Violence Against Women Essay

Women are one of the most vulnerable populations in the world whose health conditions impact the overall productivity and wellbeing of the nations. Violence against women is an illustration of a historical, cultural, and social mechanism through which women have been oppressed and considered inferior. Violence against women illuminates men’s desire to have power and authority over women. Desire for superiority has caused men’s discrimination against women to ensure their obedience via control and violence. Within the realm of violence, sexual violence against women is a common behavior independent of societies’ modernity and development. Within sexual violence, marital rape is an area worthy of study. Marital rape is defined as,
Any unwanted
It was in 1970s, when the Womens’ Movement started advocating for change in the legal system to gain women’s rights that the issue of marital rape was discussed as a serious criminal offence and received attention of the politicians (Basile, 1999; Gelles, 1977). According to Martin et al. (2007), marital rape has become illegal in all fifty states of the United States recently. Yet, 10% to 14% of married women and 40% to 50% of battered women in the United States experience marital rape (Martin et al., 2007). Furthermore, even in countries where marital rape is considered a criminal offence, providing evidence that the crime happened requires the victims to prove they did not consent to sexual intercourse (Choudhary, 2015). This is the fact that makes it difficult for the victims to overcome the situations legally and prove the crime. According to Tracy (n.d.), legally, in the United States, there are three types of marital rapes: i) Battering rape, which is the most prevalent types of marital rape, where women are physically and sexually violated by their husbands, ii) Obsessive rape, which involves perverse sexual intercourse and physical violence, and iii) Force-only rape is the type of marital rape that men use force only to coerce their wives, beating is not involved. Each one of the three types fall within specific category of sexual