Measuring gender differences in partner violence: implications from research on other forms of violent and socially undesirable behavior

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  June, 2005  by Sherry L. Hamby

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Sexual Assault and Rape

Criminological data on sexual assault indicate that males perpetrate the vast majority of sexual assaults. Males perpetrated 96% of all sexual assaults reported to the 2002 NCVS, and 100% of assaults against intimate partners (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). Almost everyone (99%) arrested for forcible rape in 2002 was male (FBI, 2003), although this partly reflects the fact that only women can be raped according to the legal definition in many jurisdictions. Nonetheless, the FBI provides an index of all sexual offenses excluding rape and prostitution, and this figure too shows a pronounced gender difference--92% of those arrested were male.

Child Sexual Abuse

Child abuse statistics are an important comparison for partner violence statistics because these generally involve familial or caregiving relationships, and social roles inhibiting female participation in crime may be less active in the home (Straus & Smith, 1990). Yet a careful examination of child abuse data does not suggest gender parity for violent forms of maltreatment. The gender pattern for child sexual abuse is similar to the pattern for other sexual assaults--the vast majority of reported offenders are men. As seen in Table I, this holds true for official child protection statistics (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996; Snyder & Sickmund, 1999) as well as retrospective self-report (Finkelhor, Hotaling, Lewis, & Smith, 1990). Unlike physical violence, most childhood sexual abuse victims are women, although even most male victims of childhood sexual abuse are also assaulted by men (Finkelhor et al., 1990).

Child Physical Abuse

At first glance, statistics on child physical abuse might seem like an exception to the patterns for physical assault, robbery, homicide, and sexual assault. Several national studies have found that women and men perpetrate physical abuse against their children in roughly equal numbers, or even that women perpetrate physical abuse slightly more than men (e.g., Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998). Official statistics, although widely acknowledged to capture only a small percentage of actual abuse, show a varying pattern, but certainly indicate more gender parity than other forms of interpersonal violence (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996; Snyder & Sickmund, 1999; see Table I). More specifically, official data suggest that the greatest gender parity exists for biological parents (50% of all abuse cases involve mothers and 58% involve fathers, and 60% of physical abuse cases involve mothers, whereas 48% involve fathers), whereas 80-90% of abuse by other parent figures is perpetrated by males (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996).

Nonetheless, several authors have noted that child abuse statistics, like any others, must be viewed in context (Straus et al., 1998). One of the most important contexts for child abuse statistics is caregiving. In 2002, approximately 23% of all children lived only with their mothers whereas only 5% of children lived solely with their fathers (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2003). Of those that live with both parents, children are 56 times more likely to live with a stay-at-home mother and employed father as to live with a stay-at-home father and employed mother (Fields, 2003). Thus, in terms of amount of yearly contact, female caregivers are probably much less likely to physically abuse children than male caregivers. To date, there have been no quantitative efforts to adjust gender differences in caregiver violence for contact frequency. Although important to understanding child physical abuse, differences in contact time are not applicable to partner violence data. Partner violence involves only one dyad (partner-to-partner), whereas child abuse statistics compare two dyads (mother-child to father-child). The contact time between partners will be perfectly equivalent.