The Fear No American Woman Dares Forget : THE FEMALE FEAR <i> by Margaret T. Gordon and Stephanie Riger (The Free Press: $19.95; 225 pp.) </i>

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir liked to tell a story about a Cabinet meeting she attended in which the ministers were discussing an outbreak of sexual assault on women at night. One minister suggested a curfew: Women should stay home after dark in order to avoid being raped. “But,” said Meir, “it’s the men who are attacking the women. If there’s to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.”

In “The Female Fear,” authors Margaret T. Gordon of Northwestern University and Stephanie Riger of Lake Forest College use an innovative and original study to demonstrate how our attitudes toward rape in the United States closely parallel those of the minister who suggested a curfew: It is women, they write, who are held responsible for preventing rape. As a result, they suffer devastating emotional consequences and severe limitation of opportunity to be active participants in public life.

In a startling survey designed to prove the pervasiveness of female fear in our society, Gordon and Riger interviewed nearly 400 men and women in three major U.S. cities. Respondents were asked a series of questions about how they conduct their daily lives--questions that might seem insignificant in and of themselves, but which, taken together, demonstrate beyond a doubt that women restrict their activities in order to protect themselves, that they often create small strategies to deal with the fear of rape, and that they spend a good deal more time than men do worrying about assault.

For example, respondents were asked, “how often do you drive rather than walk because of fear of being harmed?” (women, 56%; men 18%), or “how often do you carry keys in your hand when going to your car?” (women, 82%; men, 44%), or again, “how often do you cross the street when you see someone who seems strange or dangerous?” (women 52%, men, 25%), or finally, “how often do you go out with a friend or two as protection?” (women, 51%; men 4%). There are a series of 30 such questions and in each case the answers are strikingly gender-stratified. The authors conclude that “rape is of significant concern for most (women), and all women are forced to live their lives in its shadow.”

Incredibly, the United States has the highest rate of rape in the world. In a fascinating chapter called “The Realities of Rape,” the authors take a close look at rape statistics in our country. They compare and contrast numbers from the Uniform Crime Reports (which are based on local police reports and are compiled by the FBI) with the numbers from the National Crime Survey (conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Census). Police reports recorded a total of 90,434 forcible rapes in 1986, which is a rate of 73 women raped per 100,000 women (one rape every six minutes). But census figures are much higher, indicating that 220 women of every 100,000 are raped (one rape every two minutes). The authors note that the FBI definition of rape is quite stringent, and that there are many errors and omissions. For example, each crime is tabulated in a single crime classification according to the most severe offense. Thus, a rape-murder would be classified solely as a murder. In addition, say the authors, many women do not report sexual assault to the police, but they may indicate that they have been raped in answer to a census question.

There have been dozens of books about rape written since Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 ground-breaking work, “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.” But most have been psychological studies, political treatises, prevention handbooks, victim’s rights analyses, firsthand accounts of women who have been raped and, of late, books examining rape survivors’ tactics. This book is clearly in a class all its own. Calmly, but relentlessly, it explores what one researcher calls, “the male prerogative as a social support for rape and other abuses of women.” It succeeds in shifting the focus from the individual woman who is raped to the social institutions and agents in this country that contribute to a climate where rape is accepted as a fact of life. This must change, the authors insist: “The freedom to walk safely through city streets should be a right enjoyed by every citizen in a nation which calls itself the land of the free.”

A chapter titled “Society’s Responsibility” suggests nine major steps we can take to allay female fear of sexual assault and reduce rape, the authors touch on the role of the mass media, college educators, legislators, policy-makers, communities, police departments and individual citizens in creating a rape-resistant culture, and call for the “full weight of social institutions” to be brought to bear against the conditions that cause rape. They conclude with a moving chapter about a 33-year-old minister who was raped while five of her colleagues were tied up in her living room. A year after the rape, the minister gathered with a number of her friends in a ritual “rite of passage”--to mark what she hoped would be the end of a difficult year of anxiety, mourning, grief, fear and anger. Friends were asked to bring a special symbol of hope and healing to give to her. They were also asked to share their thoughts about the rape, and about sexual assault in general. The authors describe the ritual in detail, and in so doing, evoke for the reader the emotional pain of all the participants, whose lives had been permanently changed by the assault of their friend: “Most of them had not before known a rape victim, and they understood, for the first time, the depth of the devastation wrought by the crime. They saw how important it was to express their caring to Susan and to one another. They shared Susan’s pain, and learned that Susan’s rape and its aftermath were not just Susan’s problems, but also theirs. They saw that rape is not only a problem for victims, but for our entire society.”

This is a powerful book that begins with a scientific study and ends with individual human experience. It is research and writing at its best: executed with technical care and scientific expertise, but never for a moment separated from its specific purpose of improving the quality and value of life for women and men in our society.