Australia is beginning to catch up with the rest of the western world with research conducted at the nation's university's showing the level of domestic violence against men is the same as the those cases recorded by international researchers in the 1970s.
In 1999, Melbourne-based researchers Bruce Heady, Dorothy Scott and David de Vaus concluded that men were just as likely to report being physically assaulted by their partners as women and that men and women were about equally likely to admit being violent themselves.
Their research also revealed that men and women reported that they experienced about the same levels of pain and need for medical attention; that violence ran in couples and that; people who had violent parents were significantly more likely to be victims of violence.
Ongoing studies by Charles Sturt University researcher Sotirious Sarantakos’ have also shown that men’s injuries are more severe and includes knife punctures, particularly to the head and upper body. His studies also show that most women who abuse their husbands do not do it in self-defence. Bullying, and jealousy were more common reasons for their action than self-defence.
"In summary, with regard to the type of aggression that motivated the wife to assault her husband, the study shows that, in the vast majority of cases, the male behaviour that precedes assaults by the wife entails either no male aggression, or a minor form of aggression which does not constitute serious danger; only in a small number of cases it contains serious aggression.
Similarly, in the majority of cases, there is no evidence of past abuse by the husband to trigger violence by the wife: either such past abuse does not exist or - where it exists - it is not referred to by the wives (and other respondents) as having influenced their decision to attack their husband. This means that in most cases the conduct of the husband that precedes attacks by the wife does not pose a danger to her or her children. Hence, in most cases, the wife hits the husband, not in order to defend herself, but most likely to punish, retaliate, control, or settle personal or family matters."
His conclusions replicate the results of a number of worldwide studies that demonstrate that self defence is not the primary motivational force of violent women.
In 1990, Stets and Straus’* showed that women initiated the violence in 52.7 per cent of cases, their partners in 42.6 per cent and it could not be determined who hit first in the remaining 4.7 per cent instances. The authors concluded that violence by women was not primarily defensive.
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