David Smith reports in the Guardian, that in South Africa, 1/4 of men report having raped a woman. Key quotes……..
“Jewkes and her colleagues interviewed a representative sample of 1,738 men in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.
Of those surveyed, 28% said they had raped a woman or girl, and 3% said they had raped a man or boy. Almost half who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once, with 73% saying they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.
The study, which had British funding, also found that men who are physically violent towards women are twice as likely to be HIV-positive. They are also more likely to pay for sex and to not use condoms.
Any woman raped by a man over the age of 25 has a one in four chance of her attacker being HIV-positive.
One in 10 men said they had been forced to have sex with another man. Many find it difficult to report such attacks to the police in subcultures where the concept of homosexuality is taboo.”
These numbers are incredibly high. As we are fortunate enough to have an African expert in our midst, does this sound plausible Lynn? Is South Africa especially patriarchal? Given that almost every study on economic development in the third world emphasizes the need to educate girls, how does this fit in with this kind of a culture?
Steve
Well, I wouldn’t actually call myself an expert …
My thoughts …
1) Wow, that is a large number.
2) I recall (but don’t have a reference) seeing some similarly large number in a particular survey of US college students – not of men who said they’d actually raped, but of men who said they would rape if they could get away with it. My vague memory of the study was that part of how they got men to say that in such high numbers was by not actually using the word “rape,” but by describing things that would in fact be rape (e.g. “have sex with a woman who has said no,” or “have sex with a woman who is passed out drunk”) and combining the people who said they’d be willing to do one of those “yes, this really is both legally and ethically rape” things. I specifically remember the Amptoons blog as having written about that one, so it might be possible to find it by searching the appropriate category there (I think it was years ago).
3) As far as patriarchy in South Africa, I know of mixed indications. On the one hand, it’s probably the most GLBT friendly country in Africa (not, to be sure, in general the most GLBT friendly continent). It has a constitution that outlaws discrimination by sexual orientation and protects privacy rights, it legalized same-sex marriage in 2006, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu has spoken in favor of gay rights. That part doesn’t sound especially patriarchal. On the other hand, traditional polygamy’s fairly widespread, the current president, Jacob Zuma, has multiple wives and fiancees, and one of the risk factors in spreading AIDS there is the prevalence of “dry sex,” a practice that involves women making sex more painful for themselves to enhance men’s pleasure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10448396?dopt=Abstract).
Here’s a site on women’s and girl’s education in Africa: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/africaneducation/women-and-education-in-africa.html.
I think I’d want to get more information on the study before drawing any conclusions. Disturbing, if true.
More links related to this study:
Executive summary of the study, at the web site of the organization that funded it (has some additional information about methodology and findings): http://www.mrc.ac.za/gender/men_exec_smry.pdf.
Some past publications of the researcher: https://www.researchgate.net/author/Rachel+Jewkes.
Interview with the researcher: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLJ271974.
Among the things that I picked up from these links: South Africa apparently has a highed incidence of rapes reported to police than most countries (and particularly of gang rapes), so in that sense the study is in line with existing crime data. The current president, Jacob Zuma, was tried for rape some years ago and acquitted (I remembered reading about the trial, but didn’t remember for sure who the politician was who was tried, well, it’s Zuma, and Wikipedia has an item on the trial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma_rape_trial).