Cross-cultural comparisons of perceptions of marital rape across the MENA region, South Asia, Western and Eastern Europe: the role of resistance, sexual deprivation, and jealousy

Abstract

This thesis investigates cross-cultural perceptions of marital rape (MR) across four world regions: MENA, South Asia, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, with particular attention to contextual factors often overlooked in prior research, including victim resistance, perpetrator's sexual deprivation, and jealousy. Guided by a constructivist paradigm, the research treats perceptions of MR as culturally and socially situated, shaped by norms, gendered power dynamics, and implicit moral frameworks.
A three-stage, mixed-methods design was employed. The first study (MENA and South Asia) tested methodological feasibility and provided preliminary insights into resistance, jealousy, and sexual deprivation through vignette-based materials. The second study extended the sample to Western and Eastern Europe, that enabled systematic cross-regional comparison through both quantitative findings and qualitative explanations, again using vignettes to ensure comparability across cultural groups. The final study adopted a fully qualitative design to explore participants' narratives in greater depth, particularly the silences surrounding jealousy and sexual deprivation observed in the earlier studies.
Key findings indicate that culturally embedded gendered norms continue to shape perceptions of MR, with the level of resistance strongly influencing judgements of seriousness, victim blame, and rape supportive attitude across regions. Sexual deprivation and jealousy, while often unacknowledged in qualitative narratives, implicitly shaped quantitative responses, reflecting culturally embedded rape myths. Cross-cultural differences emerged: MENA participants exhibited the highest levels of victim blaming and rape supportive attitude, while Western Europeans displayed the lowest; South Asia and Eastern Europe showed intermediate but distinctive patterns. Qualitative findings revealed similar core thematic structures across all regions, alongside some unique subthemes reflecting cultural, historical, and relational nuances.
The thesis makes several unique contributions: it expands the study of MR to the under researched MENA region, integrates multiple world regions for comparative insight, and demonstrates the coexistence of universal and context-specific MR-supportive beliefs. It also shows that cross-cultural similarities in qualitative conceptualisations of MR persist despite quantitative differences, emphasising the need for future research to adopt culturally grounded, mixed-method and language-sensitive approaches in order to capture both explicit attitudes and the implicit frameworks that shape them.

Date of Award	May 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Dr Miranda Horvath (Supervisor)