of visible disorder (Ferraro, 1995; Lane et al., 2014; Warr, 2000). This last factor is well established in the literature and has considerable implications for this study. It is the idea that disorder—whether actual or perceived—breeds fear in communities, with much of this work having its roots in social disorganization and broken windows theories. Broken windows theory suggests that disorder that goes unfixed and unpunished signals to residents that no one cares, ultimately causing a breakdown of informal social control as residents retreat indoors, avoid one another, and change their behaviors due to their growing fear of crime in their communities (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Kelling & Coles, 1996). In this way, disorder produces more disorder because residents are not around to stop it from occurring (whether through formal or informal means) and outsiders may be attracted to the neighborhood, knowing that there are opportunities to commit crime there without consequence (Kelling & Coles, 1996; Skogan, 1990).
Skogan (1990) distinguished between two types of disorder in his work: that which is social and that which is physical. Social disorder refers to behaviors such as public intoxication, prostitution, catcalling, and vandalism that are episodic. Alternatively, physical disorder refers to ongoing “visual signs of negligence and unchecked decay: abandoned or ill-kept buildings, broken streetlights, trash-filled lots, and alleys strewn with garbage and alive with rats” (Skogan, 1990, p. 4). Skogan (1990) found that perceptions of risk and fear of crime are strongly associated with both forms of disorder, with residents interpreting them as “signs of crime.”
One of the main questions that has been generated by studies examining the disorder-fear nexus is whether people perceive disorder in the same ways. Sampson and Raudenbush (2004), for instance, found that individuals’ perceptions of disorder vary and are shaped by the neighborhood’s racial composition. Specifically, they found that black residents report lower levels of disorder than whites; however, both blacks and whites are likely to perceive predominantly black neighborhoods as having high disorder. Later, scholars aimed to expand upon Sampson and Raudenbush’s (2004) conclusion, with the goal of understanding how racial stereotypes influence individuals’ perceptions of disorder, risk, and fear. Some have argued that the perceived racial composition of a neighborhood 1 impacts residents’ perceptions of risk and fear, and they often attribute this relationship to individuals’ stereotypes of blacks as criminals (Chiricos et al., 2001; Pickett et al., 2012). Pickett and colleagues (2012), for example, concluded that residents’ perceptions of their neighborhood’s racial composition increase their perceptions of victimization risk, with beliefs about the percentage of black residents having the second largest effect on risk after respondents’ gender.
This relationship largely has to do with individuals’ deep-seated racial stereotypes and prejudices that link African Americans to crime and criminal behavior (Chiricos et al., 2001). For, as Wickes and colleagues (2013) argued, “‘Seeing’ disorder is, at least in part, influenced by enduring biases that associate particular minorities with criminality” (p. 521). In other words, the disorder that individuals perceive in their communities is strongly influenced by their assumptions about particular people, places, and contexts (Wickes et al., 2013). They discovered that residents who perceive a higher minority presence in their neighborhoods “see” more disorder, while those who perceive a smaller minority presence see less disorder.
The Current Study
The present study seeks to build on this previous research in three key ways. First, since research in community settings has illustrated that perceptions of disorder are subjective, are often tied to particular (urban) contexts, and have strong effects on residents’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime, it is critical for research investigating the gendered fear of crime on campus to compare the similarities and differences in students’ perceptions of risk in various contexts. These are the goals of the present study. Second, it is especially imperative to gain a more nuanced understanding of these issues on college campuses in light of Ferraro’s (1995) assertion that younger women have the highest fear of rape due to educational and career transitions that often require them to move, placing them in unfamiliar environments. Finally, given that a large body of recent research quantitatively examining gender differences in fear has taken place on college campuses (e.g., Dobbs et al., 2009; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Hilinski, 2009; Lane et al., 2009), it is important to understand if qualitative research will uncover the same findings with regard to how gender shapes fear on campus, and particularly the existence of the shadow of sexual assault.
Methodology
Study Settings
Characteristics of Study Settings.
Note. All numbers have been rounded. Percentages may not sum to 100.
a Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2014); based on 2010 estimates because 2013 estimates were unavailable.
b Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2014); based on 2013 estimates. Where 2013 estimates are available, any differences from 2010 estimates are less than 1%.
c Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014); crime rates calculated by author.
Characteristics of Undergraduate Students and Study Samples, by Institution.
Note. Statistics for both institutions are based on fall 2013 enrollment data. Percentages have been rounded and may not sum to 100.
* To maintain confidentiality in the analysis and presentation of findings, this student was grouped with women because the ways in which they presented their gender was most consistent with that of women respondents.
