Beneath the Veil: Attitudes toward Religious Motivated Hate Crimes Against Women

• In Event: Poster Session II

Abstract

According to the FBI a hate crime is “a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion”.
According to Perry (2013),
Women are not particularly vulnerable to hate crime…. However…[Muslim] women and girls appear to be extremely vulnerable….due to the fact that those who are covered…are readily identifiable. (Perry, 2013; p. 1)
Perry postulated that, Westerners view veiled women as oppressed and are punishing these women for their willingness to submit to patriarchal pressure.
In addition to Muslim women, many married Orthodox Jewish women and Catholic nuns wear head coverings. Research examines whether the victim’s religion interacts with participants religion to impact reactions to the crime.
Method
Participants (n=162) read one of three news stories about an assault. The news stories were the same except for references to the victim (Muslim woman, Jewish woman, or Catholic Nun).
Results & Discussion
A 3 Victim’s Religion (Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim) X 3 Participant’s University (Christian, Catholic, vs. State) ANOVA was conducted on each of the dependent variables.
Results for whether the assailant was guilty revealed significant main effects for University and Victim’s Religion as well as a significant interaction.

Authors

• Robin Maria Valeri, St. Bonaventure University

• Kevin Borgeson, Salem State University

• Josiely Reyes, St. Bonaventure University

• Cynthia Symons, Houghton College