Women's Rights, Men's Rights, Human Rights : Discourses of Rights and Rape in Marriage in 1970s and 1980s Australia

This article examines the discourse in Australia, during the 1970s and 1980s, surrounding a husband’s immunity from prosecution when he had engaged in non-consensual intercourse with his wife. Appealing to a broad sense of human rights was found to be a non-compelling argument for criminalizing marital rape when brought to the public. Instead, the public found individual accounts from women who had suffered at the hands of their husbands to be much more compelling. These stories contributed to the criminalisation of marital rape throughout Australia in 1992.