Examining the determinants of sexual violence among young, married women in Southern India

The prevalence of sexual violence is increasingly being studied in India. Yet the determinants of sexual violence, irrespective of physical violence, remain largely unexplored. Here the authors identify the determinants of sexual violence, and additionally, explore how the presence of physical violence modifies these determinants. A cross-sectional analysis is conducted using baseline data from a longitudinal study involving young married women attending reproductive health clinics in Southern India. A multivariable logistic regression analysis is conducted to first identify determinants of sexual violence and then repeated after stratifying elements based on presence or absence of physical violence identified from participants' reports. 36% and 50% of the participants report experiencing sexual and physical violence, respectively. After adjusting for other covariates, women's partners' characteristics are found most significantly associated with their odds of experiencing sexual violence. These characteristics include husbands' primary education, employment as drivers, alcohol consumption, and having multiple sex partners. Women's contribution to household income also increases their odds of experiencing sexual violence by almost twofold; however, if they are solely responsible for "all" household income, the relationship is found to be protective. Physical violence modifies the determinants of sexual violence, and among women not experiencing physical violence, husbands' primary education and employment as drivers increase women's odds of experiencing sexual violence nearly threefold, and women who contribute "all" the household income (n = 62) do not experience sexual violence. These relationships are not significant among women experiencing physical violence. Study findings improve the understanding of the determinants of sexual violence. Future research is needed to examine the risk factors for different types of GBV independently and to tease apart the differences in risk factors depending on women's experiences. The significance of male partners' characteristics warrants in-depth research, and in order to promote gender-equitable norms, future interventions need to focus on male behaviors and men's day-to-day survival challenges, all of which likely influence conflicts in marital relationships.     

Violence against women associated with arrests for sex trade but not drug charges

The current study was designed to examine associations between gender-based violence and arrests due to sex trade or drug-related charges among a statewide sample of incarcerated women in Rhode Island. Incarcerated women were asked to participate in brief pre- and posttest surveys of their experiences of violence, sexual risk and substance use behaviors, as part of a study on the effectiveness of a family planning program in a state correctional facility; data from pretest surveys (N=447) were used for current analyses. Logistic regression analyses adjusted for demographics were used to assess significant associations between gender-based violence variables (i.e., adolescent intimate partner violence (IPV), adult IPV, childhood sexual assault (SA), adolescent SA, and adult SA) and arrests due to sex trade or drug-related charges. Significant relationships were observed between arrests for sex trade and adult SA (OR=2.1, 95%CI=1.2-3.6), adolescent IPV (OR=2.5, 95%CI=1.5-4.1), and adult IPV (OR=1.7, 95%CI=1.1-2.6); no significant associations were observed for drug-related charges. Findings from the current study demonstrate that experiences of gender-based violence are associated with arrests for sex trade but not drug-related charges. Interventions for incarcerated women are needed to consider and address history of victimization from gender-based violence and its relation to women's historic and future sex trade involvement.     

Religion, State Power, and Domestic Violence in Muslim Societies: A Framework for Comparative Analysis

This article focuses on the issue of domestic violence in Muslim societies in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The analytical framework is comparative, emphasizing four factors and the interplay among them: shari'a (Islamic law), state power, intrafamily violence, and struggles over women's rights. The comparative approach historicizes the problem of domestic violence and impunity to consider the impact of transnational legal discourses (Islamism and human rights) on "local" struggles over rights and law. The use of shari'a creates some commonalities in gender and family relations in Muslim societies, notably the sanctioning and maintenance of male authority over female relatives. However, the most important issue for understanding domestic violence and impunity is the relationship between religion and state power. This relationship takes three forms: communalization, in which religious law is separate from the national legal regime; nationalization, in which the state incorporates religious law into the national legal regime; and theocratization, in which the national legal regime is based on religious law.     

Gendering Justice in Humanitarian Spaces: Opportunity and (Dis)empowerment Through Gender‐Based Legal Development Outreach in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Why have women in eastern DR Congo increasingly turned to domestic courts in the aftermath of sexual violence, despite the fact that the state has consistently failed to provide basic goods and services to its citizens? Moreover, how do victims of violence interpret their first encounters with state law in an environment characterized by institutional fragility and humanitarian governance? This article analyzes the experiences and reflections of 50 self‐reported victims of sexual violence in eastern DR Congo. We find that human rights NGOs have served as critical mediators in persuading victims of violence to pursue legal remedy for sexual crimes. However, rather than being socialized to prioritize formal accountability mechanisms in precisely the ways that the architects of legal outreach programs intended, we find that victims of violence have turned to the law for a combination of material and ideational factors. Some appear to have internalized emerging norms of punitive criminal justice, while others have adopted the language of law instrumentally, in order to access crucial socio‐material benefits. We identify a paradox of opportunity and disempowerment, therefore, that characterizes our interviewees' experiences with the law.     

