Experts now estimate that as many as 4 million women experience severe or life-threatening assaults from a male partner in an average 12 month period in the United States and that one in every three women will experience at least one physical assault by an intimate partner during adulthood. In 1992, the U.S. surgeon general ranked abuse by husbands and partners as the leading cause of injury to women aged 15 to 44. Although many maintain that less educated, unemployed, poor young women are more likely than others to be in abusive relationships, intelligent people let this happen too. In the Justice Department's survey of 1973-1992, women are about three times as likely as men to be victims of domestic violence. According to the survey, a women is abused every 15 seconds and four women are killed each day by their intimate male partners.
Domestic violence has a long history.
Social systems dating back for centuries have condoned and even encouraged men's violence toward their mates. Modern societies are no exception. Men continue to abuse the women with whom they are intimate in epidemic proportions. Sometimes the abuse is psychological, sometimes it is physical, but it is always devastating to the battered woman.