A Structured Review of Methodologies for Measuring Socio-Economic Impacts of Unequal Urban Opportunity for Women

Women’s fear in urban space is increasingly recognized not only as a safety issue, but as a socio-economic constraint affecting mobility, access to opportunities, and participation in urban life. However, the literature remains fragmented in the way it translates women’s perceived insecurity into measurable impacts relevant for urban planning. This paper presents a structured review of the methodological approaches used to operationalize the socio-economic impacts of women’s fear in cities as part of a broader systematic literature review. Rather than focusing exclusively on safety perception, the review investigates how studies measure the downstream effects of fear through indicators and proxies related to restricted mobility, reduced access to jobs and services, time and travel burdens, additional financial costs, lower use of public space, and unequal urban participation. The paper maps the main methodological families emerging from the literature, including perception-based surveys, participatory and audit-based approaches, GIS and built-environment assessments, spatial-statistical models, and transport accessibility frameworks. The review argues that existing studies are stronger in identifying correlates of perceived insecurity than in constructing robust and transferable indicator systems able to capture its socio-economic implications. The paper outlines the basis for a gender-sensitive and spatially explicit framework to measure how fear reshapes access, mobility, and urban opportunity.