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.