Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Rape in marriage is a global problem affecting millions of women -- it is still legal in many countries and was only criminalized in all U.S. states in 1993. In much of the world, marital rape is too often understood as an oxymoron due to the fact that the ideology of permanent consent
underlies the legal and cultural definitions of sex in marriage. From Vietnam to Guatemala to South Africa and beyond, this volume examines how cultural, legal, public health, and human rights policies and practices impact intimate partner violence. While legal and cultural conceptions of marital
rape vary widely -- from criminal assault to wifely duty -- this volume offers evidence from different societies that forced sex undermines the physical and psychological well-being of the women who experience it, regardless of their cultural context.

Globally, the nature of marriage is changing and so are notions of individual choice, love, intimacy, and rigid gender roles. Marital Rape documents wide ranging and fluid understandings of sex, consent, and rape in marriage; such an array of perspectives demands an international and
interdisciplinary approach to the study of sex and gender-based violence. This text brings together an international group of scholars from the fields of anthropology, sociology, criminology, law, public health, and human rights; their work points to the importance of understanding the lived
experience of sexual violence for the design of effective and culturally sensitive public policy and practice.


Author: Kersti Yllö
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 06/06/2016
Pages: 262
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780190238360

About the Author

Kersti Yllö, MA, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Wheaton College (MA), where she held the Henrietta Jennings Chair for Outstanding Teaching, and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Estonia. She has done research on domestic violence for nearly four decades and has published numerous articles and
books including License to Rape: the Sexual Abuse of Wives (with David Finkelhor).

M. Gabriela Torres, MA, PhD, is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College (MA), and is a specialist in the study of the violence and state formation. Her work focused on Guatemala has been published in numerous journals and edited collections and has been funded by the Wenner Gren
Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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