Date rape: A feminist analysis

This paper shows how the mythology surrounding rape enters into a criterion of reasonableness which operates through the legal system to make women vulnerable to unscrupulous victimization. It explores the possibility for changes in legal procedures and presumptions that would better serve women's interests and leave them less vulnerable to sexual violence. This requires that we reformulate the criterion of consent in terms of what is reasonable from a woman's point of view.     

Reports call for end to harms caused by Criminal Code prohibitions surrounding prostitution

The sale of sexual services between consenting adults is legal under Canadian law, yet the Criminal Code prohibits many activities related to prostitution and the sex trade. As a result, many people who work in the sex trade come into conflict with the law. In recent reports, two Canadian organizations have called for the repeal of the current Criminal Code prohibitions on activities related to the sex trade. Pivot Legal Society's report, "Voices for Dignity: A Call to End the Harms Caused by Canada's Sex Trade Laws," was released in March 2004. The Conseil permanent de la jeunesse, a 15-member advisory panel to the Québec government, released "Prostitution de rue: avis" in April 2004.     

What puts women at risk of violence from their husbands? Findings from a large, nationally representative survey in Turkey

A large, nationally representative, cross-sectional survey was conducted in Turkey in 2008. In this survey, which used the WHO (World Health Organization) study module on violence, information about lifetime and current violence (past 12 months) was obtained using weighted, stratified, and multistage cluster sampling. This article describes factors associated with physical or sexual violence experienced by ever-married women, aged 15 to 49, from their current or most recent husbands in the 12 months before the survey. Logistic regression analysis is used to describe the risk and protective factors from a considerable range of explanatory variables. The findings confirm that many factors are similar to the experiences of other countries. The physical or sexual violence experienced by ever-married women from their husbands was 15.1%. The violence experienced by women is significantly positively associated with early childhood abuse experiences of both women and their husbands; marriages decided by families or others; husband's behaviors such as drunkenness, adultery, controlling women's behavior, and preventing contact with women's family and friends. The age of the women, their contribution to the household income, support from women's families, women's acceptance of male authority, and nonpartner violence experience as well as regional differentials also affect the risk of violence. No significant associations were found with the employment status of women and men or education difference. This study, as one of the largest surveys ever conducted on the issue of domestic violence using face-to-face interviews, demonstrated how the patriarchal family structure still affects women's lives in Turkey. This is particularly significant, given Turkey's setting between traditional and modern values.     

Labours in Vice or Virtue? Neo-liberalism, Sexual Commerce, and the Case of Indian Bar Dancing

Of late, the Indian state has adopted an abolitionist stance towards sex work and bar dancing. This article argues that although in the Indian state of Maharashtra, the judicial overturning of the ban against bar dancing has been celebrated by feminists as a triumph of women's right to livelihood over patriarchal demands of women's sexual morality, the judgment is predicated on a sharp distinction between morally 'good' and 'bad' female labour, namely, bar dancing and sex work. This is ironic given their striking sociological similarities and the stigmatization and levels of state abuse inflicted against both. The article considers the usefulness of the totalizing logic of neo-liberalism for explaining the increased judicial and feminist tolerance for bar dancing. The article argues that prospects for redistributive law reform for all sexual workers are dim unless the arbitrary legal distinctions drawn between markets in female sexual labour are overcome.     

Exploring a Research Agenda of the Feminization of the Legal Profession: Theories of Gender and Social Change

This essay suggests that recent work in feminist theory should reorient the questions that are asked about the role of gender in the legal profession. Some use gender as a category of analysis to explore differences that reinforce conventional gendered stereotypes, such as the conceptualization of work and family in lawyering as a "women's issue." Others use conventional sociology of the professions analysis, such as stratification, to measure women's "success" and "satisfaction" in the context of the traditional law firm. By focusing on some recent historical and sociological research on women in the legal and medical professions, the author illustrates how we might ask different questions, not to reify gender differences but to more fully examine the role that gender difference, as socially constructed, might play in the transformation of law practice.     

Obscuring sexual crime: examining media representations of sexual violence in Megan’s law

Sexual violence remains a pervasive and persistent social problem. In 1996, Congress enacted Megan’s Law, dictating mandatory community notification and potential civil commitment for those deemed by the State to be dangerous sexual offenders. In 2013, Megan’s Law continues to influence the treatment of sexual offenders under law and the social construction of a highly publicized, yet statistically rare, sexual crime – the rape and murder of a young female child by a depraved male stranger. This influence highlights the extent to which this personalized crime bill shapes the social construction of sexual violence in terms of sex and gender systems. This paper examines how sex and gender shape media discourses of the sexual offender and victim that are mobilized in the legislative debate on Megan’s Law. Drawing on theoretical ideas from cultural studies and feminist legal scholarship, we employ discourse analysis to analyze the legislative debate on Megan’s Law. We find that high-profile media images of sex offenders and victims are relied on to construct a singular image of sexual violence, whereby a child is victimized by an adult sexual predator. These images draw on traditional, conservative notions of gender and sexuality.     

