Marital Rape

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.

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.

Table of Contents
Prologue: Understanding Marital Rape in Global Context
Kersti Yllö
Section I: Conceptualizing the Problem of Marital Rape
Chapter 1: Reconciling Cultural Difference in the Study of Marital Rape
M. Gabriela Torres
Chapter 2: An Overview of Marital Rape Research in the United States: Limitations and Implications for Cross-Cultural Research
Raquel Kennedy Bergen
Chapter 3: Cross-Cultural Studies of Gender-Based Violence: Holistic Approaches for Marital Rape Research
Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane
Section II: The Lived Experience of Rape in Marriage in a Cross-Cultural Context
Chapter 4: Modern Marriage, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence in Nigeria
Daniel Jordan Smith
Chapter 5: Marital Sexual Violence, Structural Vulnerability, and Misplaced Responsibility in Northern Viet Nam
Lynn Kwiatkowski
Chapter 6: Normalizing Suffering, Robadas, Coercive Power, and Marital Unions Among Ladinas in Eastern Guatemala
Cecilia Menjívar
Chapter 7: Marital Rape and the Law: The Condition of Black Township Women in South Africa's Democracy
Judith L. Singleton
Chapter 8: Marital Sexual Violence in Turkey
Henrica A.F.M. (Henriette) Jansen, Ilknur Yüksel-Kaptanoglu, Filiz Kardam, and Banu Ergöçmen
Chapter 9: Rape and the Continuum of Sexual Abuse in Intimate Relationships: Interviews with US Women from Different Social Classes
James Ptacek
Chapter 10: Sexual Murder of Women Intimate Partners in Great Britain
Russell P. Dobash and R. Emerson Dobash
Section III: Public Health, Legal and Human Rights Approaches
Chapter 11: A Feminist Public Health Approach to Marital Rape
Jacquelyn Campbell, Bushra Sabri, Jocelyn Anderson, and Veronica Barcelona de Mendoza
Chapter 12: Marital Rape Laws Globally: Rationales and Snapshots Around the World
Michelle J. Anderson
Chapter 13: Human Rights Meets Intimate Partner Sexual Violence
Monica McWilliams and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Epilogue: Implications for Policy, Practice, and Future Research
M. Gabriela Torres and Kersti Yllö