ABSTRACT
Integrating interdisciplinary and cross-cultural analysis, this volume advances our understanding of sexual violence in intimacy through the development of more nuanced and evidence-based conceptual frameworks.
Sexual violence in intimacy is a global pandemic that causes individual physical and emotional harm as well as wider social suffering. It is also legal and culturally condoned in much of the world. Bringing together international and interdisciplinary research, the book explores marital rape as individual suffering that is best understood in cultural and institutional context. Gendered narratives and large-scale surveys from India, Ghana and Africa Diasporas, Pacific Islands, Denmark, New Zealand, the United States, and beyond illuminate cross-cultural differences and commonalities. Methodological debates concerning etic and emic approaches and de-colonial challenges are addressed. Finally, a range of policy and intervention approaches—including art, state rhetoric, health care, and criminal justice—are explored.
This book provides much needed scholarship to guide policymakers, practitioners, and activists as well as for researchers studying gender-based violence, marriage, and kinship, and the legal and public health concerns of women globally. It will be relevant for upper-level students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, psychology, women’s studies, social work and public and global health.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Section I|22 pages
Introductions to sexual violence in intimacy
part Section II|76 pages
Gendered narratives of sexual violence in marriage
chapter 5|19 pages
“I didn’t tell anyone because of my self-respect”
part Section III|72 pages
Changing the public discourse on sexual violence in intimacy
chapter 7|18 pages
Speaking the previously unspeakable
chapter 9|18 pages
The art of the possible
part Section IV|42 pages
Implications for policy
chapter 11|27 pages
Prevalence and patterns of sexual violence in marriage in the Pacific Region
part |36 pages
Implications for policy