During the year of data collection, 27 violent crimes were reported to Urban U’s police department, including 26 robberies and one aggravated assault. 2 All of these incidents involved Urban U students and took place on or near campus. Additionally, about 135 property crimes were reported, including 113 larceny thefts, 16 burglaries, and six motor vehicle thefts (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014). Campuses with similar numbers of students enrolled (between 8,000 and 14,000) had an average of four violent and 86 property crimes (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014), illustrating that Urban U has comparatively higher levels of crime. This characteristic, combined with those of the urban city, demonstrate why Urban U is a unique setting and appropriate site for comparison in this study.
Quite differently, and even though Suburban U’s student body is three times larger than Urban U’s, only four violent crimes were reported to Suburban U’s campus police in 2013, including two aggravated assaults, one rape, and one robbery. Additionally, 190 property crimes were reported, including 179 larceny-thefts, seven burglaries, two arsons, and two motor vehicle thefts (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014). Relatively speaking, Suburban U is a low crime setting, as similarly sized campuses across the United States (with 31,000-37,000 students) had an average of 11 violent and 355 property crimes (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014).
Sampling and Data Collection
This study is based on data from in-depth interviews with 70 undergraduates, including 34 from Urban U and 36 from Suburban U. Data at Urban U were primarily collected during the fall 2013 semester as part of a graduate-level qualitative methods seminar that focused on undergraduates’ perceptions of safety and risk on and around campus. About one-quarter of the interviews at Urban U were conducted by the author, with the remainder conducted by trained graduate student researchers. All interviews at Suburban U were conducted by the author and took place from September 2014 to March 2015.
At both institutions, all attempts were made to construct samples that closely resembled the demographic profiles of their undergraduate student bodies, particularly with regard to grade level, gender, race/ethnicity, and age. To facilitate this goal, stratified purposive sampling was used, as it aims to be representative of the demographic groups in the broader population (or in this case, the undergraduate student body), despite the fact that participants are not selected randomly (Daniel, 2012; Robinson, 2014). This is especially important when examining the contextual basis of gendered fear on two diverse campuses.
To recruit participants for the study, a screening survey was distributed to students in a large, introductory psychology course at both institutions. This course was selected because it is one that fulfills general education requirements, meaning that students from a variety of majors and grade levels will be enrolled and could be included in the sample. The screening survey included spaces for students’ names and contact information, as well as questions about their gender, race/ethnicity, age, place of birth, time at their institution, major, living arrangements, victimization experiences, and encounters with the campus police. To ensure a diverse sample, students were contacted for interviews based on a combination of their demographic characteristics and responses to the survey questions. Table 2 illustrates that at both institutions, the characteristics of the study samples closely resembled those of their larger universities, with two notable exceptions. At each, freshmen and those under 25 were overrepresented as a result of the recruitment method outlined above.
Interviews were semi-structured and ranged from 30 minutes to 3 hours at Urban U and from 30 minutes to over an hour at Suburban U. Although the same interview guide was used at both schools, interviews at Suburban U were typically shorter because students had fewer victimization experiences to share. At the beginning of each interview, participants were given a map of their campus and the areas surrounding it, and they were asked to identify places where they typically spent time, were most comfortable, and avoided or tried to avoid. This activity led to more detailed discussions about perceptions of safety and risk on and around campus. Specifically, open-ended and general prompts were used that asked students to describe how safe they felt their campus was; if they usually felt safe; if there were particular people, places, or things in the environment that made them feel more (or less) safe at some times than others; if there was a time they felt concerned about their safety; and if they ever felt truly afraid that they were in immediate danger. The same questions were then asked about the community around each campus. Upon completion of their interview, students were given a $10 Starbucks gift card and a list of safety resources on their respective campus.
Analysis
All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, and participants were assigned unique pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. The transcripts were analyzed inductively using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which was integral to every stage of the analysis from reviewing and revisiting interview transcripts to coding and identifying key emergent themes in the data (Boeije, 2002). Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed separately by gender and institution in order to make comparisons across gender and campus context about students’ fear of crime, as well as their assumptions about the victims and perpetrators of campus crime. This resulted in the creation of four separate data files in Microsoft Word for (a) women attending Suburban U, (b) men attending Suburban U, (c) women attending Urban U, and (d) men attending Urban U.
