Rape Legislation and Gendered Evaluations of Non-Consensual Sex

Recent years have seen a global shift from coercion-based to consent-based rape legislation. This pre-registered study examines how the introduction of a consent-based rape law in Norway affects gender bias in evaluating non-consensual sex. Before the law is introduced, we expected respondents to be more likely to evaluate a scenario of non-consensual sex as rape if a man is the perpetrator and a woman is the victim than if the roles are reversed. Building on expressive law theory, we hypothesized that this gender bias would be reduced after the consent-based law is adopted, and even more so among people who are made aware of its implications. We tested these hypotheses using a vignette experiment of a non-consensual sexual encounter administered to representative samples of Norwegians before and after the legal change. We document a substantial gender bias in the evaluation of non-consensual sex but we do not find that the consent-based rape reform attenuated the bias. Our findings contribute to the nascent empirical literature on the expressive power of the law.