RT Article
T1 A comparison of the gender-specificity of age of consent legislation in Europe and China: towards a gender-neutral age of consent in China?
JF European journal on criminal policy and research
VO 23
IS 4
SP 523
OP 537
A1 Zhu, Guangxing 1988-
A2 Aa, Suzan van der 1982-
LA English
YR 2017
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1567184448
AB Age of consent—the age at which young people are considered legally competent to consent to sexual activities—is an important weapon invented by law makers to protect young children from being sexually abused and exploited by predatory adults. In this study, a comparison of the age of consent legislation in 2004 and 2016 in Europe reveals that it is a trend for European law makers to adopt a gender-neutral approach in their age of consent legislation, i.e., the gender of the sexual participants does not affect the legal consequence of the sexual activity and both male and female children, either in heterosexual or homosexual relations, enjoy protection to the same extent. Then the age of consent legislation in China is deeply examined to see whether it is gender-neutral as most of the European jurisdictions. Based on the previous introduction and analysis of Europe and China, this paper concludes that the gender-neutral trend identified in Europe could be instructive for China’s future age of consent legislation.
K1 Age of onsent
K1 Gender-neutral
K1 Gender-specific
K1 Child abuse, sexual
K1 Childhood
K1 Chinese criminal law
K1 Child sexual abuse
K1 Sexueller Kindesmissbrauch
DO 10.1007/s10610-017-9353-2