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.
