Impact of Gender on Attribution of Victim Blame in Rape Case: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

Women have been victimized and discriminated against due to various reasons in society. In addition to the trivial forms of sexual victimizing such as sexist statements, sexually tainted whistles, or bad touch, women frequently face more severe forms of victimization such as rape. Rape is a social crime that is prevalent in all cultures around the world where the frequency of a woman being a victim is pretty high. Statistics depict that in most rape cases, society attributes the blame for the rape to the victim. The current paper explores the manner in which gender influences the attribution of victim blaming in rape cases. However, studies with female victims only were considered. The results present that the observer’ gender seemed to be a crucial factor in the attribution of blame to victims of rape crime. There was a significant effect of gender on the attribution of rape blame to the victim and it was observed that male participants showed a high tendency to blame the victim for rape than the female participants. It is necessary to examine the complex interaction between an individual and the situational factors that influence the attribution of rape to the victims.

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