تحليل جامعه شناختي ترس از مجرم درميان زنان شهر تهران

A Sociological Analysis on Fear of Crime Among Women Based on Qualitative Study in Tehran

Fear of crime is a very prevalent issue today. It challenges the safety of cities. For this reason it has gained considerable attention among the sociologists and criminologists over the last 20 years. Whilst men experiencing relatively high rates of violence, they report their fear of crime less than women. In the contrary women have a much greater fear of crime than men, but are victimized less than men. Womenʹs fear comes mostly from their vulnerability to sexual harassment. However, fear of crime is real and it affects peopleʹs quality of life. The intention of this paper is to present a perspective on debates surrounding womenʹs experience and fear of crime. This paper draws an original data collected from in depth interview with 50 selected respondents in Tehran. Narratives provided by women included in this study are used throughout the paper as means of drawing the attention to the point that fear is not something that happens out of the context but is situated in the social details of individualsʹ circumstances and the life style. The authors of this paper organized their interview around a major theoretical and empirical divide in studies of fear of crime between approaches that see fear as a by-product of physical environment and those have emphasized on the social nature of fear. In this research fear of crime is understood within a theoretical framework which emphasize on social exclusion. The result of research shows that the level of fear that a person holds depends on many factors including gender, age, past experience of being victimized, the location where one lives and so on. Based on the finding of this research women asserted that they are more fearful of crime than men. Whether in the marketplace, or the city, it is the fear of sexual violence and harassment from which underpins women high fear.