Valentine Day is about love, chocolate and kisses. Mother’s Day is about extravagance, breakfast in bed and Women’s Fellowship service at church. International Women’s Day is about serious issues with dire consequences for millions of women in hundreds of countries. Marital or spousal rape is one. The first celebration of International Women’s Day occurred on March 19, 1911, 100 years ago. Before this period, employers had their choice whether to hire women and most governments in the world, including the U.S. and Canada, prohibited women from voting. In fact, employers who decided to have anything at all to do with women relegated them to the sweatshop.
Significant progress has been made over the past hundred years but huge challenges remain for the women of today. On this anniversary, a lot has been written by more qualified experts to address some of these challenges women face. If I were a celebrity or a popular figure who people listen to, what I would love to write or talk about would be spousal rape or marital rape which occurs in several African communities and many countries.
Marital rape or spousal rape is an issue that has received very little attention internationally. I want to admit that the first time I heard the term ‘marital rape’, it sounded an oxymoron or a paradox. It was like hearing “useless treasure”, “precious garbage” or “holy dirt”. I asked myself how someone could be raped by her own partner. Isn’t that what the relationship is for?
There are millions of people, some highly educated, some not, who hold the mentality that I had. In many communities in many countries, when a woman (girl or adult) is forcibly made to have sex, it is reported as rape. No problem. When a husband forcibly pounces on his wife and has sex with her, even when she’s least ready and least expecting it, that’s no news. She’s just the wife. In fact, journalist, don’t even cover it. Marital rape does not get any attention but it happens every single day. In many countries around the world, marital rape is either legal, or illegal but widely tolerated and accepted as a husband’s prerogative.
In a 2008-2009 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, the report states that “at least 14 percent of married women said their current husband or partner had forced them to have sex in the past year, while another 37 percent had been subjected to sexual violence at some point in their relationship”. That is 14 out of every 100 women surveyed said their husbands had entered them forcibly in one year. And 37 women out of 100, overall! That is nearly 4 out of every 10 women! Again a World Health Organization conducted a study on violence against women in Tajikistan and Turkey. In Tajikistan they surveyed 900 women above the age of 14 and found that 47% of married women reported having been forced to have sex by their husband. In Turkey 35.6% of women had experienced marital rape sometimes and 16.3% often. How many of these were reported? How many were covered in the evening news? And how many appeared in the local newspaper? Perhaps none. The societies accept these social behaviors and actually women who come out and report these behaviors will be stigmatized. A politician wouldn’t want to waste an ounce of their effort fighting such an irrelevant matter.
As we celebrate the international women’s day, I’ll end this by suggesting a few actions that governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities need to take to protect the rights and dignity of women in relationships.
- Embark on aggressive community campaigns to educate the citizenry on what sexual violence and rape in marriage implies
- Empower the women to assert their rights and report what they perceive as rape or other forms of sexual violence
- Enact laws to police marital or spousal rape and related violence
- Train and provide health care professionals at the hospital who can identify what rape and other sexual violence are, who know what the law is, and how to enforce it and can show the women how to move forward. Since some of these women will eventually end up at the hospital or clinic with lacerations and other ‘fingerprints’ this will be an effective method to identify women who may have been abused.
I wish all women a Happy Women’s Day. Violence against women is violence against civilization.
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I can understand why something like this will be controversial to many guys from our countries. Becos most of them do not respect the woman and as you said, they thing the woman’s job is simply to satisfy the man, anytime, anywhere any how.
Hi Fatto. Thanks for your comment. You’re right to day that there are cultural differences in what constitute rape or sexual violence. However, certains should not tolerated no matter where they occur. In the above, article, I was not referring to the usual back and forth husbands and wives go through to have intimate relashionship. My target is the real cult of male dominance that is practiced in some communities. In fact there are instances where the woman is just an sexual object with her sole responsiblity being to satisfy the man; in essence, she’s a sexual slave. The video on the sexual violence that we posted here a few days ago will give you and idea of what some women go through. So I’m not saying that if your wife always pulls back with an excuse of headache or fatique, then you got to give up, but tying her up to do your own thing when she’s not into it evil, and that’s what I’m talking about here. Did I answer your question?
What do you mean by marital rape. So if you’re wife is always saying no and you try to get her or something, is that rape? I don’t think so? May be in west they call it rape, but in our culture, it’s not rape. I don’t kow if am making sesne