One in five think it’s ok to hit a woman for wearing sexy clothes
March 9th, 2009
One day after International Women’s Day, the Home Office has released details of an extremely worrying poll on attitudes towards domestic violence against women.
The poll of 915 people in England and Wales found that 20% of people thought it was ‘acceptable’ or ‘acceptable in some circumstances’ for a man to hit or slap his wife/girlfriend if she wore sexy or revealing clothes in public.
16% thought it was fine for a man to hit a woman if she was ‘nagging or constantly moaning at him’, and 13% thought it was acceptable if he thought she was flirting with other men.
The figures are even more shocking when respondents were asked about their attitudes towards women who have been sexually attacked or raped.
47% thought that a woman should be held responsible or partly responsible for being the victim of a sexual assault/rape if she worked as a prostitute.
43% thought that a woman who was flirting heavily with the man beforehand was responsible or partly responsible for her attack, rising to 49% if the woman did not clearly say ‘no’ to the man.
A significant proportion also thought the woman should be held entirely or partly responsible if she was drunk (36%) or using drugs (42%).
More than a third - 37% - of those questioned said they personally knew a woman who has been the victim of violence from a man she knows.
[via The F Word]
OMG, that is shocking. No wonder nobody’s commented yet.
My only concern would be to wonder how the question was asked, but I can’t see however it was asked giving those sort of answers. Evidently we need to do a bit more work to get across the idea that No, means No.
Or have I just gone back through a time vortex to the 1950s?
Anastasia ∼ March 15th, 2009 8:41 pm