Females' Labor Force Participation and Rape

Abstract

Ellis has observed that although feminist theorists clearly identify gender inequality as the fundamental cause of violence against women, they are vague about the direction of the causal effect. Using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992-1994) incident-level rape subset data file, this article tests the hypothesis that females' labor force participation will increase their rape victimization by frustrating resentful males into using violence as an ultimate resource in humiliation and control (i.e., the backlash hypothesis). Contrary to this proposition, results show that unemployed women are more likely to be raped than employed women. They also show that poor, older, unmarried, White, suburban females have disproportionate risks of rape victimization. Implications of these data for the debate on the uniqueness of violence against women are discussed.