To engage in the process of constant comparison, Boeije’s (2002) step-by-step approach was adopted. This first entailed analyzing the content of each interview through the process of open coding the data for themes related to perceptions of risk, fear, and gender (see Charmaz, 2012) before revisiting and recoding the interviews a second time to determine if there was enough evidence in the data to support the themes that had emerged in the initial coding process. Second, interviews within the same group were compared for similarities, differences, and possible explanations. For example, women attending Suburban U were compared with other women attending Suburban U to understand the similarities and variations in the themes that emerged from their remarks. Next, interviews from different groups were compared, which required comparing the focused codes and data of Suburban U women with Suburban U men to identify any similarities or differences in their perceptions of risk and fear of crime. The same procedure was used to compare Urban U women with Urban U men. Finally, the focused codes and data of students attending the two different universities were compared, while simultaneously understanding whether women (and then men) in the different contexts described their perceptions of risk and fear of crime in the same ways and whether any variations could be attributed to context. The themes that emerged in the course of this analysis are discussed below.
Findings
Perceptions of Risk in the Suburban Context
Tabulation of Themes in the Suburban Sample, by Gender (n = 36).
Note. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding error.
a Because many students mentioned more than one crime type during their interviews, the summed row for “Total Crimes Mentioned” at the bottom of this table exceeds the total suburban sample size of 36.
Despite participants’ overwhelming perception that the campus was safe, a small minority still emphasized the need to pay attention to their surroundings. Erin, a white woman, stated, “I think it’s safe,” but acknowledged that “like any college environment, you have to be cautious just ‘cause you’re in college and anything can happen.” Likewise, Justin, a Filipino American man, agreed: “I think we’re relatively safe. Everywhere has their risks and their issues; there’s no such thing as a perfect society. But I think we do fairly well about keeping people safe.”
Gendered Risk and the Shadow of Sexual Assault at Suburban U
All participants at Suburban U made assumptions about the crimes students were most at risk of and who was most likely to be victimized on campus. During their interviews, students typically referred to more than one type of crime, with 14 different crimes being mentioned a total of 99 times across the 36 suburban participants. The crimes that Suburban U students mentioned are summarized by gender in Table 3. The three most frequently mentioned crimes included the sexual assault and rape of women students (by 97%), property theft in school buildings (by 33%), and someone impersonating a student on campus (by 31%). Other crimes that were mentioned by seven or fewer students included underage drinking and/or substance abuse, physical assault, robbery/mugging, bomb threats, stalking, women being drugged at parties, murder, suicide, hate crimes, kidnapping, and hazing.
As required by the Clery Act, institutions of higher education must provide timely notifications about violent incidents on campus and where they occurred to students, faculty, and staff (Jacobsen, 2017; Sloan & Fisher, 2011). At both study sites, these notifications took the form of emailed crime alerts. Interestingly, the alerts Suburban U students recalled receiving coincided with the three crimes they mentioned most frequently; however, students did not always refer to alerts when describing their concerns on campus. In the case of the sexual assault and rape of women students, 44% referred to crime alerts, and less than one-third referred to the alert about the student impersonator. With the exception of this last incident, the crimes students mentioned were typically raised independently of specific alerts and more as risks they perceived on the suburban campus. Further, they believed women were most likely to be targeted for crime.
According to the shadow hypothesis, women’s fear of rape is expected to predict and overshadow their fears of other types of crime. Although previous research has rarely made contextual comparisons, it has found evidence of the shadow in different campus contexts, including those in rural, suburban, and urban areas (e.g., Day, 1999; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Hilinski, 2009; Lane et al., 2009; Lee & Hilinski-Rosick, 2012; Wilcox et al., 2006; Woolnough, 2009). Consistent with these studies, the present analysis uncovered support for the pervasive existence and influence of the shadow on students (and especially women) in this particular suburban setting, with all but one student explicitly mentioning sexual assault or rape as a primary concern for women. For instance, Julian, a Latino man, noted, “I think that [crime] generally tends to target women, so it’ll be like rape or a female student was assaulted, or a female student was robbed in the garage.”
Other men at Suburban U also asserted that women were easier targets, pointing to their lack of physical strength. Omar, an Arab man, explained, “Females tend to be a little more—they feel they’re more fragile. That’s the way I’d put it. And guys tend to take advantage of that for their own personal gain or benefits or such. Whatever they want … That’s the sad truth.” Colton, a white man, expanded on Omar’s description of women as “fragile”:
I don’t wanna sound sexist or anything. Statistically speaking, there’s been more sexual abuse towards females than males. I just feel like it’s more likely to happen, something like that, ‘cause in a lot of ways people view females as weak compared to males, so they might think it’s an easier opportunity to take advantage of a girl versus a guy.
