Women today feel that their urban surroundings are unsafe, and because of that they use different strategies to reduce the risk of being exposed to criminal acts towards them. The focus of this study is to develop an understanding of the insecure feeling that women feel and what that feeling might originate from. By using previous research and theories we have been able to incorporate a gender perspective on the study this because the gender role is central to understand women’s feelings of insecurity. The purpose of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of women’s sense of safety and insecurity.The central questions of the study are1. How do women describe their insecurity, and what kind of impact does it have on their everyday life?2. How do women relate to and handle their witness of fear and insecurity in their everyday life?To gather answers for these questions we interviewed six women between the ages of 20-30 who all live in Örebro. The women’s responses show that they have a greater sense of insecurity than men, that the feeling of insecurity is always present and the fear cannot be connected to a certain object. Instead the women see many different factors as frightening, and they position themselves as victims in a town, created by and for men. Thus the women use different strategies to reduce the risk of being exposed to crime. The conclusion is that the town is influenced by gender, and that everyday life looks different for women and men. The social construction of gender creates different positions for women and men in society; this is a result of people’s views on other people and their society, an expectation of how things should be and how they are. Keywords: safety, insecurity, fear, gender, city, Örebro
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-22559 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Berg, Elin, Lundin, Anette |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Örebro Studies in Sociology, 1650-2531 |
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