About this Book

The authors review popular, legal and scientific explanations of rape and offer a new and persuasive approach to understanding violence against women. They show that rape is not common to all societies and conclude that it is linked to general levels of sexual inequality, sexism and violence. It is seen as a consequence of the development of capitalism. In supporting their thesis, the authors present material that will be of great interest to anthropologists, criminologists, political economists, and people in women's studies.

`This is the best book available on rape and will remain so for the forseeable future. It is inordinately well written, brilliantly conceived, and imaginatively researched...I wholeheartedly recommen