Women’s Safety and the Right to the City: Analysis of Rape against Women in Sweden through A Spatial Analytical Lens

Abstract: Drawing on a spatial analytical framework this research study the development of rape against women in Sweden. It aims to explore the spatio-temporal pattern of rape against women in Sweden at the regional and municipal levels. Based on these spatio-temporal traits, this research examines if socio-economic and demographic factors hypothesized by existing studies can be used to explain the prevalence of rape against women in Sweden at the local level studies in a general way. It also analyzes how news media represents and constructs gender relations behind rape against women in a discursive way. Beyond that, methodologically, the study provides a new way to look at rape against women through a spatial analytical lens, combining spatial-temporal visualization and discourse construction, and it points out possible obstacles in the work of preventing rapes against women in Sweden. The results show that total rape against women has increased at the national and regional level during the year 2015-2019, but high or low rates of rape against women concentrated in the small municipalities. The prevalent spatio-temporal traits of rape against women in Regional Stockholm and Region Syd can be related to the high female population, economic level, and education level while no obvious links between the prevalence of rape and these socioeconomic variables in the other five police regions. For high rates of rape crime concentrating in small municipalities, local cultural and historical background, such as religions and military history may be related. However, the data collection methodology conducted by Swedish criminal prevention agencies, such social practices may affect the spatial distribution of rape patterns. Besides that, Swedish national and regional news media have their sociopolitical role in shaping the spatial production of rape against women and the broader gender relations by combining portray of rape crime with other social issues, which contributes to the prevalence of rape against women in Sweden.