Defining, assigning and designing sex

This article challenges the distinction the law draws between male and female. It focuses on the legal and medical treatment of intersexual people. Analysing the nature and rate of intersexuality it argues that there is a significant number of people who cannot be described as either male or female and instead exhibit a range of sexual characteristics. Until recently the law and medicine have insisted that intersexual people should be categorized as either male or female. Surgery was performed to ensure that they had the appearance assumed to be the 'norm' for a man or woman and the law followed this medical assignment of sex. Over the last couple of years the established medical practice and the legal treatment have been challenged. This article discusses the nature of these challenges and argues that there is a strong case for rejecting the traditional legal and medical approach to intersexual people. Cosmetic surgery on intersexual babies should be delayed until the individual is old enough to be able to choose their own sexual identity, which may be neither male nor female. The insistence that every person must either be male or female is no longer supportable in medical or social terms and a much wider range of sexual identities must be recognized by the law.     

The Paradox of Complaining: Law, Humor, and Harassment in the Everyday Work World

This article addresses the question of women's seeming rejection of sexual harassment law by refusing to apply the label "sexual harassment" in the face of incidents that would easily qualify as such. Building on the work of Bumiller (1988) and the tradition of sociolegal studies focusing on understanding the power of the law in its everyday context (e.g., Merry 1979; Engel 1987; Sarat and Kearns 1993), this analysis explores the "tactical milieu" in which both hostile work environment sexual harassment and tactics for its resistance are produced. Using in-depth interviews with both women and men, the author explores the ways a particular form of hostile work environment harassment–dubbed "chain yanking"–poaches on the realm of ambiguous humor to effect male group solidarity and women's disempowerment. A common countertactic–"not taking it personal"– is analyzed for its simultaneous power as resistance and unwitting collaboration. The contradictory effects of this tactic-countertactic pairing on the naming and claiming of the harm of sexual harassment are examined, as well as the implications this has for combating sexual harassment in the workplace.     

Intimate partner violence against older women in Germany: prevalence and associated factors

Violence against women is a recognized human rights and public health issue, with significant impacts on women's life and health. Until now, several studies, most of them relying on small scale samples, have explored the prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence against older women, whereas few have examined what actually puts older women at risk of intimate partner violence. This study is based on a secondary analysis of the first national survey on violence against women in Germany, looking at the prevalence and associated factors for physical and for sexual violence by the current partners of women aged 50 to 65 and women aged 66 to 86 years. The prevalence of violence in women's current relationships was 12% and 5%, respectively. In both age groups, women who had experienced violence during childhood and nonpartner physical or sexual violence after the age of 16 had higher odds of experiencing current partner violence. Current partner violence was associated only with women and their partner's level of education and women's vocational training among women aged 66 to 86 years. Relationships where one or both partners drank heavily in recent months were associated with higher odds of violence among women aged 50 to 65. Future studies on intimate partner violence need to recognize that women above reproductive risk are also at risk of current partner violence.     

Domestic violence and minoritisation: legal and policy barriers facing minoritized women leaving violent relationships

This article on service responses to women of African, African-Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian backgrounds facing domestic violence draws on our recently completed study based in Manchester, UK () [Batsteeler, J., Burman, E., Chantler, K., McIntosh, S.H., Pantling, K., Smailes, S., Warner, S., et al. 2002. Domestic violence minoritisation: Supporting women to indepence. Women's Studies Centre: The Manchester Metropolitan University]. We frame our analysis of domestic violence and minoritisation around the question that is frequently posed in relation to women living with domestic violence: 'why doesn't she leave?' In response, we highlight the complex and intersecting connections between domestic violence, law, mental health provision, entitlement to welfare services, which function alongside constructions of 'culture' and cultural identifications, structures of racism, class and gendered oppression. All these contribute to maintain women, particularly minoritized women, in violent relationships. Further, we illustrate how leaving violent relationships does not necessarily guarantee the safety of women and children escaping domestic violence. Despite many recent legal and social policy initiatives in the UK that have usefully brought domestic violence into the public domain, there have also been counter-measures which have made leaving violent relationships correspondingly more difficult, in particular for women from minoritized communities. We offer an analysis of how state practices, particularly facets of immigration law in the UK (although , provides an equivalent U.S. analysis), interact with domestic violence. These not only equip perpetrators with a powerful tool to oppress minoritized women further, but it also indicates how state structures thereby come to impact directly on women's distress (Chantler et al, 2001). In addition, we highlight how other aspects of state policy and practice which enter into the material well-being of survivors of domestic violence, for example, housing, levels of state benefits, and child-care also pose significant obstacles to minoritized women leaving violent relationships. Whilst women from majority/dominant groups also face many of these barriers, we illustrate how the racialized dimensions of such policies heightens their exclusionary effects. It is argued that legal and psychological strategies need to address the complexity of how public, state and institutional practices intersect with racism, class and gender oppression in order to develop more sensitive and accessible ways of supporting minoritized women and children living with domestic violence.     

The Agencies of Abuse: Intimate Abusers' Experience of Presumptive Arrest and Prosecution

Presumptive arrest and prosecution policies are designed to eradicate domestic violence by disrupting abusive relationships and transforming the subjectivities of victimized women and abusive men. Using in-depth interviews with 30 persons arrested and prosecuted for domestic violence, this article examines the power of presumptive policies by exploring how intimate abusers experience them. The study finds that while the police and courts are able to secure arrests and convictions on domestic violence cases, nearly all the respondents in this study understand their punishments as unfair sanctions meted out by an unjust local legal system rather than as the consequences of their own actions. These injustice claims emerge from abusers' group identities as well as the very practices through which the police and courts gain authority over them. These findings demonstrate that the power of the law as a force for social change may be more limited than some have claimed. In addition, they reinforce calls to reform society's response to intimate violence through procedures that can go further in empowering victims and having offenders recognize their responsibility for violence.     

From Consent to Responsibility, from Pity to Respect: Subtexts in Cases of Sexual Violence Involving Girls and Women with Developmental Disabilities

How might feminist law reform serve all women? The author explores this question within the context of sexual violence involving girls and women with developmental disabilities. She presents the difference impasse as a theoretical tool for understanding how women are positioned in law differently and unequally in relation to each other. She explores how, within the consent framework of a rape trail, competing social narratives or subtexts about race, class, gender, and disability circulate in the courtroom. She also explores the issue of pity in rape traiIs and argues that focusing on interlocking systems of domination and on our complicity in maintaining categories of women in law and law reform is a useful approach for feminist law reformers.     

Classing Sex Offenders: How Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Differentiate Men Accused of Sexual Assault

As public awareness of and concern about sexual victimization has increased in recent decades, stigmatization of sex offenders has also increased considerably. Contemporary sex offender policies transform discrete criminal behaviors into lifelong social identities. Although there is much debate about the efficacy and constitutionality of such policies, we know little about how the category of “sex offender” is constituted in the first place. In this article, I reveal how prosecutors and defense attorneys construct sex offenders, not as monsterous or racialized as is commonly thought, but as “lower class” men. This analysis is based on 30 in‐depth interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys in Michigan. These legal actors wield disproportionate power in defining the boundaries of criminal behaviors and individuals. That they associate sexual criminality with lower class men demonstrates yet another way that class‐based inequalities are reproduced in the legal field.     

Legitimacies, Indian Identities, and the Law: The Politics of Sex and the Creation of History in Colonial New England

In an early-eighteenth-century legal contest on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, an Indian leader, Jacob Seeknout, appealed a ruling that under-mined his political authority. Seeknout's lawyer, Benjamin Hawes, crafted an argument that intertwined the sexual legitimacy of Seeknout's ancestors with his political legitimacy; at the same time, Hawes also linked Indians'collective chastity as a "nation" to their sovereign status. This paper examines the economic, religious, criminal, and historical contexts of this argument, exploring the history of Indians'conjugal practices and their reinvention as the criminal acts of fornication. The case illustrates some of the diverse sources of early American law, links between these legal structures and colonialism, and the importance for scholars of attending to the local level in exploring the power of colonial law to shape new racial identities.     

Reconfiguring Law: An Ethnographic Perspective from Botswana

Using two marital disputes, this article examines women's experiences in bringing legal claims regarding family property in Botswana. It highlights the ways women draw on diverse economic and social resources available to them through their differing positions within gendered social networks that shape daily life and affect the ability to access and manipulate a legal system incorporating Tswana customary law and European law. The divergent discourses among women and between women and men document how the administrative and theoretical separation of legal systems does not extend to people's uses of the law in arranging their own lives. This analysis challenges the formalist model of legal pluralism by demonstrating that legal arguments are constructed from the gendered social and economic facts of individuals'lives that traverse the legal categories of European and customary law. It also contributes to feminist legal scholarship by explicitly marking the links among gender, power, and law.