Colton described the factors he thought heightened individuals’ risk of victimization, including “if you’re alone, your body type, your body size, your appeared strength.” Likewise, Wyatt, a white man, made gender-based assumptions about the physical strength of women and men: “Men are more aggressive, and they think they can get away with a lot of things, and girls, they don’t usually know how to protect themselves from what I’m thinking. So they’re a lot easier to take advantage of—strong guy, weak girl, there’s not much you can really do.” Asked if he was referring to a specific crime, Wyatt continued, “Usually sexually assaulting, rape, something like that.” The remarks of each of these men illustrate the widespread assumption among students at Suburban U that women are easier targets for crime due to their physical vulnerability.
Importantly, such remarks were not limited to men. For example, Kaylee, a white woman, asserted, “Most things I think usually happen to girls, like being kidnapped or raped or all those things…. It’s more of a girl thing.” More explicitly, Chloe, a multi-racial woman, argued, “Usually, girls are weaker, and so I feel like they are more targeted for crime.” Asked if this is true for every type of crime, Chloe replied, “Sexual assault. I don’t feel like there are many accounts of guys who are victims of sexual assault. I mean, there are some, but I feel like girls are more susceptible to that.” Odette, an African American woman, also explained that women are more likely to be victimized by “rape and stuff like that” because “girls are like dumb, and naïve, and little, and feeble. I don’t mean to be lookin’ like sexist and stuff, but most crimes are committed by males.” In other words, Odette believed that women were most likely to be the victims, and men the offenders, of crimes like rape due to women’s gender characteristics, which inherently make them easier targets than men.
Overall, each of these women and men explicitly stated that rape and sexual assault are primarily women’s concerns, as a result of their gender and perceived physical vulnerability. Such sentiments were representative of those voiced by the rest of the suburban sample. These gendered understandings about women’s presumed physical weakness and inability to defend themselves are consistent with the vulnerability perspective that has been discussed previously. This perspective ties assumptions about women’s and men’s perceptions of self to their gender socialization, which encourages physical strength, dominance, independence, and fearlessness in boys and men while reinforcing the characteristics of weakness, passivity, fearfulness, and dependence on men in girls and women (Cops & Pleysier, 2011; Lane et al., 2014; Madriz, 1997). Further, and consistent with students’ remarks in the present study, previous research has suggested that those (namely women) who perceive themselves as being socially or physically vulnerable and unable to defend themselves will have higher perceptions of risk and levels of fear (Lane et al., 2014; Stanko, 1992).
In addition to this pervasive concern among Suburban U students that women faced the greatest risk of (sexual) victimization, some participants referred to specific places on campus where they believed these crimes against women were most likely to occur. For example, Vanna, an Asian woman, briefly remarked, “I had a friend tell me that there’s a trail somewhere around [the gym] called the ‘rapist trail.’ I don’t know, I didn’t wanna mention it because I don’t know much.” Adina, an international student from Ethiopia, referred to the same wooded path: “There’s this one trail here, [where] I heard like a lot of things happened to girls my freshman year…. It’s a really tiny path… I just heard that’s where some girls were raped.”
Such comments were also made by men. When asked how safe he felt the campus was overall, Max, a Hispanic man, replied:
Medium…I’ve heard things, like at night—I know there’s cops, but I feel like at night there’s passages that, you know, are unprotected….There’s a bridge that goes to the [student union]….Last year, it was like dark and I think that during my freshman year, they actually put lights there, but it was usually dark, so people call it the “rape bridge” or “sketchy bridge.”
When asked if he was aware of anything happening there, Max revealed, “They said that some girls get raped, but I don’t know if that’s just to scare freshmen or if it’s like a true thing.” Indeed, my own research into whether any rapes had occurred on or near this particular path did not yield any results. However, this does not necessarily mean that no crimes had occurred there, as they may not have been reported to the campus police. Either way, such perceptions and stories about incidents of rape occurring on the path were influential in both women’s and men’s evaluations of risk on campus.
As shown in Table 3, only one Suburban U student did not explicitly mention sexual assault or rape during her interview; however, it was clear that the crime still shadowed her experiences on campus. When discussing areas where she felt uncomfortable, Nida, an Arab woman, explained:
The only place—I don’t even think I feel uncomfortable there—it’s just the parking lot, if I’m alone and it’s dark. It’s just kinda secluded, even though it’s really close to like the main part of campus, not many people park there so it’s kinda like cut off from reality…It’s not scary by any means. I mean, I like it, it’s close, but at night one time I was going back at like 10 and I was like, “uh, got my pepper spray!”
