Tackling Rape Culture: Ending Patriarchy

In Tackling Rape Culture: Ending Patriarchy, Jan Jordan asks why, despite decades of feminist activism, does rape culture remain so endemic within contemporary society. She argues that, in order to understand the global pandemic of sexual violence, we must view rape culture as a consequence of the social divisiveness that emerges from the logic of patriarchy. In advancing this argument, Jordan offers a comprehensive indictment of the patriarchal system while recognising also women’s efforts to resist its edicts. Jordan critically explores two mechanisms that she argues are central to the maintenance and reproduction of rape culture - silencing and objectification. Both are examined as patriarchal strategies that have been relied on for centuries to control and constrain women’s lives, silencing their voices and keeping them as ‘othered’ outsiders in a male-defined world. Women throughout history have sought ways to resist such control and, since the second-wave women’s movement of the 1970s, this has included multiple initiatives both offline and more recently online. While #MeToo is being hailed by many as evidence that the silencing of women’s voices about rape has finally been broken, Jordan urges a more critical appraisal given the continued dominance of patriarchal thinking. To end rape culture, Jordan argues, we must end patriarchy.

This timely and provocative book, which complements Jordan’s Women, Rape and Justice: Unravelling the Rape Conundrum (Routledge, 2022), will be of great interest to researchers, students, practitioners and activists seeking to understand and challenge the pervasive rape culture characterising contemporary patriarchal society.

Jan Jordan is Emerita Professor of Criminology at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has spent more than three decades researching sexual violence, with the primary aim of making the voices of women silenced by rape heard by those positioned to facilitate their access to justice. Her books include The word of a woman? Police, rape and belief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Serial survivors: Women's narratives of surviving rape (Federation Press, 2008). Her latest research, funded by a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Award, asked why, despite more than 50 years of feminist action against violence, rape prevalence remains so high and rape justice so elusive. Exploring this conundrum has led her to explore the origins of patriarchy and how the mechanisms of silencing and objectification are integral to the maintenance of contemporary rape culture. Tackling Rape Culture: Ending Patriarchy is the second of two books resulting from this research; the first was recently published as Women, Rape and Justice: Unravelling the Rape Conundrum (Routledge, 2022).