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Are Heterosexual Men Also Victims of Intimate Partner Abuse?

NCJ Number
213556
Author(s)
Joanne Belknap Ph.D; Heather Melton Ph.D.
Date Published
March 2005
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This paper critically examines the research literature on the intimate partner abuse (IPA) victimization of heterosexual men at the hands of their female partners.
Abstract
Based on the examination of existing research, the authors conclude that approximately 5 percent of IPA cases are truly female perpetrated. Taken as a whole, the research literature shows that violence and abuse against intimate partners is highly gendered, with men accounting for the majority of perpetrators and women accounting for the majority of victims. There is a segment of the research literature, however, that contends women are just as abusive as men within the home. Upon critical review of this research, the authors point to five possible explanations for the finding of gender equity in IPA: (1) the most common assessment instrument for domestic violence, the Conflict Tactic Scales, ignores motivations for violence, such as self-defense; (2) gender differences in honesty in reporting the use of force against an intimate partner; (3) victims of abuse are more likely to disclose their victimization in clinical settings, which are rarely used for large research projects; (4) differences in the types of samples used to measure domestic violence and abuse; and (5) methodological problems in research design that work to inflate the rate of abuse perpetrated by women. The findings of this critical literature review have implications for mandatory domestic assault arrest policies that have had the unintended consequence of increasing the rate of female arrest for domestic violence. References