ii. Violence (See Section E.ii for Domestic Violence and Female Infanticide)
a. Laws on Rape and Sexual Assault (Also see EWCMS and GEW for rape in and by the military and other armed groups)
LRW PRACTICE 1: Are laws against rape and sexual assault enforced? [Include conviction and incarceration rates.] Are reasons given for the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in this country?
LRW PRACTICE 2: Are there taboos against reporting rape or sexual assault? [Include elements that work to fight against those taboos, such as womens shelters, hotlines, etc.]
LRW PRACTICE 3: Can a woman be killed (i.e., honor killings) or otherwise punished if she is raped or sexually assaulted even if she is obviously innocent? Can a woman be forced by her society to marry her rapist for the sake of honor, whether or not that practice is legal? (See LRW LAW 4)
LRW LAW 1: Are there laws against rape and sexual assault? Is there a law against statutory rape, and what is the age of consent cut-off for statutory rape?
LRW LAW 2: What are the punishments and how is fault decided?
LRW LAW 3: Who can be a legal witness [e.g., must the witness be a male?] and does the womans testimony count? Consider other factors, such as whether the court looks at the womans sexual history or dress, etc.
LRW LAW 4: Are there laws in the country absolving a rape perpetrator if they marry or agree to marry their victim?
LRW DATA 1: How prevalent is rape and sexual assault? [Look for incidence, qualitative, or quantitative information.]
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Purpose: The intent of the scale is to capture the prevalence of rape within the cultural context of likelihood of rape being reported and what is legally considered rape. This scaling process will help standardize the rape data in a consistent way so that international comparative analysis can be more reliably performed.
Subscores: The final number is a composite of three subscores. The first is the official reported statistic of rapes per 100,000 population per year. The second score is based on the strength of the taboos that discourage rape being officially reporting within a particular country. The final score is based on the inclusivity of the rape laws. Use the table (see below) to combine the three subscores. Subscore values are as follows:
SUBSCORE 1 (LRW SCALE 4): Official Reported Rape Prevalence(out of 100,000 total population). Since these are but reported figures, the user should understand that they may not be a reliable indicator of the prevalence of rape within a society. Users are advised to use one of the composite scales instead (LRW SCALE 7 or 8).
0 0/100,000
1 1-10/100,000
2 11-30/100,000
3 31-60/100,000
4 >60/100,000
SUBSCORE 2 (LRW SCALE 5): Strength of Taboos Against Reporting Rape
0 Virtually no barriers to reporting rapes
1 Some cultural barriers to reporting rapes
2 Cultural barriers regularly keep women from reporting rape
3 Cultural barriers to reporting rape are intense, but a woman is not under risk of possible physical duress if she does report the rape
4 Cultural norms on reporting are severe (including physical punishment, exile from family, or death) and the woman may face this punishment even if innocent.
SUBSCORE 3 (LRW SCALE 6): Inclusivity of Laws Concerning Rape
0 The law considers date rape andother forms of sex without consent with known or unknown individuals (including spousal rape), drugs etc as still constituting rape.
1 Legal definitions do not specifically name date rape, spousal rape, or other forms of non-consensual sex as rape.
