When fear makes the decision : A qualitative study on female student’s perception of safety In the campus of University of Dar es Salaam

• Main Author: Saarensilta, Timo
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Umeå universitet, Kulturgeografi 2014
• Subjects: Feminist Geography; Geography of Fear; Mobility; Female; Focus group interview; Constructivist grounded theory; Tanzania; Dar es Salaam
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-99328

This bachelor thesis had the aim to investigate how young female students experience their safety situation in their own neighbourhood, around the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Previous research shows that women tend to feel more fear of crime in public spaces than men, and this feeling is restricting their mobility in time and space. This gender structure is a worldwide phenomenon and is by feminist geographers explained as an expression of the patriarchy. A phenomenological approach was used in this research to gain an understanding of how this gender structure is affecting individual female’s lives. The used method was focus group interviews and two groups were interviewed, with totally seven respondents. The sessions were analysed by using constructivist grounded theory and partly narrative analysis. The interviewees explained that there were certain spaces that they experience as dangerous, foremost dark places without visibility and few people passing. They also stated that places where people had been robbed, raped or kidnapped earlier were more threating. The potential criminal was portrayed as a non-student male, and the male students were described as their potential protectors. The fear was always present in their lives, they felt more or less unsafe in all parts of the campus and even in their homes. This threat restricted their daily mobility in both time and space, and they used different strategies to avoid different types of crimes.