CONTENTS
- The World Takes Notice
- Intimate Partner Abuse
- Sexual Coercion
- Impact on Reproductive Health
- Threats to Health and Development
- Health Providers Play a Key Role
- An Agenda for Change
HIGHLIGHTS
- What lies behind violence?
- Culture: a double-edged sword
- Child sexual abuse is widespread
- Violence harms women in many different ways
- *Pullout guide: What Health Providers Can Do
- Responding to violence: Lessons learned
Published in collaboration with:
6930 Carroll Avenue
Suite 910
Takoma Park
Maryland 20912, USA
Phone: 301/270-1182
Fax: 301/270-2052
The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) is a research and advocacy organization that seeks to integrate concern for gender equity and social justice into international health policy and practice. CHANGE staff can be reached by e-mail at change@genderhealth.org or at http://www.genderhealth.org.
December, 1999
Series L, Number 11
Issues in World Health
Forced Sexual Initiation
For example, at an antenatal clinic in the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, 32% of 191 teenage mothers, whose average age was 16, reported that their first intercourse had been forced. Some 72% reported having had sex against their will at some point, and 11% said they had been raped. Seventy-eight percent said they would be beaten if they refused sex, 39% feared being laughed at, and 6% said they would lose their friends. Some 58% said their sexual partner had beaten them ten or more times (282). Also, in a study in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, the reasons that young girls most often gave for beginning sex was being “forced by partner,” at 28%, followed by “peer pressure,” at 20% (50). Adolescent boys admit that coercion of female partners is common. In Kenya, for example, boys ages 12 to 14 and 15 to 19 in focus-group discussions observed, “We seduce them at first, but if they remain adamant we force them,” including sometimes drugging them or gagging them to prevent screams (301). During focus-group discussions in South Africa, one teenage girl observed, “I actually think forced sex is the norm. It is the way people interact sexually” (450).
The younger a woman is at first sexual intercourse, the more likely that sex is forced. In New Zealand, for example, one girl in every four who had intercourse before age 14 reported that she was forced to do so, often by a much older man (112). Likewise in the US, 24% of those who had intercourse before age 14 reported having been forced (2).
 Hesperian Foundation (54) |
| For many young women, unmarried or married, sexual initiation is a terrifying experience, accompanied by fear and force—as young men will often admit. The younger a woman is at sexual initiation, the more likely that sex is forced. |
Even when first intercourse takes place within marriage, it can be traumatic, especially where women and girls are given little information about sex (186). A study among married women in a poor community of India reported that many women found their first sexual experience to be traumatic; only 18% had even a vague idea of what to expect on their wedding night. One woman recalled, “It was a terrifying experience. When I tried to resist, he pinned my arms above my head” (248).
Girls who are married off at a young age are especially vulnerable. Although the practice of child marriage is declining, many young girls still are married off unwillingly, often to men many years their elder (277).
Intercourse at young ages, even when culturally supported, can be traumatic for girls. For example, when anthropologist Mary Hegland interviewed Iranian women living in the US about their sexual initiation in Iran, many recounted graphic stories of forced defloration. Often, relatives held a girl down while the man forced himself on her. The interviewed women used terms like “rape” and “torture” to describe their experience but said that the word “rape” would never be applied to these experiences in Iran because the sex took place within marriage (208).
