ABSTRACT
What is rural, and what is woman abuse? The main objective of this chapter is to answer these two important questions and to make explicit current controversies in defining these concepts. As well, this chapter reveals that there are no uniform definitions of them. Nonetheless, debates about defining woman abuse are much more heated than those about defining rural. This chapter also introduces a modified version of Liz Kelly’s continuum of sexual violence. It includes interpersonal forms of woman abuse (e.g., rapes and beatings) and women’s experiences of crimes of the powerful (e.g., genocidal rape).
