ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the feminist idea of 'intersectionality' in order to elaborate its potential as a theoretical perspective that social workers can draw on in their efforts to divest rape and sexual assault of their power to demean women. It explores the understandings of rape and sexual assault in the contemporary context, and discusses the feminist understandings of rape and sexual assault, and the more recent contribution of an intersectional feminist lens. The chapter outlines the definition and incidence of rape and sexual assault, and considers the contribution that radical and intersectional feminisms bring to our understanding of these problems. Social workers, no matter in which sector of service provision or policy writing, will be working with women who have survived rape, yet this is an area of social work that is insufficiently recognised. Understandings of the contexts and incidence of rape and sexual abuse are arbitrated by different cultures and rape is defined differently in diverse legal jurisdictions.
