Observatoire des droits humains (anglais seulement)

Friday essay: ‘A prisoner on the rack’ – how 19th-century Australian women wrote about marital rape

(Version anglaise seulement)

par Zoe Smith, PhD Candidate, School of History, Australian National University

In late 19th-century Australia, a husband could legally rape his wife. Officially, he was still allowed to do so, in some Australian jurisdictions, until as late as 1994. Legal traditions inherited from the British Empire included coverture, the notion that a wife lost her legal identity upon marriage – and thus her ability to consent to sex.

Yet over a century before it…

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