Sexual Violence Against Women is Pervasive in Asia-Pacific

Sexual violence by men and teenagers raping and beating females, especially their wives, is "pervasive" in the Asia-Pacific region, a United Nations survey reported on September 10.

The 120-page document titled "Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It?" includes Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea.

The survey during 2010 to 2013 questioned more than 10,000 men aged 18 to 49, plus 3,000 women.

One woman said she suffers sexual abuse when her husband "pushes objects in," such as a child's toy, and then has sex with her.

"All our children are unplanned because he rapes me," she said, according to the UN report.

The survey focuses mostly on "intimate partner violence and non-partner rape" and why males in the Asia-Pacific assault females.

"It may be that such violence against women is used as a way to reassert some level of power and control where, in other domains of their life, men feel relatively powerless."

The survey describes abuse as: "Hit his partner with a fist or with something else that could hurt her. Kicked, dragged, beat, choked or burned his partner. Threatened to use or actually used a gun, knife or other weapon against his partner. Forced his partner to have sexual intercourse when she did not want to."

Respondents are kept anonymous.

"The word 'rape' was not used in the questionnaire," and instead gleaned from responses about "forced or coerced sexual intercourse, which was defined as rape."

The survey increased confidentiality by "avoiding any potential ethical dilemmas for the interviewers about obligations to report criminal behavior to the police," it said.

"Male rape of women was pervasive across the region, but prevalence varied across sites."

In underdeveloped Papua New Guinea -- on the eastern half of New Guinea island in the South Pacific -- and also on nearby Bougainville which is the largest of the Solomon Islands, 62 percent of interviewed men "reported perpetrating some form of rape against a woman or girl in their lifetime."

Those assaults include a high number who participated in "gang rape."

The region's lowest rape rate is committed by 10 percent of men in urban Bangladesh.

About half of all rapists in the Asia-Pacific attacked "when they were teenagers."

Among those, the lowest rate was in urban and rural China, where 25 percent of the rapists were teens.

The highest rate was in Papua New Guinea and Bougainville, where 64 percent of rapists were teenagers.

"A relatively large proportion of men reported that they were younger than 15 years at the time they first perpetrated rape" in Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, and Indonesia's West Papua.

Sexual and non-sexual assaults however do not match any pattern of religious, economic, or other social factors.

In Muslim-majority Bangladesh and on the Buddhist-majority island of Sri Lanka, "almost all the reported partner violence occurred within marriage, and physical violence perpetration was more common than sexual violence perpetration."

Urban Indonesia's mostly Muslim population meanwhile scored the lowest rate, 5 percent, of the region's men who believe "a woman deserves to be beaten."

In rural Bangladesh, 62 percent of men physically brutalized females to punish them.

Impoverished Bangladesh's tradition of brides being expected to bring a lucrative dowry to the groom worsened "gender inequality" which "strongly correlated with violence."

In lightly populated Cambodia where many people are Buddhists, and across overcrowded Indonesia, "a larger proportion of men reported perpetrating sexual violence against an intimate partner than physical partner violence."

The study was funded and coordinated by the UN's Development Program, Population Fund, Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and Volunteers.

Financing also came from the nongovernmental organization CARE and governments of Australia, the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden.

Overall solutions include "zero tolerance for violence against women" and educating people through "schools, faith-based organizations, media and popular culture."

Male delusions of "patriarchy," "masculinity," "control" and "sexual entitlement" also need to be corrected.

Laws must be toughened in countries where "marital rape is not criminalized."

"Although alcohol is often assumed to be a common trigger for violence perpetration, it was the least common" reason for men to rape.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, Ceremonies and Regalia, in a new book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.

His websites are:
http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets
https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

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