Study maps the strategies women use to defend against sexual violence

Women identified more than 9,000 possible ways of preventing or responding to sexual violence, with the strategies they suggested varying according to who posed the threat and whether an assault had already occurred. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Sexual violence can produce serious physical, psychological, reproductive, and social consequences. Although considerable research has examined why sexual violence occurs, substantially less has investigated the full range of actions women may use to prevent an assault, resist one in progress, or reduce its consequences afterward. Previous studies have also tended to examine a predetermined set of behaviours, such as avoiding isolated places, travelling with others, or carrying a weapon, rather than allowing women to generate strategies themselves.

This earlier research has often focused on assaults by strangers, even though sexual violence is frequently perpetrated by acquaintances, dates, and romantic partners. Strategies that might be useful against a stranger could carry different practical or social consequences when the potential perpetrator is someone the woman knows.

Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss sought to develop a broader, context-sensitive taxonomy of women’s potential defenses. Drawing on sexual conflict theory, they proposed that women may have learned, developed, or evolved a varied set of responses that are sensitive both to their relationship with a potential perpetrator and to whether they are trying to prevent an assault or manage its aftermath.

Study 1 included 262 women between the ages of 18 and 75, with an average age of 22. Participants were recruited between August 2021 and May 2022 through the University of Texas at Austin psychology participant pool, social media posts, and snowball sampling. They considered five scenarios presented in random order: travelling through a dangerous area, attending a party where an acquaintance accused of sexual assault might be present, meeting a man from a dating app, dealing with a sexually aggressive romantic partner, and a general opportunity to suggest additional protective behaviours.

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For each scenario, participants listed three to six things they might do, producing 4,467 nominations. They subsequently provided demographic information and completed measures of sociosexual orientation, perceived mate value, fear of crime, and perceived physical formidability. Responses were organized into an initial coding scheme using both categories suggested by previous theory and categories that emerged from the participants’ answers, after which research assistants who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses independently coded the nominations.

Study 2 included 301 women recruited through the University of Texas at Austin participant pool between August 2023 and May 2024. They were between 18 and 26 years old and were randomly assigned either to suggest ways of preventing an impending sexual assault or to suggest ways of protecting oneself from the consequences of a completed assault. The prevention condition included 148 participants and the aftermath condition included 153.

After reading an explicit definition of sexual assault, participants responded to four randomly ordered prompts involving a stranger, acquaintance, date, or current romantic partner, listing three to six strategies for each. They also reported their biological sex, gender, ethnicity, age, and history of sexual violence. Participants generated 2,268 prevention strategies and 2,350 aftermath strategies, which were independently coded by pairs of research assistants.

In Study 1, the most frequently suggested strategies involved using social allies as “bodyguards.” Women described telling trusted people where they were going, arranging check-ins, bringing someone with them, or pretending that someone else knew their whereabouts. These strategies accounted for nearly 29% of all responses. Preparing to use a weapon or pepper spray accounted for approximately 14%, while other common responses included avoiding isolated places, unwanted attention, nighttime travel, or the situation altogether.

Participants also generated strategies that had received comparatively little attention in previous research, including remaining sober, ending a relationship, researching a potential date, changing clothing or body language, wearing shoes suitable for running, and warning other women through informal “whisper networks.” The strategies varied substantially across scenarios. Remaining sober was overwhelmingly associated with the acquaintance-party scenario, gathering information was especially common before an online date, and ending the relationship or verbally asserting refusal was concentrated in the romantic-partner scenario.

Study 2 showed that women generated similar overall numbers of strategies for prevention and aftermath, but the kinds of strategies differed. For preventing an assault, aggressive defenses, such as carrying a weapon, learning self-defense, or fighting back, were most common, accounting for 33.2% of nominations.

Verbal defenses accounted for 19.0%, using social allies for 16.6%, vigilance for 9.8%, and avoidance for 8.5%. Aggressive defenses were suggested more often against strangers, while avoidance was suggested far less often against romantic partners than against other potential perpetrators. In the aftermath condition, seeking medical or psychological support was the most common response, accounting for 29.4% of nominations.

Participants also suggested turning to social allies, preparing to defend themselves against future assaults, withdrawing socially, engaging in activism or expression, controlling who learned about the assault, pursuing legal action, practising self-care, and warning others. Aftermath strategies were generally less dependent on the perpetrator’s identity, although women were more likely to suggest managing information following an assault by an acquaintance, verbally asserting boundaries with romantic partners, and withdrawing socially following assaults by partners rather than strangers.

Combining both studies produced a preliminary taxonomy of more than 19 broad categories and 48 specific tactics.

The authors emphasize that the taxonomy documents strategies women could imagine using; it does not establish whether participants would use them in real situations or which strategies are most effective.

The research, “Women’s Defenses Against Sexual Violence,” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss.