In many countries legal system is extremely soft on men who commit rape - expert

As a new report by the Muslim Women’s Network which suggests young girls from different ethnic backgrounds are too scared to report attacks for fear of bringing shame on their families, Rachel Jewkes, the Director of the South African Medical Research Council based in Pretoria and one of the authors of the survey that we are talking about, in an interview with the Voice of Russia commented on the survey’s results and on measures to be taken to make women feel safer and "to hold men more accountable".

Mrs. Jewkes, hello and welcome to the program! As the author of the survey, how would you assess the results? Were they in any way predictable?

I think that I some ways we could have predicted them. The research with women has shown that actually the experience of being raped by their husband or their boyfriend is much more common than we would think. The figure of 1.7-1.5 women who have ever been coerced into sex by a husband or boyfriend is something that has been described in other research. The component that comes across as being very different is the component of non-partner sexual violence. Women tend to report quite low levels of victimization of non-partner sexual violence. And the figure that we’ve been able to measure from men is very-very much higher than that. What we have shown is that the prevalence is very much higher than people would have thought.

Considering the aftermath of the horrific gang rape in India’s Delhi and, of course, relying on the survey’s findings is there a potential to offer any effective government-controlled measures to make women feel safer not only in public places, but at home as well?

I think that the key thing about making women feel safer is that actually we need a comprehensive effort to try and make sure that rape perpetration is reduced. And apprehending the men who rape and locking them up, and charging them, denying them bail, prosecuting them, giving them longer sentences is obviously part of the set of measures that are needed. And we know that in many countries the legal system is extremely soft on men who commit rape. And we know that across the world, including the US, Britain and South Africa the conviction for rape is actually very low, even amongst cases that get into court. So, there is a huge amount of effort that could be done to actually hold men accountable more. But I think there is also a big agenda of primary prevention – stopping a rape happening before it ever occurs. And there is a set of things that need to be done here. I think, first of all, we have to change the social norms that lead men to think that it is acceptable for them to take a woman for sex if they want to. We also need to change the social norms in general about the use violence, because this drives the problem of gender-based violence overall. We found that in countries that have a higher prevalence of rape and other forms of violence against women there is generally a greater acceptability for the use of violence. It is very important to work with ordinary men around how they come to see themselves as men, because in most societies being a violent man is not something which is actually regarded as being a particularly admirable thing to be. In most societies men are expected to gain respect through nonviolent means. And so, the most admired masculine positions actually are not violent. That gives us a lot of potential for working to try and get men who use violence to think about how they want to be seen as men. And we also see a sort of toppling of ideas that it is important for men to demonstrate their heterosexuality a lot by having lots of partners, as well as being tough on willing to defend their honour with force. These ideas are all linked to rape perpetration. So, it is very-very important that we try and sort of unpick that cluster of ideas and get men to see themselves as being good, respectful and admirable men based on other ideas around masculinity. Another thing I wanted to mention is childhood, because actually men who experienced physical, emotional and sexual abuse in childhood are more likely to rape and be violent towards women. We need to change the way in which we raise children in order to be able to make sure that they behave more as the adults that we fit in better into our society and don’t perpetrate crimes.

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_09_11/In-many-countries-legal-system-is-extremely-soft-on-men-who-commit-rape-expert-2659/