This year the Crime and Justice Research Centre will co-host the Crime and Justice in Asia and the Global South International Conference with the Asian Criminological Society. The conference will be held in Cairns from 10-13 July 2017 and will feature international speakers:
- Professor Rosemary Barberet;
- Professor Jiahong Liu;
- Professor John Braithwaite; and
- Professor Raewyn Connell.
Abstracts for the conference are now due by 31 March 2017!
To showcase the diversity of topics that will be presented during the conference, each week the CJRC blog will feature an accepted abstract from a presenter.
This week’s featured abstract is authored by Associate Professor Rebecca Hayes from Central Michigan University, USA.
“Sexual Violence as a Global Social Problem: The Culture of Victim Blaming”
by A/Prof Rebecca Hayes
Sexual assault occurs often, mostly to women and girls, but frequently goes unreported. This is, largely due to, societal attitudes regarding the incidence of sexual assault. These attitudes are often influenced by expectations regarding gender and sexuality, which in turn cause people to victim blame. Victim blaming, therefore, is ingrained in the culture. Two types of victim blaming are rape myths and the just world belief. Rape myths are false beliefs about the incidence of rape that are commonly accepted within society. The just world belief is the assumption that people get what they deserve based on their actions or behavior. Rape myths and the just world belief downplay the seriousness of sexual assault by focusing on the victims behavior. This presentation is a synthesis of research on rape myth acceptance from multiple locations and two countries (one Western, one Non-Western). The presentation will also address how sexual violence and victim blaming are a global phenomenon, and the cultural nuances of these issues. Ideas for future research will also be discussed.
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