The Gender Symmetry Workshop focused on three key issues: (1) developing a typology of violence; (2) dealing with data collection and measurement issues; and (3) understanding the context of women’s use of violence. Workshop participants were interested in developing a definition or typology of violence that did not involve the use of violence severity. Instead, the typology of violence agreed upon at the Workshop drew a distinction between violence that occurs sporadically in the context of relationship conflict and violence that occurs as part of a general pattern of coercive control designed to exert dominance in a relationship. The Gender Symmetry Workshop followed an earlier workshop co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NIJ in 1998 which focused on building data systems for monitoring and responding to violence against women. Debates regarding the definition and measurement of IPV that were raised at this first Workshop caused a research impasse that the NIJ hoped to get past by convening the Gender Symmetry Workshop, which focused specifically on IPV definition and measurement issues from different perspectives. Since the Gender Symmetry Workshop, NIJ has funded a number of IPV studies that should be ready for publication in the near future. References