Are women of all age groups equally affected by the shadow of sexual assault? Evidence from Germany
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708231156330 |
| Author | Helmut Hirtenlehner,Stephen Farrall,Eva Groß |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Are women of all age groups
equally affected by the shadow
of sexual assault? Evidence
from Germany
Helmut Hirtenlehner
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
Stephen Farrall
University of Derby, Derby, UK
Eva Groß
University of Applied Sciences in the Academy of the Police Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
Abstract
Ample evidence suggests that women are more fearful of crime than men. The ‘shadow of sexual assault
hypoth esis’offers a possible explanation for this gender gap: in patriarchal societies females are more
afraid of sexual violence, which, in turn, drives their fear of other types of criminal victimization.
Although the shadow hypothesis has received some empirical support, knowledge on the role of age
in this context has remained scant. Therefore, the present study examines whether fear of sexual assault
translates into fear of other offenses in all age segments of the female population, and whether the mag-
nitude of this shadow effect varies with age. Statistical analyses are based on a large-scale random sample
of women living in Germany. The findings suggest that although the proportion of women who are fearful
of sexual assault declines with age, a shadow effect of this fear can be observed in all age groups. The
‘radiation effect’of fear of sexual violence on fear of other crimes increases slightlywith age . We interpret
this interaction as result of older women’s heightened vulnerability to many sorts of harm.
Keywords
Fear of crime, shadow of sexual assault, perceptually contemporaneous offenses, age
Corresponding author:
Helmut Hirtenlehner, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Centre for Criminology, Altenberger Strasse 69,
A-4040 Linz, Austria.
Email: helmut.hirtenlehner@jku.at
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(3) 834–855
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708231156330
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
Introduction
Fear of crime is a widely investigated issue (Boers, 2003; Farrall et al., 2009; Hale, 1996;
Warr, 2000). One of the key findings of research on crime-related fears is the predictive
power of an individual’s gender (Hale, 1996). Numerous studies reveal that women –
despite lower rates of victimization –report higher levels of fear of crime than men
(Choi et al., 2020; Dobbs et al., 2009; Ferraro, 1995; Hirtenlehner and Farrall, 2014;
Mellgren and Ivert, 2019; Warr, 1984). The gendered fear differential seems to be par-
ticularly large for sexual offenses (Choi and Merlo, 2021; Cook and Fox, 2012;
Ferraro, 1996; Fisher and Sloan, 2003; Lane and Fox, 2013; Lane and Meeker, 2003;
May, 2001; Özascilar, 2013; Pettit et al., 2017; Riggs and Cook, 2015).
The reasons for this gender divide in fear of crime are less clear, however. Different
explanations can be found in the literature. The gender gap has been traced to
women’s greater physical vulnerability compared to men (Jackson, 2009; Killias and
Clerici, 2000) or females’greater general anxiety (Chadee et al., 2009; Vitelli and
Endler, 1993). Some scholars have argued that women are more likely to be victims of
intimate partner violence or other infringements perpetrated in close relationships and
that these victimizations have a particularly negative impact on their general feeling of
safety (Broll, 2014; Madriz, 1997). Impression management and social desirability
bias may also be involved: men have been found to downplay their fear of crime in inter-
views because being afraid of victimization is not compatible with traditional conceptua-
lizations of masculinity (Goodey, 1997; Sutton and Farrall, 2005). It has also been
proposed that women are more fearful than men because they anticipate more serious
consequences of crime and thus judge potential victimizations as more serious (Warr,
1984, 1985).
One prominent approach to explaining sex differences in fear of crime focuses on the
implications of fear of sexual violence. The so-called ‘shadow of sexual assault hypoth-
esis’suggests that women’s elevated fear of crime is due to a fear of sexual violence
which has ‘radiation effects’on many other crimes (Ferraro, 1995, 1996; Warr,
1985).
1
‘The shadow hypothesis posits that women may be more afraid of crime than
men because they fear sexual assault as a contemporaneous offense –an offense that
(…) may lead to, arise from, or be associated with other offenses’(Riggs and Cook,
2015: 2385). The underlying logic is that when criminal incidents involve face-to-face
contact between victims and offenders, women worry that they might also be sexually
assaulted, and this worry ‘overshadows’their fear of other crimes (Özascilar, 2013). It
follows that many offenses –especially those that entail personal contact with the perpet-
rator –appear more severe and dangerous for females, and this perception may result in
heightened fear of crime. In brief: the mental presence of sexual assault as a perceptually
contemporaneous offense accounts for women’s increased anxiety about crime (Warr,
1985).
The relationship between age and fear of crime is more complex. Here the evidence is
rather heterogeneous. The traditional picture is that ‘as people grow older they become
more fearful’(Hale 1996: 100). This pattern usually emerges in population surveys
that draw on global measures of fear of crime, such as feelings of unsafety in one’s neigh-
bourhood (Boers, 2003; Fattah and Sacco, 1989). When offense-specific measures are
Hirtenlehner et al. 835
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