Domestic Violence
Domestic Violence is a social issue, not a gender problem. It will never be reduced until both sides of the problem are acknowledged and addressed by those who claim to be concerned about it.
The persistent claim that the overwhelming majority of victims of domestic violence are women is not supported by any impartial research, either in the UK or elsewhere. The results of all gender-neutral studies of domestic violence in couple relationships, published to date, indicate that there is an almost equal numerical culpability between men and women.
In spite of mounting evidence the issue of women's violence has been discounted or ignored by the media, law enforcement agencies and the social services. Furthermore, there is reason to be alarmed when our understanding of family violence, policy making and allocation of scarce resources has been significantly shaped without regard to an abundance of evidence showing that family violence as a social phenomenon is not gender-specific. This clearly has important implications for research, education funding and social policy.
The technique of collecting data from Women's Aid type groups is misleading the public about domestic violence because they use surveys that show higher rates of men as aggressors based on National Crime Survey data or official law-enforcement records, but these studies are flawed methodologically because the samples are not representative and because men are less likely to lodge official victimisation reports.
Another problem with much of the domestic violence literature is that it is based on clinical populations, specifically battered women receiving shelter services or therapy. Data collected and conclusions drawn from those who seek shelter or therapy cannot be generalised to the broader population. Victims who seek services may differ significantly from the broader population, so the value of these studies lies primarily in spawning clinical prescriptions for treatment, not in describing or explaining domestic violence in general. Studies of residents in shelters for battered women are sometimes cited to show that it is only their male partners who are violent. However, these studies rarely obtain or report information on assaults by women, and, when they do, they ask only about self-defence, precluding information on female initiated assaults.