Although Nida didn’t specifically name sexual assault in her comments, her fear of rape was implied as she discussed her concerns with being alone and in the dark—remarks that are reminiscent of rape myths about strangers hiding in the bushes and waiting for unsuspecting women to walk by (Fanghanel, 2018; Madriz, 1997). This was not the only instance when Nida mentioned having her pepper spray in her hand while traveling alone on campus at night.
Perceptions of Risk in the Urban Context
Those attending Urban U also demonstrated uniformity in their perceptions of the city around their campus; however, these views were notably different than those expressed by Suburban U students. Overall, and as illustrated in Table 4, the majority of Urban U participants believed the community surrounding campus was not safe and that they had to be cautious, due to two key factors. The first was visible signs of disorder, which Eric, a white man, detailed:
It looks too shady. I feel like something happens really often like when I go outside the borders of campus because the neighborhoods look like they’re just like the ghetto kind of. And like the streets that are around it, and all the shops that are around it, they look like really sketchy … Like the appearance of them on the outside because they look really old, like banged up.
Notes. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding error.
a Because many students mentioned more than one crime type during their interviews, the summed row for “Total Crimes Mentioned” at the bottom of this table exceeds the total urban sample size of 34.Tabulation of Themes in the Urban Sample, by Gender (n = 34).
Eric described the physical disorder in the community, pointing to visual cues that contributed to his interpretation that such areas were sketchy and unsafe. Further, participants like Paz, a Hispanic student, tied their perceptions of safety to both physical and social disorder in the city: “You just see like bags of drugs, and you see broken bottles. It just looks terrible. You see people just drunk on the sidewalks and stuff … and then kind of like shady people sitting around and watching you.” Overall, students agreed that visible physical and social disorder in the urban city was one source of their elevated perceptions of risk.
The second source was the ethnic/racial characteristics of city residents, which led Jayden, an African American man, to “try to avoid there. I see a lot of, what’s the word? Demographic changes, I guess you could say? ‘Cause that’s when you start seeing the hood, and when you keep branching out further, that’s when you really see it.” Like Jayden, the majority of Urban U participants associated the visual appearance of “the hood,” as 11 students referred to it, with the demographic characteristics of the city’s residents, which illustrates how the surrounding context of Urban U (including visible disorder and the ethnic/racial characteristics of city residents) influenced students’ perceptions of risk in that setting. In this regard, Jayden continued, “I can tell when like things start to change, if that makes sense…. Some people you can tell, like damn, they’re hood.” Throughout his interview, Jayden referred to city residents as “crack heads” and “thugs”; terms that draw on racial stereotypes of African Americans (see Omi & Winant, 1994, for a discussion about racial code words) and illustrate who he believes poses the greatest threat to his safety. Jayden was not alone in his use of these descriptors, as 54% of the sample also referred to city residents with racial terms such as “gangstas,” “junkies,” “crack heads,” and “thugs,” and as guys with “dreads, sweats, and hoodies.” Given that students described community residents using these racially coded terms that are associated with gang activity, drug use, and other forms of crime, it is clear that the ethnic and racial characteristics of city residents were influential in shaping participants’ perceptions of risk in the urban context.
Despite viewing the city and areas around campus as dangerous, the vast majority of Urban U participants like Alex, a Latino student, perceived their campus as safe and significantly less risky than the rest of the city: “Around campus, there is like a barrier, the way I see it. The campus is safe—it’s very safe considering the areas that are around it. I just feel like there is no like leaking effect from what happens five blocks away.” Although Alex acknowledged the potential risks in the areas around campus, he also felt protected from these threats on Urban U’s campus, which he perceived as very safe. Other students like Heather, a white woman, described this feeling using different terms:
You’re kind of more secure here because there’s more people and you feel like it’s gated, even though it’s really not…. On campus I feel fine. I actually kind of take advantage of it and I’ll like text when I’m walking when I really shouldn’t…. I just feel like I have this bubble around me and I’m not vulnerable.
The security—or protective “bubble”—that Heather believed was afforded by the campus environment was also described by Jayden: “I feel like we’re almost in a bubble; it’s like no one can touch us. It’s when you go outside that bubble, you just—be cautious.” Overall, and as illustrated in Table 4, Urban U participants agreed that the campus itself was safe, while the areas immediately beyond its borders were not.
