Gender Views on 75 Crimes: A Survey of Mexican Opinion

Abstract

This study reports the results of a survey of students in a Mexican university who were asked to rate the seriousness of 75 crimes on a scale of 1 to 100. Results are reported overall as well as by gender. In 46 of 75 cases, the male and female mean scores were not significantly different. In the other 29 cases, women usually rated particular crimes as more serious than the men in the sample. Buying a pirated CD/DVD was considered to be the least serious crime, overall, while various kinds of murder and rape ranked as most serious. Some kinds of murder were found to be more serious than others. Women thought that murdering a prostitute would result in a greater loss to society than would murdering a local politician, whereas the male sample valued the losses equally.

Keywords: gender, crime, survey

JEL Classification: D03, J16, K14, K40