Women’s use of violence in violent relationships

More than 80 percent of women who live with a physically violent partner will not initiate violence when they are not being hit, according to new research.

When women live with a violent partner, the likelihood that they will use violence is linked with the severity and impact of the violence they experience, and children being present.

These findings are from two articles published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence by researchers at the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health. The research was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

The findings have a number of implications for policy and practice, says Associate Professor Janet Fanslow.

“If women are mainly using violence against their partner as a way of protecting themselves and their children than we need to place priority on making sure she is safe, and the children are safe,” she says.

“This also hold true for the few women who initiate violence against their partner. Our work and that of other researchers highlight the need to develop and support services that will help women recover from previous trauma, develop positive and healthy relationships and to deal with complicating factors like alcohol and drug use,” says Dr Fanslow.

“There are few studies available that describe women’s use of violence when they live with a violent partner. The data comes from the New Zealand Violence Against Women study, the largest study of its type conducted in this country,” she says.

“One in three women have reported experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Of these, 36 percent didn’t fight back at all, 30 percent fought back only once or twice and 33 percent fought back more often,” says Dr Fanslow.

“Women who reported fighting back more than once or twice were more likely to have been severely hurt by their partner”, says Dr Fanslow. “They are also more likely to report that the violence they experienced had a lot of effect on their mental health, or to report that children were present at the time of the assault.”

“This suggests that, for the women who experienced physical abuse, if they retaliated with violence, they did so as a defence strategy, for themselves and for their children”, she says.

“Only 19 percent of women reported initiating violence against her violent partner, if she was not being hit at the time, but 81 percent never initiated violence against her partner”, says Dr Fanslow.

“The women who did initiate violence against their violent partners were more likely to report having been exposed to their mother being hit or beaten by their father when she was a child, and to having experienced violence by previous partners,” she says.

“Either or both partners having alcohol problems, and her recreational drug use also increased the likelihood of her initiating violence against a violent partner.”

ENDS

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