Gender, African American City Residents, and the Shadow of Robbery at Urban U
Similar to those at Suburban U, students attending Urban U had ideas about who was most likely to be victimized on campus, along with the crimes that posed the greatest risk to their safety. They, too, tended to mention more than one type of crime during their interviews, with 14 crimes being named a total of 86 times across the 34 urban participants, as shown in Table 4. The four most frequently mentioned crimes included robbery/mugging (by 100%); physical assault (by 32%); the vandalism of cars (by 21%); and the visibility or use of drugs (by 21%). Students named these acts when describing crimes they had experienced, witnessed, or heard about at Urban U. Other crimes that were mentioned by six or fewer students included sexual assault or rape, gang activity, bomb threats, carjacking, murder, kidnapping, property theft in the dorms, women being drugged at parties, suicide, and underage drinking. Interestingly, 10 of these crimes were also mentioned by Suburban U participants, but with different frequencies.
While the perceptions of Suburban U students are consistent with the predictions of the shadow hypothesis, such that participants were primarily concerned about the rape and sexual assault of their female peers, the women and men attending Urban U felt more threatened by the possibility of being robbed. This trend was uniform across gender, with all 34 Urban U participants making references to robbery and muggings in their remarks. For instance, Brad, a white man, reported, “There is a lotta strong-arm robberies. You know, like the popular one around campus, you always hear about people getting robbed.” Isabel, a Latina student, also noted concern about “being robbed, or being mugged. Or having your tires ripped.”
One reason Urban U students consistently reported being most fearful of robbery is likely because of crime alerts they received from the campus police. During the data collection period at Urban U, 13 crime alerts were emailed to students, faculty, and staff about robberies that had occurred on or near campus against students, including women and men. The alerts always described at least one African American male suspect from the urban community, though these incidents were typically committed by groups of African American men. Importantly, none of the crime alerts named a suspect from another racial or ethnic group.
All Urban U participants were concerned about robbery on and near campus, with the majority believing that women and men faced equal risk of victimization. Eva, a Latina student, asserted, “I think it’s pretty even…like they would go after a guy or a girl, whoever they think is gonna be a good victim.” Similarly, Lauren, a Hispanic woman, observed, “It could either be a girl or a guy. It doesn’t seem to matter for the types of crimes that happen on campus. Like they’re phone robberies or whatever. Everyone has a phone, so everyone’s subject to being robbed.”
Other students like Xavier, a Hispanic man, were more explicit that “girls have a higher chance” of being victimized in the urban setting:
If I see a girl with her handbag and high heels, she can’t run that quick, with the handbag she’s weighed down, then I would go for that option. But if it’s a guy, you know, I just wouldn’t…. I’ve never worn high heels before, but I would assume you can’t run as quick as you could in sneakers. I’m not a criminal, but if I were to see a girl in high heels with the purse and with the coat and she has her earphones in, that is like—you know?
Likewise, Victor, a multi-racial man, agreed that women “get targeted more” for crime because of how they carry themselves in “a female prissy little walk.” For Victor, this walk is characterized by the “clicking of women’s heels and … [they’re] probably wearing a miniskirt that can’t let [them] run very far and [they’re] small in frame.” Alternatively, he argued that offenders are “not gonna mess with someone who has a confident stride ‘cause you don’t know what the hell they’re packing.”
Students like Nikki, an African American woman, moved beyond women’s clothing choices to suggest that their presumed physical vulnerability increased their victimization risk: “Men, they’re not attacked as much because other men wouldn’t think that they could overpower another man, logically. As for a woman, they’re more victimized and they’re seen as weaker…. We’re not physically as strong, you know, as built as [men].” Gayatri, a South Asian woman, agreed:
There’s more of a danger if you’re a girl. Just because we’re not seen as stronger or like we don’t have that on our side….If I were to come into a situation with some big guy, I obviously wouldn’t go straight to my physical strength. Obviously I’d try to rationalize it, try to talk him down, that type of thing.
Thus, Gayatri acknowledged that she wouldn’t use her muscles or fists to escape a potential attacker, but would instead try to reason with him (a pronoun she used) to survive the situation.
Within the urban sample, 29% had been personally victimized, 41% had been vicariously victimized, and 24% had witnessed a crime. All incidents occurred on or near campus and at the hands of the city’s African American residents, with robbery comprising the vast majority of the crimes students experienced. Interestingly, the five students who disclosed being victims of robbery on or near campus were all men. One of these victims was Eric, a white man, who attrubuted his discomfort on campus to his victimization experience:
A day before the semester started, I got robbed…that’s why I’m kinda shaky at nighttime…. I was walking back to my dorm at the time and I was taking a short cut, and then three people came out of that short cut at the same time I walked through. So they stopped me and made me empty my pockets.
