10 % of men blame women for rape, shows HSRC report

Ten percent of South Africa’s male population believes that women who fall victim to rape are to blame for finding themselves in such situations.

That’s according to a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) report released yesterday.

The report was HSRC’s first ever study on the prevalence, risk factors, and effects of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) across the country.

Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, delivered the findings in Pretoria.

“What was disturbing when we looked at gendered power relations, although these were not as high as others, is that 9.9% of men indicated that when a woman is raped, she is usually to blame for putting herself in that situation,” explained Minister Chikunga.

According to the report, 11.5 % of men, also agreed that woman who do not physically retaliate during intercourse, should not consider the incident as rape.

“Another one that is also disturbing when it comes to rape culture is that 11.9 percent of men agree if a woman does not fight physically, then it cannot be rape,” added the Minister.

The report also investigated gender norms within the country.

“When it comes to gender norms, we found that 51% men believed that men need more sex than women, and at 54.4% men believed that they need to be tough, and lastly 66.6% me believed that a woman’s most important role is to be a caretaker; to be home and to cook for their family,” says Minster Chikunga.

Another significant factor highlighted by the report suggests that sexual violence occur the most towards black women, compared to other demographic settings.

The report also revealed that women with disabilities bear the most brunt when it comes to violent incidents, with 14.6% of disabled women having experienced sexual abuse.

“One concerning category is that we looked at statistics for women with disabilities, focusing on sexual violence over a lifetime, we find that 14,6% of women with disabilities indicated that they had experienced sexual violation, compared with women without disabilities, which was half this figure, at 7.2%,” said Minister Chikunga.

The report further revealed that the global Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) incidents estimate for the country is 27%, while the country accounts for 33% of African continent’s IPV cases.

“How our data compare to other studies when we looked at IPV over a lifetime (for physical and/or sexual violence), we found that the global prevalence estimate is 27%, and the Africa region one is 33%,” explained Chikunga.

The Minister says the report has opened her department to the awareness that violence is experienced in the country at an early age.

“As a take-home message, the data shows us that violence starts early. It also tells us that victimisation and perpetration of violence goes through all life cycles because we are also seeing a prevalence among men and women over the age of 50.”

The Minister says the data also reveals that childhood trauma plays a pivotal role in the comprehension of the country’s victimisation and perpetration.

She adds that GBV cases are recorded higher between unmarried couples who co-habit.

She also says there is a higher rate of sexual violence among men residing in urban areas.

The Minister has acknowledged that more work needs to be done to tackle these pressing issues in society. Written by Odirile Rabolao