Columbus women feel safer than men, survey finds
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Women feel less safe than men in most major cities across the country — but not in Columbus.
Why it matters: We're a glaring outlier among 27 select cities, and researchers aren't sure why.
The big picture: City Pulse 2025: The Magnetic City, published by design and architecture firm Gensler's research wing, examined residents' attitudes about a variety of issues in their home cities.
- About 13,500 residents were surveyed between July and November 2024.
Zoom in: Almost across the board, significantly more men than women said they feel safe in their cities — in some cases, the gap is as large as 15 percentage points.
- Conversely, 64% of Columbus women feel "safe" or "very safe" and just 59% of men feel the same.
- The only other city with a lower percentage of men than women was Minneapolis, separated by just 1%.
- Columbus women feel safer than all but seven of the cities surveyed.
Between the lines: Researchers aren't quite sure what to make of Columbus' outlier data.
- Sheryl Schulze, managing editor of Gensler Columbus, doesn't have a definitive explanation, but she has some theories.
- Those include Central Ohio's fragmented downtown structure, differences in safe feelings by race, lack of public transportation and public spaces that feel less than welcoming.
What they're saying: Schulze's broadest theory is that this data set highlights a problem that isn't unique to Columbus — a "lack of civil trust and social connection" stemming from our disconnected, social media-fueled existence.
- "People have a tendency to interact and be more social with their phones than they are with others," she tells Axios.
- "Does that create some disparity here, where men aren't forming the meaningful relationships that they could, as opposed to women, who have a tendency to be more social than men?"
The bottom line: This data isn't an indication of how safe Columbus actually is.
- It "captures perception, not incident rates," Schulze notes.