Micah, a multi-racial man, was the only student to report being robbed not once, but twice, while walking from campus. He vividly described being robbed the second time while with a friend:
It happened on a Wednesday night around 10 o’clock-ish. I had to stay late to do a paper…. I had my friend walk with me to my car ‘cause it was late…. We were walking and I noticed two guys comin’ and I had a gut feeling like they were just, I dunno, like it’s just weird, the way they were walking…but I didn’t really wanna think about it ‘cause I didn’t wanna stereotype and I didn’t wanna be biased, so I just like brushed it off. And then that’s when they really came up to us, pulled out a gun, and they were like “gimme all your stuff.” So they ended up taking my jewelry … my cell phone, my wallet, my laptop…And they took from my friend his cash and his cell phone.
Interestingly, the crime that was mentioned by all but one student at Suburban U—sexual assault or rape—was only mentioned by 18% of Urban U participants, with just one student spontaneously raising concern about rape in the urban setting. Danica, a Hispanic black woman, revealed that her gendered concern about sexual assault was prompted by a news story she learned about from her step-father: “Some girls were stopped at a red light or something, and [some guys] carjacked them and then took them and raped them.” Another student, Paz, disclosed being a survivor of rape, but noted being more fearful of robbery in the urban setting—perhaps as a result of understanding that rape on college campuses does not occur randomly and is typically committed by someone the student victim knows (Cantor et al., 2019).
The remaining four participants who referenced rape included one man and three women. None of these students raised this subject spontaneously and instead only did so when elicited by the interviewer. For instance, when directly asked if there are gender differences in crime victimization on campus, Lauren, a Hispanic woman, stated, “It could either be a girl or a guy.” Later, when discussing gender stereotypes, she continued:
The mindset that society has overall—girls would be more susceptible to being a victim for crime rather than a guy. But to me, I don’t think it matters that much. If they want to commit a crime, they’ll do it whether you’re a guy or a girl, probably depending on rape because most girls are the ones that get raped.
Thus, when pressed to discuss gender differences in victimization, Lauren spoke about gender stereotypes and rape, the crime most typically associated with women. However, her remarks are not consistent with the predictions of the shadow hypothesis because she did not describe being fearful of this crime in the urban setting. The other three students who generically mentioned rape—Micah, Rosaria, and Zofia—did so in a similar manner by explaining that gender does not typically influence victimization in the urban city, even though some assume women face higher risk of rape and sexual assault.
Discussion
Using qualitative methods, the present study has revealed how context can either mitigate or intensify the extent to which participants foreground particular fears of crime, as well as how this can impact gendered interpretations of risk and the presence of the shadow of sexual assault. At Suburban U, across gender, students unanimously felt that the campus and the community around it were safe, and that the greatest threat on campus was the rape of women students. Alternatively, at Urban U, students generally reported feeling safe on campus, but unsafe in the community around it. Students’ discomfort in the urban community was largely a result of visible social and physical disorder, as well as their likelihood of having unwanted encounters with the city’s poor, African American residents. Further, Urban U students believed, with very few exceptions, that the most common threat against all students—both women and men—was robbery.
The shadow of sexual assault hypothesis, which has previously received support in quantitative studies conducted across a range of campus contexts, did not garner the same level of support in this comparative qualitative examination of students’ gendered fear. Rather, this study found that context and location do indeed matter when attempting to understand students’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime on campus, just as they do when attempting to understand residents’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime within neighborhood settings (Ferraro, 1995; Lane et al., 2014; Skogan, 1990). Students’ concerns and fears were not uniform across the suburban and urban settings but were instead unique to the people and threats they perceived in those particular contexts.
Further, it appears that campus context shapes the influence of gender on perceptions of risk and fear of crime. The shadow was present in both women’s and men’s remarks at Suburban U, such that nearly all participants explicitly attributed the limited concerns they had on campus to the possibility of women being sexually assaulted there, typically as a result of their perceived physical vulnerability relative to men. One could argue that the support uncovered for the shadow hypothesis at Suburban U may be a result of the availability heuristic (see Hart, 2017; Jackson, 2011; Tversky & Kahneman, 1993), such that students overestimated their risk of sexual assault due to receiving an emailed crime alert about a student being raped on campus during the year of data collection. However, it is important to note that even though all but one student explicitly mentioned sexual assault or rape as being a primary concern for women at Suburban U, less than half referred to the crime alert or this particular incident when discussing their concerns on campus, suggesting that perhaps something other than the availability heuristic is at play.
