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Abstract

Sexual violence is a global issue with devastating consequences. Existing research primarily focuses on its prevalence globally or how countries understand sexual violence. Additionally, media reports often misrepresent sexual violence, fail to capture its complexities, and ignore larger gender issues at play. This article synthesizes extant research using a feminist intersectional approach to provide a basis for comparing how sexual violence is discursively constructed globally. More specifically, how historical, cultural, and socioeconomic discourses underscore the perpetration and media framing of sexual violence. To this end, I reviewed 49 articles on sexual violence in India and South Africa with an eye toward contextual similarities and differences. My analysis highlights the complicated ways that cultural norms inform gender roles in context-specific ways. In doing so, this review cuts across regions of the world to demonstrate how neo-patriarchal gender norms are inextricably linked to particular socioeconomic, historical, and cultural moments in time.

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