Citation

Lennox RA. Violence Against Women 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077801221998786

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Women routinely practise taxing safety strategies in public, such as avoiding unlit spaces after dark. To date, scholars have understood these behaviors as means by which women bolster their physical safety in public. My in-depth interviews with women in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia suggest that, much less than reliably enhancing women's safety, safety work often exacerbates women's fear of violent crime and unreliably mitigates their exposure to violence. I thus interrogate the protective function of gendered safekeeping and reconceptualize women's safety work as virtue maintenance work, theorizing that women practice risk-management in public places to attain the ontological security associated with evading subjectivities of gendered imprudence.

Language: en

Keywords

gender; fear of violent crime; public space(s)