DoorwaysVA Blog

I wanted to pass along a sobering quote from Jessica Valenti in an article she wrote surveying women’s rights in America to honor International Women’s Day.

“There is a country where the leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder by a partner. In this same country, more than a (thousand) women were raped in 2008 and women are much more likely to live in poverty than men. Local laws don’t protect their right to bodily freedom and integrity; some rape laws even state that once a woman initially consents to sex, she doesn’t have the right to change her mind.

You may have caught on by now — yes, I’m talking about the United States.”

- Jessica Valenti, in “Equality begins at home: U.S. lags pathetically behind other nations in some basic rights for women.”

CORRECTION: We cannot corroborate Valenti’s claim that one million women were raped in 2008 in the United States.  It is hard to collected rape statistics in the United States.  In 2008, the UN reports that around 90,000 rapes occurred.  However, this number is consistently underreported.  By how much are we underreporting?  A 1999 study claims that 61% of rapes are not reported to the police and this number has been used by other sources.  So, it that’s the case then in 2008, there were over 235,000 rapes in the United States.  The numbers are staggering no matter how you slice them.  This cannot go on in this country and, yes, we are talking about the United States.