A slightly revised version appeared pp. Current Debates and Future Directions. The Case of Marital Violence. Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, Sugarman 1996. Since 1975 at least ten additional investigations have confirmed the fact that women hit and beat their husbands.
Research uniformly shows that about as many women hit men as men hit women.
First, the greater average size and strength of men and their greater agressiveness means that a man's punch will probably produce more pain, injury, and harm than a punch by a woman. While violence by women should not be dismissed, neither should it be overlooked or hidden. On occasion, legislators and spokespersons like Phyllis Schlafly have used the data on violence by wives to minimize the need for services for battered women. As we said, more often than not a wife who beats her husband has herself been beaten. Such surveys cannot detect whether violence by wives was retaliatroy or not, and the reporting of simple estimates of incidence has touched off heated controversies.