Trends in the Gender Gap in Violence: Reevaluating NCVS and Other Evidence

• NCJ Number: 227310
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2009 Pages: 401-426
• Author(s): Jennifer Schwartz; Darrell Steffensmeier; Hua Zhong; Jeff Ackerman
• Date Published: May 2009
• Length: 26 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: For related articles, see NCJ-227309 and NCJ-227311.

Annotation

The authors (SSZA) identify the methodological differences between their comparison of crime data on male and female violent offending, which concluded that findings from different data sources were contradictory or ambiguous, and a similar comparison by Lauritsen, Heimer, and Lynch (LHL), which concluded that there was a clear narrowing of the gender gap in nonlethal violent crime (aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault).

Abstract

In calculating offending rates, SSZA based their analyses on counting offenders; whereas, LHL based their work on counting incidents. SSZA also used a more precise method for assigning offender gender when survey respondents reported multiple offenders. Further, unlike LHL, SSZA's computational procedures took into account the sex-specific effects of the major National Crime Survey (NCS) redesign. SSZA believes their estimation strategies are significantly more accurate and more comparable with Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest data. This paper also addresses an apparent epistemological difference between SSZA's view and LHL's view of whether the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is essentially free from the social forces that influence practices of police reporting and citizen reporting of crime that have been long recognized by scholars as affecting UCR arrest trends. SSZA caution against the uncritical acceptance of the NCS/NCVS as a continuous measure of the gender ratio of violent crime, because of the changing manner in which violence is socially constructed and the accompanying changes in the culture of crime control that strongly shape NCVS reporting practices. This paper also addresses LHL's (2009) claim that sufficient evidence exists of convergence in female-to-male levels of violent offending, SSZA, on the other hand, shows that the existing evidence is either contradictory or ambiguous, requiring additional empirical inquiry. 4 figures and 21 references