Marital Rape

Abstract

Abstract Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context presents the first analysis of rape in marriage in cross-cultural perspective. Previous scholarship on marital rape has been limited compared with research on battering, acquaintance rape, and child sexual abuse and it is largely US focused. This volume represents the collaboration of an international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational group of scholars and activists. It addresses important conceptual issues, including the evolution of the notion of marital rape and the ideology of permanent consent. Further, it examines the different disciplinary and methodological approaches that can be brought to bear and includes contributions from sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars, and human rights and public health advocates. Importantly, this volume presents the first anthropological research focused on rape in marriage and includes findings from Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam, Guatemala, and Great Britain as well as the United States. The evidence is clear that marital rape is widespread and affects millions of women across the globe. However, the rich, ethnographic work of the anthropologists reveals that forced sex in marriage and other intimate relationships is not defined, experienced, or sanctioned the same way cross culturally. Still, regardless of how intimate sexual violence is understood in a particular cultural context, women everywhere experience it as a violation that undermines their health and well-being. The volume concludes with public health, legal, and human rights approaches to intervention in this most intimate—and most culturally and legally condoned—form of violence against women in the world.