A NORWEGIAN court has sentenced a woman to nine months in jail for raping a man, the first such conviction in the Scandinavian country that prides itself for its egalitarianism.

The 31-year-old man fell asleep on a sofa at a party in January last year and told the court in the western city of Bergen he woke to find the 23-year-old woman was having oral sex with him.
Under Norwegian law, all sexual acts with someone who is "unconscious or for other reasons unable to oppose the act" are considered rape.

The court sentenced the woman on Wednesday to nine months in jail and ordered her to pay 40,000 Norwegian crowns ($6355) in compensation.

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"This is a very harsh sentence," the woman's lawyer, Per Magne Kristiansen, told the Norwegian news agency NTB. The woman argued the man had been awake and consented.

The prosecutor had sought a 10-month sentence and argued the court should not be more lenient with a woman than a man. It was Norway's first conviction of a woman for rape.

Norway has long traditions of equality – 40 percent of the cabinet of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, for instance, are women.