ONE IN TEN men in the Asia Pacific region: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka, have raped a woman that wasn’t their partner, a new survey has found.
When partners of the men are taken into account, that figure rises to one in four.
Over 10,000 men in the region were surveyed by UN researchers whose findings are printed in articles today by The Lancet.
In the first article, led by Professor Rachel Jewkes of South Africa’s Medical Research Council, the authors analysed the prevalence of rape among survey respondents, and the factors associated with rape perpetration.
Overall, over one in ten men surveyed (11 per cent) reported having raped a woman who was not their partner. When men who reported having raped a partner were included, this proportion rose to nearly a quarter (24 per cent).
Of those men who reported having committed rape, just under half (45 per cent) said they had raped more than one woman.
When asked why they had committed rape, nearly three quarters (73 per cent) of respondents who had committed rape said that they did so for reasons of sexual entitlement. Over half (59 per cent) said they did it for entertainment, while over a third (38 per cent) said they had raped a woman in order to punish her.
Over half (58 per cent) of men who had raped somebody who was not their partner had committed their first rape as teenagers.
Domestic violence
The second article, led by Dr Emma Fulu, of Partners for Prevention, in Bangkok, Thailand, looked at levels of intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV constitutes physical violence (such as punching or kicking) or sexual violence (forcing a partner to have sex against their will); the researchers also analysed the prevalence of emotional abuse (such as insulting or threatening to hurt a partner), and economic abuse (such as prohibiting a partner from working, or throwing them out of the house).
Overall, nearly half (46 per cent) of men who had ever been in a relationship reported having committed some form of IPV or abuse.
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