The Gender Debate About Intimate Partner Violence: Solutions and Dead Ends

The debate on gender continues to define much scholarship on partner violence. No other single issue is as important to identifying one's theoretical and political position among those who are concerned about intimate partner violence (IPV). At this point in time, several well-documented conclusions can be drawn. First, two common estimates--under 10% female-perpetrated and 50% or more female-perpetrated--are quite discrepant from virtually all other data on physical violence. Second, several key definitional and measurement issues explain a large part of this discrepancy. Third, a number of commonly mentioned possibilities for measurement artifacts are unlikely sources of the gender parity found in many studies of IPV. This article will review each of these issues and suggest a third approach, the moderate asymmetry approach. The moderate asymmetry hypothesis for IPV is currently best-supported by the data, and it should be emphasized until a better alternative is found.

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