‘That’s What Being A Woman Is For’: Opposition To Marital Rape Law Reform In Late Twentieth-Century Australia
From 1976 until 1994, Australian states and territories introduced a raft of reforms to sexual assault laws. Most of these were welcomed, and were seen to reflect women's changing status within a modernising society. One reform, however, was especially contentious. The British law had proclaimed that a woman could not be raped within marriage: the marital bond included a husband's right to sexual access to his wife. Following South Australia's lead, all Australian jurisdictions introduced changes to this law, making it a crime to rape a woman within marriage, either before or after separation. It was a fundamental challenge to the way familial authority was conceptualised, established and policed.
In a period where feminism had infiltrated many layers of political and social life, we might expect that this change to the law would have been greeted with relief and even celebration. The response to changes to marital rape laws was, however, both muted and ambivalent. Even feminist groups did not offer unequivocal support, and in general public opinion was at best reserved. Further, many conservative groups understood the new laws as an assault on the sanctity of the family itself.
Drawing on a wide range of sources in the mainstream and alternative media, as well as parliamentary debates, government enquiries, academic studies and legal reports, this paper will explore the multifarious responses to legislative change. It uncovers the complex ways sexual violence and female bodily autonomy were understood within and beyond the borders and boundaries of the home and family.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12281
‘I Am a Slave Not a Wife’: Slave Women in Post-Proclamation Gold Coast (Ghana)
This article contributes to the recent wave of historical studies that have examined the immediate social transformations implied by slavery abolition on gender relations. It highlights slave women's attempts to alter their status and the personal agency they displayed in the immediate post-proclamation period in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). During this very early period (1874–1877) women were quite an active presence in the colonial court and the percentage of cases discussing the right of women to leave their husbands increased. Traditional and colonial powers soon reacted to this changing situation. There were two main constraints to women's emancipation. On one hand there was a general confusion on the legal status of wives within traditional family, and on the other, the logic of debt concealed within the repayment of dowries tried to force women back into bondage even when they succeeded in changing their status from slaves to free women.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12279