Sarah Britto

The impact of women's status and gender inequality on female homicide victimization rates: evidence from U.S. counties

Feminists have long argued that structural inequality between men and women influences the prevalence of female homicide victimization. In the present study, a cross-sectional analysis was performed using data on 3,083 U.S. counties in 2000 to assess the impact of women’s absolute status and gender inequality along educational, employment, income, and occupational dimensions and patriarchal culture on their risk of homicide victimization. The findings indicate that only women’s absolute status contributes to our understanding of cross-sectional variation in female homicide rates across U.S. counties and lends support to Marxist feminist theory.

Gender Equality and Women’s Absolute Status A Test of the Feminist Models of Rape

Feminist theory predicts both a positive and negative relationship between gender equality and rape rates. Although liberal and radical feminist theory predicts that gender equality should ameliorate rape victimization, radical feminist theorists have argued that gender equality may increase rape in the form of male backlash. Alternatively, Marxist criminologists focus on women’s absolute socioeconomic status rather than gender equality as a predictor of rape rates, whereas socialist feminists combine both radical and Marxist perspectives. This study uses factor analysis to overcome multicollinearity limitations of past studies while exploring the relationship between women’s absolute and relative socioeconomic status on rape rates in major U.S. cities using 2000 census data. The findings indicate support for both the Marxist and radical feminist explanations of rape but no support for the ameliorative hypothesis. These findings support a more inclusive socialist feminist theory that takes both Marxist and radical feminist hypotheses into account.

Women's status and risk of homicide victimization: An analysis with data disaggregated by victim-offender relationship

Several feminist theories predict that womens socioeconomic status, both absolute status and their status relative to men, influences the prevalence of violence against women, with some suggesting a positive correlation and others a negative one. Although each theory provides insight into the possible causal connection between womens status, gender inequality, and violence, empirical tests of these relationships are inconclusive. The present study addresses this issue by using a cross-sectional design with 2000 census and crime data to assess the impact of womens absolute status and gender inequality along educational, employment, income, and occupational dimensions and their risk of homicide victimization by intimate partners and nonintimates. The findings indicate that womens absolute status is significantly correlated with female homicide victimization rates by intimate partners. However, tests for equality of regression coefficients between the intimate and nonintimate partner models suggest that these differences may be attributed to random chance.

‘Diffuse anxiety’: the role of economic insecurity in predicting fear of crime

Past research on fear of crime has focused on variables from the victimization/vulnerability, neighborhood disadvantage, and community control models. Recent theoretical work on fear of crime also suggests the importance of ‘diffuse anxieties’ in elevating personal fear of crime and creating a ‘culture of fear’ in American society. Diffuse anxieties include concern about the economy, big government, welfare, union-led inflation and affirmative action. To date, few studies have empirically tested the relationship between diffuse anxiety and fear of crime. This exploratory study, conducted during the recent economic recession in the USA, tests the role of economic insecurity in predicting crime fear, while controlling for measures of crime vulnerability, neighborhood disorder and community control. Results indicate that economic insecurity is an important predictor of fear of crime and the implications of this finding are discussed.

The Role of Fear of Crime in Donating and Volunteering A Gendered Analysis

Extensive empirical studies have established that women fear crime more than men and theoretical arguments have suggested this difference produces consequences ranging from increased medical and psychological problems to restricted movement and limited exposure to social networks and opportunities resulting in restrictive informal social control and reduced social capital. More recently, a number of studies have begun to test the theoretical link between fear and behavior, with some suggesting fear will restrict prosocial behavior and others suggesting fear will motivate behavior that improves personal and communal well-being. This study adds to this emerging literature by exploring how fear of crime affects two measures of philanthropic behavior—donating and volunteerism. Using a stratified random telephone survey of 2,361 individuals living in the 20 counties that compose the greater Metro Atlanta area, the authors explore the role of fear of crime as an independent variable in models of donating and volunteering time to a charitable organization. Additionally, interaction terms are included in models of volunteering to control for the possibility that the strength of the relationship may vary based on sex. The results indicate that fear of crime is an important predictor of volunteering, but not donating, and that the effects are stronger for women than men.

Assessing the Impact of Changes in Gender Equality on Female Homicide Victimization: 1980-2000

Numerous studies have tested the feminist hypothesis that gender inequality affects homicide rates by analyzing Census and Uniform Crime Report data for a single time period. Although these “snapshot” tests are important, they do not capture the “change” element that is implied by these hypotheses. According to feminist perspectives, gender inequality and gender equality could increase homicide rates, the former increasing the structural disadvantage of women relative to men and the latter representing a “backlash” effect. Women’s absolute status may also be an important predictor of homicide victimization. Furthermore, it is quite possible that this process is dynamic and therefore the change in equality over time may be more important than the actual level of equality at any given time. The present study measures the impact of gender equality and women’s absolute status on female homicide victimization using city-level data from 1980 to 2000. In general, the results suggest that changes in gender equality and women’s absolute status have decreased women’s rate of homicide victimization, and the negative effect of gender equality appears to have grown stronger over time; however, these results are not uniform across victim–offender relationships.

Using Feminist Methods and Restorative Justice to Interview Capital Offenders’ Family Members:

Researching sensitive topics is critical to understanding women’s lives. However, this research often carries the risk of retraumatization and exploitation. This articleexamines the development of a sensitive-topic interview protocol that sought to minimize harm and to gain reliable and valid data by using principles from feminist methods and theory, and restorative justice. The development of the protocol is examined and its effectiveness is explored in a postinterview survey of family members of capital offenders. The data indicate that the methods minimized harm and that the protocol resulted in a robust understanding of the participants’ lived experience from their perspectives.