University of Detroit Mercy Women's and Gender Studies

06/02/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVLdciYjB/

A recent study has confirmed what every woman instinctively knows: men and women experience the simple act of walking through the world in fundamentally different ways -- with women performing an invisible, automatic threat assessment that begins the moment they step outside alone.

Researchers at Brigham Young University showed nearly 600 college students photographs of campus walking paths at four Utah universities and asked them to click on the areas that stood out most as they imagined walking through those spaces alone. They turned the responses into heat maps -- and the differences were stark.

Men looked at the path ahead. The destination. A streetlight, a garbage can, the walkway in front of them. Women scanned the periphery -- the bushes, the dark corners, the spaces alongside the path where someone could be hiding. As lead researcher Robert Chaney put it, they "expected to see some differences, but we didn't expect to see them so contrasting. It's really visually striking."

The gap widened dramatically at night and in what the researchers call "high-entrapment" settings -- narrow bridges, walled paths, spaces where escape would be difficult. In those conditions, the heat maps were so structurally different that the two groups were essentially looking at entirely different environments.

And there is good reason for that vigilance. Women aged 18-24 are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than women of other age groups. Among college women, there are two sexual assaults for every one robbery -- a complete inversion of the ratio in the general population. That scanning isn't paranoia. It's pattern recognition built on a lifetime of lived experience.

But the study reveals something beyond individual behavior -- it reveals who our shared spaces are built for. Those walkways, bridges, and campus paths were designed by people who see space the way the men in this study do: eyes forward, focused on the destination. A narrow walled bridge with a single light at the end works fine for the person who looks straight ahead. It doesn't work for the person whose eyes go immediately to the dark edges on either side.

It's not that anyone set out to make public spaces feel unsafe for women. It's that many of the people making design decisions rarely had to scan for danger themselves -- so they never thought to design for those who do. The threat isn't just in the shadows. It's in the fact that no one considered the shadows at all.

Co-author Alyssa Baer said her hope is that having concrete data will start conversations that lead to meaningful action in designing safer spaces. Chaney went further: "Why can't we live in a world where women don't have to think about these things?"

--> We want to hear your thoughts. Do these findings match your own experience? What do you do when you're walking alone at night -- and have you ever tried to explain it to someone who didn't understand? What do you notice that the men in your life don't?

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For a groundbreaking look at how a world built on male-default data -- from urban planning to medicine to car safety -- systematically disadvantages women, we highly recommend "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" for ages 14 and up at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781419735219 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/2Qzqg8H (Amazon)

Urban design isn't the only area where sexist bias affects research; for two excellent books for adult readers about how medical systems often fail women, we recommend the new "Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World" (https://www.amightygirl.com/unwell-women) and "Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctor's Believe in Women's Pain" (https://www.amightygirl.com/ask-me-about-my-uterus)

To read the full study, "Gender-Based Heat Map Images of Campus Walking Settings: A Reflection of Lived Experience," published in the journal Violence and Gender, visit https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10951437/

To read BYU's coverage of the study, including additional heat map images, visit https://news.byu.edu/intellect/study-visually-captures-hard-truth-walking-home-at-night-is-not-the-same-for-women

05/11/2026

04/08/2026

The Women's and Gender Studies Program is thrilled to announce the winners of our 2025-26 Annual Undergraduate Writing Competition!

Poetry (collection of 3-6 poems)
1st place: Melissa Converse - ​Blue’s Clues Never Covered This​
2nd place: Eemi Toma - ​I Do Not Want to Be the First​
3rd place: Kylee Foster - ​The Phenomenal Fawn​

Academic Essay
1st place: Erin DeFever - ​Beyond the Binary: Speculative Fiction as a Lens for Postgender Futures​
2nd place: Lena Williams - ​Voices in the Margins: Biblical Women Reclaiming their Narrative​
3rd place: Candy Saputo -​ Domestic Violence: A Plague Infiltrating the Souls of Our Women​

Short Fiction/Personal Essay
1st place: Sarah Soria - ​The Consistency of Wool​
2nd place: Erin DeFever - Matryoshka: A Cruel Legacy
3rd place: Melissa Converse - ​Survive​

Please join us in congratulating these students!

03/27/2026

Detroit Mercy welcomes guest speaker Nada Fadul on Wednesday, April 1, who will present virtually on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and give a general overview of Sudan’s history with an in-depth description of the current war, including the role of international actors.

The presentation will begin at 5 p.m. Please register to receive a Zoom link to the presentation: https://udmercy-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/aMJpF0XFS6qedX8GhIaspA #/registration

Fadul is assistant dean and professor of Medicine at the Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). She is a board member of the Sudanese American Public Affairs Association (SAPAA).

This event is co-sponsored by Carney Latin American Solidarity Archive (CLASA), the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. For more information or any questions, please contact Gail Presbey at [email protected].

03/25/2026

Women and men see the world differently.

We often talk about urban safety in terms of lighting and infrastructure. But a new study reveals that the gap between men and women isn't just about physical safety - it's about perception.

Researchers surveyed 571 college students across four Utah campuses, using heat maps to track where participants focused their attention when imagining a walk alone. The results were striking:

- Different foci: Male participants predominantly focused on the walking path ahead. Female participants consistently highlighted areas outside the path - bushes, shadows, and dark corners.

- The night factor: This divergence widened significantly at night. Women were far more likely to flag areas outside the path during nighttime and high-entrapment settings (areas where escape is difficult).

- Statistical reality: The structural similarity between male and female heat maps was low, indicating that men and women are essentially scanning the same environment for entirely different threats.

Why this matters:

This isn't just about avoiding crime. When half your population is constantly scanning for hidden risks, their freedom of movement - and consequently their physical and mental health - is compromised.

The study suggests that simply adding streetlights isn't enough.

We need to design spaces that account for the "lived experience" of safety, recognizing that women’s vigilance is often a rational response to disproportionate risk (women aged 18–24 are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than other age groups).

Holistic community safety requires more than reactionary apps or better bulbs. It demands that we view walking spaces through the lens of those who feel most vulnerable. When we design for the most cautious walker, we create safer spaces for everyone.

Have you noticed differences in how people navigate shared spaces? What urban design changes would make you feel safer?

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Ready to turn these insights into policy?

Join us at the 13th World Urban Forum (WUF13). This is where global leaders, urban planners, and communities converge to co-create inclusive, safe, and resilient cities for everyone.

📅 Register now: https://wuf.unhabitat.org/ Let's build spaces where no one has to scan for shadows to feel safe.

03/22/2026

Two great events happening on Monday and Tuesday this week. All are welcome:

03/05/2026

Starting soon! We hope you can join us.