Gender Based Perception of Safety : An exploratory among Stockholm residents

Sammanfattning: A city is considered to be safe when people can move freely, without being concerned about being subjected to any crime. CPTED is a way to work with crime prevention in the society. Although safety and security are two distinct concepts, they can interact with each other in the work towards a more sustainable society. This bachelor essay explores how the perception of safety, regarding common anxiety, is distributed between men and women in Stockholm City. Furthermore, the perception of safety within the female group is examined in terms of age. This has been conducted in the form of a quantitative analysis, based on data from Stockholm’s safety survey in 2014. The results showed that the perceived safety, in a general sense, is very low among the Stockholm residents. In all but one of the cases, the proportion of women who claimed to be unsafe was bigger than the proportion of men. Most women, who felt unsafe in the neighborhood or transit environment, were between the ages of 25 and 44 years. The results were analyzed in a more qualitative form, by an assessment of its reasonableness and feedback with relevant theory that has been presented. This led to the conclusion that there are differences in people’s perceived safety, which can be explained by its individual characteristics like gender and age.