Exploring Gender Differences in Fear of Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT

The fear of physical and sexual violence within the family context has not received much attention in the literature. Drawing on a national sample of 11,584 respondents from the 2012 German Victimization Survey, this study examined the prevalence of fear of domestic violence (DV) as compared with fear of physical and sexual crimes in general; identified gender-specific prevalence of fear of DV; and determined socio-demographic factors that predicted fear of DV for men and women. The study found both males and females reported similar rates of fear of both physical and sexual assault victimization in the family context. Younger persons and people with migration backgrounds were more likely to express fear of DV than older persons and German respondents without migration backgrounds, respectively. Future research should examine the fear of domestic violence more systematically.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of crime
• domestic violence
• male victims
• female victims
• Germany
• gender issues
• males

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The questionnaires are available online: https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/sdesc2.asp?no=6853&db=e&notabs=1

² For the last reported event of physical assault, the survey includes some follow-up questions about the offense. In case the respondent saw and knew the perpetrator one question concerns the victim-offender-relationship. All in all, 30 victims reported that the perpetrator (or at least one of them in case of several offenders) has been their (former) partner/spouse or another family member. Due to the small number of cases the informative value of these follow-up questions is very restricted.