NCJ Number
129081
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 37 Issue: 4 Dated: (November 1990) Pages: 593-612
Date Published
1990
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This paper examines how women's activities, roles, and status affect the gender gap in homicide by altering the social context for female victimization. It develops and tests a model of temporal and cross-national variation in the gender gap in homicide using pooled time-series data form 18 developed democracies for the period 1950-80.
Abstract
In particular, it shows that women's nontraditional roles decrease the gap between female and male risk of homicide victimization whereas higher female status increases this gap. The adverse effect of women's non-traditional roles appears to be limited to low female status. It argues that variation in the gender gap in homicide victimization can be explained by temporal and cross-national variation in gender differences in role and gender differences in status. The model derived from theory and research on the distribution of the risk of personal crime victimization resolves apparently conflicting predictions about how changes in gender stratifications affect women's risk of violent victimization. An analysis of the structural sources of variation in the gender gap in homicide could be extended to other research on violence against women. 5 tables, 11 notes and 60 references