Arming women and teaching them to forcefully defend themselves significantly reduces the incidence of rape. Women are often advised to use non-aggressive s

Arming women and teaching them to forcefully defend themselves significantly reduces the incidence of rape. Women are often advised to use non-aggressive strategies against sexual assault[3]. Research suggests that this is a poor advice.According to one study, women who used non-forceful verbal strategies, e.g, crying or pleading with the assailant were raped about 96% of the time[4]. Forceful verbal resistance, including loud screaming was more effective than non-forceful verbal resistance. These strategies were associated with completion of rape from 44%-50% of the time[5]. Running works even better than verbal resistance. Researches indicate that only 15% of women who attempted to flee were raped[6]. Forceful physical resistance is an extremely successful strategy. The completed rape dropped to 14% when the rapist’s attempt was met with violent physical force. Striking was more successful than pushing or wrestling. Physical resistance also appeared to be more effective when assault occured outdoor[5]. Women who used knives or guns in self-defence were raped less than 1% of the time. Defensive use of edged or projectile weapons reduced the rate of injury to statistical insignificance[7]. http://medind.nic.in/jal/t07/i4/jalt07i4p99.pdf http://medind.nic.in/jal/t07/i4/jalt07i4p99.pdf * Whether this particular strategy will be effective or not, I don't know. But I can easily imagine the class of rapists who give up when the woman merely yells at them might decide they really don't want to deal with this. Naively, if I wanted to reduce the incidence of rape, I'd make switchblades standard issue for young girls and tell them to seriously attempt to do maximum damage when threatened. Though it might work differently in South Africa. *I had read this before, but had to google for the paper. It looks good to me, but I cannot vouch for its reliability.