Alternatively, the shadow was largely absent from Urban U students’ comments, and most notably from women’s comments. This is likely because they believed there were more immediate threats to their safety like robbery, due to frequent email alerts from the campus police, as well as various characteristics of the urban context including its visible disorder and racial diversity. Further, the fact that many Urban U participants had been personally or vicariously victimized on or near campus likely played a role in their overarching fear of robbery, as this crime comprised the vast majority of the incidents that students reported. However, even among the 41% who had not been victimized, the pervasive threat of robbery still loomed.
Importantly, our theories and explanations of social phenomena are influenced by the methods we use to study them. The primary impetus behind this study and the qualitative methods it employed was that the vast majority of studies examining how gender shapes students’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime on campus have used quantitative methods (e.g., Dobbs et al., 2009; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Hilinski, 2009; Lane et al., 2009; Riggs & Cook, 2015), with only one study in the past decade using qualitative in-depth interviews (see Jacobsen et al., 2020). As Lane and colleagues (2014) highlighted, “Qualitative studies have the potential to build and expand theory … [Participants] may describe their feelings in ways that indicate fear without using the terms researchers choose in their typical survey measures” (p. 232). In other words, qualitative examinations of students’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime on campus, including the present study, may more effectively capture the nuances in students’ concerns, as well as when and how those concerns are shaped by gender and context. It may be that our understandings of students’ fear on campus are limited due to scholars’ tendency to use quantitative methods while investigating this subject, rather than including a broader array of methodological tools. Thus, studies using qualitative techniques to both investigate students’ concerns and examine the shadow of sexual assault on campus are much needed, and the present research aimed to revitalize this important methodological discussion.
In addition to relying on quantitative methods, previous work examining the shadow hypothesis on campus has rarely been comparative in nature, hindering further investigation of how contextual features (e.g., racial demographics, physical and social disorder, income levels) shape students’ gendered perceptions of risk and fear of victimization. The oversight of context is particularly notable, given that research examining fear of crime within neighborhood settings has concluded that environmental context plays an influential role in residents’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime (Lane et al., 2014). Specifically, this work has found that those living in urban areas tend to report higher levels of fear due to higher crime rates, an increased likelihood of victimization, and the prevalence of disorder (Ferraro, 1995; Lane et al., 2014; Warr, 2000).
Despite these findings about varying levels of fear in different types of community settings, quantitative examinations of fear on campus have often treated students’ fear as being relatively uniform across context (e.g., Day, 1999; Dobbs et al., 2009; Fisher & Sloan, 2003; Hilinski, 2009; Lane et al., 2009; Lee & Hilinski-Rosick, 2012; Wilcox et al., 2006; Woolnough, 2009). Due to this emphasis on quantitative techniques and limited focus on contextual factors, research has typically provided overwhelming support for the shadow hypothesis in university settings, concluding that women’s fear of sexual assault on campus accounts for their higher fear of other crimes relative to their male peers. Thus, the present study aimed to expand on the contributions of previous research by using qualitative in-depth interviews with students attending universities in two starkly different contexts. This approach allowed for the examination of how gender shapes students’ perceptions of risk and fear of crime, as well as whether any similarities or differences in their concerns can be traced to campus context. To facilitate this comparison, this study was conducted at one university located in a disadvantaged, urban area with relatively high rates of crime, and another university in an affluent, suburban area with comparatively lower rates of crime.
Importantly, this article does not intend to argue against the validity of the shadow hypothesis as a possible explanation of the gender-fear paradox on college and university campuses. A central limitation of this study is that it took place at two universities on the east coast of the United States using relatively small samples of undergraduate students. Although theoretical saturation was achieved during data collection at both institutions (see Charmaz, 2012), it is difficult to know if the same findings would be uncovered at other colleges and universities of the same size and type—or if the findings discussed in this article are truly contextually-bound to the particular locations and demographic compositions of the student bodies of Suburban and Urban U. Given the findings of this study, it is imperative that future research continue to examine the existence of the shadow across suburban, urban, and rural campus settings and with different methodological techniques to see if the findings presented here hold true. It is entirely possible that students pursuing higher education on suburban and urban campuses in other locations may have different safety concerns. It is also important to consider not just whether, but why, the shadow of sexual assault may be more influential in some settings than others. Such findings point to the critical need for scholars to more intentionally investigate the role of campus context—and context more generally—in their research on gendered fear of crime.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jody Miller for her guidance and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, which significantly improved this paper.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
