Male Versus Female Intimate Partner Violence: Putting Controversial Findings Into Context

Key Words: female violence, intimate partner violence, male violence. The article "Partner Violence and Mental Health Outcomes in a New Zealand Birth Cohort" is an empirically sound study that raises interesting questions for the field of domestic violence research. As noted by its authors, the study's strengths include the large representative sample, the prospective nature of the research, and the consideration of a variety of covariates of domestic violence. Within this study, the authors have addressed a series of controversial issues, and their findings now become one new piece of the puzzle regarding how to conceptualize male and female intimate partner violence. When attempting to fit this new piece into the puzzle, it is important to keep in mind the "larger picture" (which we might wish was neatly presented on the side of the puzzle box!) and the evolution of work in this area. How do the current findings fit into the existing empirical findings on partner violence? Rates of Male and Female Intimate Partner Violence First, as have many others, the authors find that among a community sample of young people, rates of male and female violence are equivalent (see review by Archer, 2000). Indeed, if anything, in such samples, women tend to be slightly more likely to engage in physical aggression than men (Archer). As the authors note, these findings are consistent with a growing body of literature studying young samples and community samples, but they are inconsistent with research examining severe levels of violence (e.g., studies of criminal behavior, stalking after separation or divorce, sexual aggression, emergency room visits, murder), which usually suggest that male violence is more problematic than female violence. Unfortunately, studies such as the current one often do not include enough cases of severe violence to permit examination of gender differences in severe violence. Thus, differences in findings across studies have been attributed to the samples studied, the measures used (e.g., the Conflict Tactics Scale does not adequately assess the context or consequences of violence), and the behaviors examined (e.g., studies that include measures of stalking and sexual aggression show higher rates of male violence). Given such discrepancies in findings, as the authors note, there is clearly a need for future research to "provide an in-depth analysis of the way in which the gender ratio in the perpetration of domestic violence varies with the severity of violence." Until such work is accomplished, the field will continue to be divided into two camps: (a) those studying community and young samples and primarily minor violence, who argue that women and men are equally violent and (b) those studying samples experiencing severe violence, who argue that male violence is more problematic than female violence. At this time, we do not understand the relationship between these two types of violence. Certainly, some spouses who initially perpetrate minor violence will escalate their aggression over time, becoming engaged in more severe violence. But longitudinal studies suggest that such escalation is not inevitable and that some couples maintain only minor levels of violence or even desist from violence over time. We do not fully understand which couples progress from minor to severe violence and whether couples change from common couple violence to intimate terrorism (i.e., terms coined by Johnson, 1995; Johnson & Ferraro, 2000) or whether these types of violence are distinct and independent phenomena. Based on our own work on batterer typologies, we have suggested that differences in the course of violence may best be predicted by individual, particularly male, characteristics, such that some subtypes of men (e.g., generally violent and antisocial men or men experiencing severe psychological distress and evidencing characteristics of borderline personality disorder) will engage in high levels of partner violence, whereas other subtypes of men (e. …