Studies of citizen reaction to crime have oscillated between two categories: objective insecurity, which actual experiences with crime represent, and subjective insecurity, which perceptions and sensations in the face of criminality focus on. This article aims to analyze the divergence or convergence between these two dimensions, based on the analysis of the gender factor, but a particular characteristic of a fundamental context for Colombia and Mexico transversalizes: the high rates of criminal violence. For this purpose, in line with previous research on fear of crime, we use the victimization and perception of security surveys existing in both countries. This analysis allows us to affirm that from the objective dimension, the data coincide for men and women in the "official" victimization scenarios and practices, surpassing the traditional approach of interpretation that anchors female fear to cultural and historical factors that determine and make it. However, the behavioral component of the subjective dimension is the one that marks the greatest differential in the response to fear by men and women, making evident the impact of the fear of crime on the ways of living of the latter. © 2023 Centro Estudios Derecho Penal. All rights reserved.