Main description:

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.

Contents:

Section I: Introductions to Sexual Violence in Intimacy

Chapter 1: New Frameworks for a Global Understanding of Sexual Violence in Intimacy

M. Gabriela Torres

Chapter 2: Living through Marital Rape

Fatima Muhammad DeSaraogo Porgho

Section II: Gendered Narratives of Sexual Violence in Marriage

Chapter 3: Young African Men's Reflections on Negotiating Sexual Intimacy

Akosua Adomako Ampofo

Chapter 4: Structural Vulnerability and Marital Sexual Violence in Chuuk, Micronesia

Sarah A. Smith

Chapter 5: "I didn't tell anyone because of my self-respect." The Collective Response to Naming Sexual Violence within Marriage in India

Niveditha Menon

Chapter 6: Black Feminist Analysis of Intraracial Sexual Violence within Black Women's Intimate Relationships

Freda Grant

Section III: Changing the Public Discourse on Sexual Violence in Intimacy

Chapter 7: Speaking the Previously Unspeakable: How Codifications of Spousal Rape into Law Affects How Intimate Partner Sexual Assaults are Reported

Rachel Lovell, Cyleste C. Collins, and Misty N. Luminais

Chapter 8: Marital Sexual Violence, Care, and Shared Suffering in Vietnam

Lynn Kwiatkowski

Chapter 9: The Art of the Possible: An Exploration of Artistic Interventions to Address Marital Rape in India.

Sreeparna Chattodpahay

Chapter 10: The Nexus between Sexual and Gender Violence and the Trafficking of Women in Puerto Rico

Luisa Hernandez Angueira and Sheila Perez Lopez

Section IV: Implications for Policy

Cross Cultural Comparisons of Sexual Violence in Intimacy
Chapter 11: Prevalence and Patterns of Sexual Violence in Marriage in the Pacific Region: Quantitative Data in Cross Cultural Comparison

Henriette Jansen

Chapter 12: A Global Women's Health Perspective on Marital Rape: Sanctions and Sanctuary

Jacquelyn Campbell

The Impact of Gender Equity Discourses on Policy

Chapter 13: Gender Equality Achieved? Policies on Intimate Partner (Sexual) Violence in the Danish Context.

Eva Bertelsen, William Osterby Sorensen, and Anna Maria Moskilde

Chapter 14: Reframing Sexual Violence as "Sexual Harm" in New Zealand: A Policy Critique

Nicola Gavey and Jade Farley