A comparison of the gender-specificity of age of consent legislation in Europe and China: Towards a gender-neutral age of consent in China?

Abstract

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.

European legislators’ attitudes toward childhood sexuality from the perspective of age of consent legislation

“…Moreover, jurisdictions that used to have an outright ban on anal sex or homosexuality, have now lifted that ban. These developments witnessed the equalization of age limits for homosexual and heterosexual sex across the European continent, which could not have been achieved without the support of legislation from the European level (Zhu and Van der Aa, 2017b). For instance, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in many cases that the criminalization of homosexuality or a higher age of consent for homosexuality violated the European Convention on Human Rights, 6 and in 1997, the European Commission of Human Rights held that a higher age limit for homosexual behavior constitutes a violation of the Convention as well.…”