Conceptions of gender and age in Swedish Victim Support
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758015571473 |
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| Author | Kerstin Svensson,Lotta Jägervi |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Conceptions of gender and
age in Swedish Victim Support
Lotta J¨
agervi and Kerstin Svensson
Lunt University, Sweden
Abstract
The aim of this article is to unpack how the categories ‘gender’ and ‘age’ are understood among
Swedish Victim Support organizations. This is done through a study of how individuals who work in
Swedish Victim Support organizations talk about victims as well as about their own role. In an
analysis of 12 focus groups from Swedish Victim Support organizations, where one part was based
on vignettes and the other part on open discussion, we focus on how the supporters understand
gender and age. By working with three categorical pairs – victim and supporter, male and female as
well as young and old – we show that gender is a dominant categorization in understanding both
victims and victim supporters. Age seemed to have more importance in how women are under-
stood, as female victims were described quite differently depending on age, and the ideal helper
was described as a mature woman. Male helpers were regarded as a homogenous group and age
did not matter. Conclusively, we found that, while gender as a category was important in the
understanding of how people are perceived in Victim Support, the intersection of the categories of
gender and age were important in supporting and enhancing this understanding. This article points
at the importance of understanding how these specific categories work.
Keywords
Age, crime victims, gender, intersectionality, victim support
Introduction
Every day, in every situation, we humans all have to sort out information. To do that, the use of
categories helps to pack information into well-known conceptions, so that the new information
becomes part of the perception of reality. The use of categories becomes a part of what Davies
(2011) calls ‘doing-differences’, the process whereby categories operate simultaneously and dif-
ferences are constructed and reconstructed in our understanding. Charles Tilly (1999) considers
the use of categorical understanding as a mechanism behind durable inequality. One of the main
Corresponding author:
Lotta J¨
agervi, School of Social Work, Lund University, PO Box 23, SE 221 00 Lund, Sweden.
Email: lotta.jagervi@soch.lu.se
International Review of Victimology
2015, Vol. 21(2) 217–231
ªThe Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758015571473
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