Violence against women and violence against men: What the latest ABS data can and can’t tell us

The Personal Safety Survey, released by the ABS in October 2006, gives us some useful data on men’s and women’s experiences of violence. But it can’t tell us everything.

HERE’S WHAT THE PSS CAN TELL US;
(1) Men are more likely than women to experience violence.
(2) Women are most at risk in the home, and from men they know. Men are most at risk in public spaces, and from men they do not know.
(3) Over their lifetimes, men are more likely than women to be subjected to physical assault and less likely than women to be subjected to sexual assault.
HERE’S WHAT THE PSS CANNOT TELL US;
(1) The PSS cannot tell us much about domestic violence to women and men.
(2) The PSS does tell us how many men and women have experienced at least one incident of physical assault by a current or previous other-sex partner in the last 12 months.
(3) But the PSS doesn’t tell us much more than this, because of the narrow way in which it defines violence. The PSS doesn’t tell us much about how many incidents there were, whether the violent act was a one-off or part of a pattern of abuse, who hit first, whether the violence was in self-defence, how serious it was, if anyone got hurt, etc.
(4) Domestic violence typically is defined to involve a variety of physical and non-physical tactics of abuse and coercion. Not all the women and men counted above are living with this.
(5) The PSS tells us how many women or men were subject to at least one physical assault by a partner, but this doesn’t tell us much about the *impact* of the violence: fear, injuries, etc.
(6) So, if we want to use the term ‘domestic violence’ to refer to the experience of chronic abuse and subjection by a partner or ex-partner to strategies of power and control, we can’t say that every one of the PSS’s 73,800 women or 21,200 men above is a victim of domestic violence.
(7) Therefore, the PSS isn’t much use in assessing women’s versus men’s experiences of domestic violence. Acts-based approaches such as that used in the PSS are unable to distinguish between distinct patterns of violence in heterosexual couples – because they tell us so little of the extent, dynamics, impact, or context of violence.
(8) Acts-based approaches, because of the narrow ways in which they define and measure violence, tend to produce claims of gender ‘symmetry’ and ‘equivalence’.
(9) However, data from other approaches shows that women and men *do not* have the same risks of domestic violence. Women are far more likely than men to be subjected to frequent, prolonged, and extreme violence, to sustain injuries, to be subjected to a range of controlling strategies, to fear for their lives, to be sexually assaulted, to experience post-separation violence, and to use violence only in self-defence.
Yes, some men do experience such forms of intimate partner violence. And this is rarer than among women. And in general, men are most at risk of violence from other men. If we’re serious about addressing the violence that men suffer, this is what we should be focusing on.
WHAT THE PSS CAN TELL US: MORE DETAIL
(1) The PSS shows that, in the last 12 months, one in 20 women and one in 10 men were the victims of violence. 5.8 per cent of women, and 10.8 per cent of men, experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence.
(2) Among the large numbers of men physically assaulted each year, in the most recent incident close to 70 per cent were assaulted by a stranger and less than five per cent were assaulted by a female partner or ex-partner. In contrast, among the female victims of physical assault, 24 per cent were assaulted by a stranger and 30 per cent were assaulted by a male partner or ex-partner
Also, a substantial proportion of assaults on women – nearly as many as those by partners or ex-partners – are perpetrated by other male family members and friends. Of all females physically assaulted in the last 12 months, in 27.7 per cent of cases the most recent incident involved a male family member or friend. Among men on the other hand, only 10 per cent involved a male family member or friend.
Most violence to men is public violence, taking place in streets, outside licensed premises, and in other public spaces. The most common location for violence to women is domestic: their homes, their partners’ homes, or other familiar locations.
(3) Since the age of 15, 41 per cent of men experienced physical assault, compared to 29 per cent of women. On the other hand, 16.8 per cent of women experienced sexual assault, compared to 4.8 per cent of men. This gender contrast holds too for other forms of sexual coercion and violence: obscene phone calls, indecent exposure, and unwanted sexual touching.
WHAT THE PSS CANNOT TELL US: MORE DETAIL
(2) From the PSS data, a total of 73,800 females and 21,200 males experienced at least one incident of physical assault by a current or previous other-sex partner in the last 12 months. In other words, females comprise 78 per cent and males comprise 22 per cent of victims of physical assault by a current or former partner in the last year.
(3) To assess people’s experience of physical violence, the Personal Safety Survey asks if they have ever experienced one or more of a series of physical acts. Have they been pushed, grabbed or shoved; slapped; kicked, bitten or hit with a fist; hit with something else that could hurt them; beaten; choked; stabbed; shot; or subject to any other kind of physical assault (being burnt, hit by a vehicle, etc.) We could assume that any person who has experienced any physically violent act by a partner or ex-partner has experienced ‘domestic violence’. (This would exclude assaults by other family members, and sexual assaults by a current or previous partner. And it would define domestic violence only in terms of violent ‘acts’, rather than the presence of fear or injury or other forms of power and control. But let us leave these for the moment.)
