Women routinely practise taxing safety strategies in public, such as avoiding unlit spaces after dark. To date, scholars have understood these behaviors as means by which women bolster their physical safety in public. My in-depth interviews with women in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia suggest that, much less than reliably enhancing women’s safety, safety work often exacerbates women’s fear of violent crime and unreliably mitigates their exposure to violence. I thus interrogate the protective function of gendered safekeeping and reconceptualize women’s safety work as virtue maintenance work, theorizing that women practice risk-management in public places to attain the ontological security associated with evading subjectivities of gendered imprudence.

女性通常会在公共场合实施征税安全策略，例如在天黑后避开没有照明的空间。迄今为止，学者们已经将这些行为理解为女性在公共场合加强人身安全的手段。我对不列颠哥伦比亚省大温哥华地区女性的深入采访表明，安全工作不仅不能可靠地提高女性的安全，而且往往会加剧女性对暴力犯罪的恐惧，并且不可靠地减轻她们遭受暴力的风险。因此，我质疑性别化保管的保护功能，将女性安全工作重新定义为美德维护工作，理论化女性在公共场所实践风险管理，以获得与逃避性别轻率主观性相关的本体安全。