Survey
finds male abuse approval
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5092100.stm
BBC
- 18th June 2006
More
than half of women questioned at a Glasgow university said they
approved of wives hitting their husbands.
The Glasgow
Caledonian students were among 6,500 women surveyed from 36 universities
for an international study into attitudes on domestic violence.
Of the 200
women, 60% said it was acceptable for women to hit their husbands
while 35% admitted assaulting their partner.
A total
of 8% admitted injuring them - the highest rate in the study.
The injured
men suffered bruises, cuts or broken bones.
Among European
students, only English women were more likely to have carried out
assaults, with 41% admitting that they had punched or kicked their
partners.
However
those inflicting injury was less than in Scotland, at 5%.
Just under
a quarter of those in Scotland admitted there were occasions when
it would be acceptable for a husband to slap his wife.
Worldwide,
more than 4,800 female students approved of assaulting their partner
and 2,000 admitted to pushing, shoving, slapping, throwing objects
and twisting their partner's arms or hair.
The findings,
printed in the Sunday Times, will be published next month in the
European Journal of Criminology.
'Bottom
line'
Professor
Murray Straus, co-author of the study, told the paper there was
a need for better rehabilitation programmes for women with violent
tendencies.
"This
study raises questions about why there's so much violence between
partners whether they're married, cohabiting or dating," he
said.
"The
bottom line is that we need make the same 'big deal' about violence
by women as we do about men who behave violently."
In recent
years, the Scottish Executive has spent hundreds of thousands of
pounds on raising awareness of domestic abuse, including a helpline
for victims which received more than 20,000 calls in 2005 - an increase
of 38% on the previous year.
David Smith,
honorary professor of criminology at Edinburgh university and editor
of the European Journal of Criminology, said he found the results
"surprising".
"The
number of women who admit to assaulting men is interesting as it's
well known that men are more violent than woman."
