From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: feminist sound bytes
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 10:49:43 GMT
Followup-To: alt.feminism

rini writes:
> 
> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:

> I've seen Bronis' statistics a number of times, so I thought I'd add
> my own.  These are from the National Survey of Families and Households,
> which was carried out in 1988.
>                                                Men        Women
> Perpetrators:
> Respondent ever hit/threw/shoved spouse:      63.6%        62.0%
> Respondent cut, bruised, or seriously
> injured spouse:                                6.5%         8.6%
> 
> Victims:
> Spouse ever hit/threw/shoved respondent:      56.3%        62.2%
> Spouse ever cut, bruised, or seriously
> injured respondent:                            6.5%        15.9%
> 
> From these numbers, it is fairly clear that women have a broader
> defintion of violence than men.  Only 6.5% of men claim to have
> seriously injured a spouse, but 16% of women claim to have been
> seriously injured.  Interestingly, it works the other way too.  More
> women claim to be abusers than there are abused husbands.
>
> If you go by victim's reports only, women are much more often abused,
> especially seriously abused.  
> 
> If you go by the perpetrators word, the levels of abuse are similar, with 
> women committing slightly more of the serious injuries.

I feel I should point out that the statistics I quoted (at least the ones
by Straus & Gelles) do not appear to suffer as much from the phenomeona of
differing definitions between the genders as the statistics Rini quotes
above.

Part of the difference may be in asking more specific questions which are
less open to cultural interpretation in the Strauss & Gelles work.  The most
problematical reaming question in the statistics I quoted is the one about
'beat up' which isn't nearly as clear (IMO) as the others and is most likely
to be the subject of differing intepretations between the genders.

However, there may be other factors.  One of the very early pilot studies
done by Strauss & Gelles had a similar apparent bias.  This bias disappeared
in later studies.  There were two differences between the later study and
the earliest one.  The first was the generally larger sample size.  The
second difference was the fact that only *one* family member was asked to
report on violence - the earlier study asked all family members. 
Interestingly enough, the authors seemed to avoid speculating that this
difference in methodology might have made the difference between the first
pilot study and their later ones - that people might adjust their reporting
of violence if they feel it might be 'compared' to reports of their family
members.  The authors (Strauss, Gelles, and I believe at that time Steinmitz)
seem to prefer the explanation that it was a statistical fluke due to the
small sample size.

There are more details on this, including the figures from perpetrators and
the figures from victims for the Strauss & Gelles studies I cited in 'Behind
Closed Doors'. (I wish I had them handy to quote here, but I don't.)

> Official statistics show the heavy slant towards wife abuse, of
> course.  The average yearly rate of wife abuse is 2.7 per 1000 as
> compared to 0.2 for husband abuse. (Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
> Studies, 1984.)  This probably reflects, to an unknown extent, the 
> greater tendency for males not to report abuse. 
> 
> Finally, of homicide victims who were killed by their spouse, 40% were
> husbands killed by wives; 60% were wives killed by husbands.  In some
> cases, the wives killing of the husband "has been justified on the
> grounds of long-term physical abuse at his hands." (Source: Family
> Violence.  Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. 1982.)

I am not sure whether husbands killing wives has ever been justified on the
grounds of long-term abuse or not.  I'm sure that it has happened (that
husbands have killed their wives because of long-term abuse)  but
whether it has been used to justify the killings I'm not so sure about :-(.

There seems to be an unfortunate tendency for a 'double standard' in this
area - where women are ocassionally acquitted by juried when they kill their
husbands in their sleep by burning them alive (the famous Burning Bed Case),
wheras men are mostly held to the stricter legal standard (which is really
supposed to apply to everyone) of killing only in self-defense against an
immediate threat - and not making a 'history of abuse' an acceptable reason
for homicide.
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