Because of the narrow way in which the PSS measures violence, these figures do not tell us whether this violence was part of a systematic pattern of physical abuse or an isolated incident, whether it was initiated or in self-defence, whether it was instrumental or reactive, whether it was accompanied by (other) strategies of power and control, or whether it involved fear. (In addition, we only know the relationship to the perpetrator for the most recent incident.) In this regard, the PSS is similar to many other quantitative studies using measurement instruments focused on violent acts. Instruments such as the Conflict Tactics Scale focus on ‘counting the blows’, although most CTS-based studies provide more information than the PSS on the severity of the physical acts involved.
(4) Violence prevention advocates typically use the term ‘domestic violence’ to refer to a systematic pattern of power and control exerted by one person (usually a man) against another (often a woman), involving a variety of physical and non-physical tactics of abuse and coercion, in the context of a current or former intimate relationship. It is simply not the case that every one of the 73,800 women noted above is necessarily living with this. All experienced at least one violent act by a partner in the last year: for some this was part of a regular pattern of violent physical abuse, but for others it was a rare or even reciprocated event. The PSS itself gives us some sense of this. Among women who had experienced violence by a current or previous partner since the age of 15, for a little over half (54.2 per cent) there had been more than one incident (ABS 2006a: 37).
(5) Related to this issue, noting how many women or men were subject to at least one physical assault by a partner does not necessarily tell us much about the impact of domestic violence on the victim. Women may see the emotional impact of physical aggression as more significant than the physical impact, and the emotional impact is influenced as much by judgements of threat and intent to harm and their own self-blame as by the degree of force used or injury caused (Gordon 2000: 759). In addition, women may experience the impact of non-physical tactics of control and abuse – controlling their movements, destroying property, verbal abuse, mind games, and so on – as more damaging than physical aggression. The PSS does allow some slight assessment of the emotional impact of partner violence. For example, among women who had experienced violence by a current partner or a previous partner since the age of 15, close to 20 per cent (19.7 and 18.3 per cent respectively) had experienced anxiety or fear regarding this in the last 12 months (ABS 2006a: 37). This does not tell us about fear or anxiety among women who experienced partner violence in the last year, but it does suggest that large proportions of women who have ever experienced a physically violent act by a partner or its threat are not ‘living in fear’.
(6) We can certainly say that every one of the 73,800 women above is a victim of violence, using the definition of violence adopted by the PSS. But to the extent that we use the term ‘domestic violence’ to refer to women’s experience of chronic abuse and subjection by a partner or ex-partner to strategies of power and control, we cannot claim that every woman here is a ‘victim of domestic violence’. Domestic violence advocates offer sympathetic images of battered women as victims living in fear of violent, controlling male perpetrators. These images are accurate for much violence between heterosexual partners or ex-partners. But we cannot assume, and should not imply, that they hold for all the women and men identified in the PSS as involved in physical aggression (Gordon 2000: 773).
(7) For these same reasons, there are also real limits on the extent to which we can use PSS data to adjudicate the debate regarding women’s and men’s experiences of domestic violence. As Dobash and Dobash (2004: 331-2) note for acts-based approaches such as that used in the PSS, ‘acts’ “are stripped of theoretical and social meanings and, as such, provide an inadequate basis for describing or explaining the violent acts of men and women.” In particular, these approaches are unable to distinguish between distinct patterns of violence in heterosexual couples. Some heterosexual relationships suffer from occasional outbursts of violence by either husbands or wives during conflicts, what Johnson (2000) calls “situational couple violence”. Here, the violence is relatively minor, both partners practise it, it is expressive in meaning, it tends not to escalate over time, and injuries are rare. In situations of “intimate terrorism” on the other hand, one partner (usually the man) uses violence and other controlling tactics to assert or restore power and authority. The violence is more severe, it is asymmetrical, it is instrumental in meaning, it tends to escalate, and injuries are more likely. Acts-based studies are only a weak measure of levels of minor ‘expressive’ violence in conflicts among heterosexual couples. They are poorer again as a measure of ‘instrumental’ violence, in which one partner uses violence and other tactics to assert power and authority. Because the PSS tells us so little of the extent, dynamics, impact, or context of violence, it is inadequate as a single source of information, whether on female or male victims of domestic violence.
(8) Acts-based approaches, because of the narrow ways in which they define and measure violence, tend to produce claims of gender ‘symmetry’ and ‘equivalence’ (Dobash and Dobash 2004: 332). In other words, they predetermine the questions they set out to assess.
(9) However, data from other approaches shows clear asymmetries in men’s and women’s uses of and subjection to intimate partner violence. When it comes to violence by partners or ex-partners, women are far more likely than men to be subjected to frequent, prolonged, and extreme violence, to sustain injuries, to be subjected to a range of controlling strategies, to fear for their lives, to be sexually assaulted, to experience post-separation violence, and to use violence only in self-defence (Flood 2003; Belknap and Melton 2005; Gordon 2000). Dobash and Dobash (2004) provide a clear example of apparent symmetries and actual asymmetries in domestic violence. Using an acts-based approach found that both men and women were physically aggressive to their partners. But interviews with the same men and women documented that men’s violence differed systematically from women’s in terms of its nature, frequency, intention, intensity, physical injury, and emotional impact.

Michael Flood, November 9, 2006.

WHITE RIBBON DAY TEAM