DOMINANCE
AND SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE BY MALE AND FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
IN 32 NATIONS
Paper presented
at conference on Trends In Intimate Violence Intervention, sponsored
by the University of Haifa and New York University. New York University,
May 23, 2006.
The study
investigated the widely held belief that violence against partners
in marital, cohabiting, and dating relationships is almost entirely
perpetrated by men, and that when women assault their partners,
it has a different etiology than assaults by men. The empirical
data on these issues were provided by 13,601 university students
who participated in the International Dating Violence Study in 32
nations. The results in the first part of this paper show that almost
a third of the female as well as male students physically assaulted
a dating partner in the 12 month study period, and that the most
frequent pattern was mutuality in violence, i.e. both were violent,
followed by "female-only" violence. Violence by only the
male partner was the least frequent pattern according to both male
and female participants. The second part of the paper focuses on
whether there is gender symmetry in a crucial aspect of the etiology
of partner violence -- dominance by one partner, The results show
that dominance by either the male or the female partner is associated
with an increased probability of violence. These results, in combination
with results from many other studies, call into question the assumption
that partner violence is primarily a male crime and that, when women
are violent, it is self-defense. Because these assumption are crucial
elements in almost all partner violence prevention and treatment
programs, a fundamental revision is needed to bring these programs
into alignment with the empirical data. Prevention and treatment
of partner violence could become more effective if the programs
recognize that most partner violence is mutual and act on the high
rate of perpetration by women and the similar etiology of partner
violence by men and women.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf
