Women
are more violent, says study
By Sophie
Goodchild, Home Affairs Correspondent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=9443
Independant
- 12th November 2000
Bruised
and battered husbands have been complaining for years and now the
biggest research project of its kind has proved them right. When
it comes to domestic confrontation, women are more violent than
men.
"The
study, which challenges the long-standing view that women are overwhelmingly
the victims of aggression, is based on an analysis of 34,000 men
and women by a British academic. Women lash out more frequently
than their husbands or boyfriends, concludes John Archer, professor
of psychology at (lie University of Central Lancashire and president
of the International Society for Research on Aggression.
Male violence
remains a more serious phenomenon: men proved more likely than women
to injure their partners. Female aggression tends to involve pushing,
slapping and hurling objects. Yet men made up nearly 40 per cent
of the victims in the cases that he studied - a figure much higher
than previously reported.
Professor
Archer analyzed data from 82 US and UK studies on relationship violence,
dating back to 1972. He also looked at 17 studies based on victim
reports from 1,140 men and women. Speaking last night, he said that
female aggression was greater in westernized women because they
were "economically emancipated" and therefore not afraid
of ending a relationship. "Feminist writers say most of the
acts against men are not important but the same people have used
the same surveys to inflate the number of women who are attacked,"
he said. "In the past it would not even have been considered
that women are violent. My view is that you must base social policy
on the whole evidence."
His views
are supported by Dr Malcolm George, a lecturer in neuroscience at
London University. In a paper to be published next year in the Journal
of Men's Studies, Dr George will argue that men have been abused
by their wives since Elizabethan times. He uses examples such as
the actor John Wayne, beaten by his wife Conchita Martinez, and
Humphrey Bogart battered by his wife Mayo Methot, as well as Abraham
Lincoln whose wife Mary who broke his nose with a lump of wood.
His research is backed up by historical records which show that
men who were beaten by their wives were publicly humiliated in a
ceremony called a "skimmington procession". The procession
was named after the ladle used to skim milk during cheese making.
Dr George has also unearthed a plaster frieze in Montacute House
in Somerset that depicts a wife hitting her husband over the head
followed by a "skimmington" ceremony. "It's a complex
argument but we do get more women aggressing against male partners
than men against female partners," said Dr George. "The
view is that women are acting in self-defense but that is not true
- 50 per cent of those who initiate aggression are women. This sends
a dangerous message to men because we are saying they are not going
to get any legal redress so their option instead is to hit back."
Terrie Moffitt, professor of social behavior at the Institute of
Psychiatry at King's College, London, admitted that women do engage
in abusive behavior and said the Home Office should fund research
into the issue in the UK. "If we ask does women's violence
have consequences for their kids then the answer is 'yes',"
she said. "There is also an elevated risk of children being
victims of domestic violence if there is central violence between
parents."
However,
Dr Anne Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Durham, said
that women should still receive the most support because they were
the greater victims of domestic violence. "The outcome of violence
is that women are more damaged by it and need the bulk of resources,"
she said. "But women's violence has become increasingly legitimized.
There is a sense now mat it's OK to 'slap the bastard'."
