Sexual violence is a pervasive global issue shaped by intersecting social, cultural, political and structural conditions. Shame has been identified as having a significant emotional, relational and systemic role in the use, experience and impact of sexual violence, yet its potential in primary prevention remains under-theorised. This paper addresses this gap by critically engaging with how shame is theorised across ‘Western’ psychological, philosophical and sociological disciplines, as well as Confucian and Indigenous knowledge systems.
These perspectives variously position shame as an internalised emotion, a relational moral force and a mechanism of violence and control embedded in broader systems of power. Building on these understandings, the paper examines how shame has been applied across the sexual violence prevention spectrum, highlighting that current approaches remain largely confined to individual and interpersonal levels of analysis. Drawing on feminist relational theory and feminist political economy, it offers a repoliticised reframing of shame as a multidimensional emotion that is socially constructed and structurally embedded across individual, community, institutional and systemic levels.
The analysis reveals how current strategies often reproduce depoliticised understandings of shame and individualise responsibility, obscuring the broader conditions that sustain sexual violence. By positioning shame as a conceptual lens for interrogating these conditions, this article contributes to more contextually grounded and systems-level approaches to primary prevention. We thank Dr Sarah Vrankovich for her valuable comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this article.
We also acknowledge the Partners in Prevention of Sexual Violence Project team and thank Felicity Young for her management of the project. This research is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. This research is a part of the Partners in Prevention of Sexual Violence Project at La Trobe University funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
This research is funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia La Trobe Rural Health School, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical approval: The research in this article did not require ethical approval. Informed consent: This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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