Gender symmetry in partner violence: Evidence and implications for prevention and treatment.

Abstract

Physical aggression against marital partners, although long recognized and deplored, has historically been denied under the guise of protecting the privacy and integrity of the family (Calvert, 1974). The training manual published by the International Society of Chiefs of Police (International Association of chiefs of Police, 1967), for example, advised officers to minimize involvement in what were then called “domestic disturbances.” Some cities in the United States followed an informal “stitch rule” under which arrests were made only if there was a wound that required sutures. As a result of efforts by the women’s movement starting in the mid 1970s there has been a reversal of these traditional approaches. In most jurisdictions in the US and Canada, police are now required or advised to arrest perpetrators of physical attacks on a partner. Concordant with the arrest policy has been the growth of treatment programs for perpetrators. Many courts now offer participation in such programs as an alternative to incarceration. There may be about a thousand such programs in operation in the United States, and over 200 in Canada (National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, 2004). These are tremendous advances, but there is also evidence questioning the effectiveness of the 30 year long effort to reduce “domestic violence.” A central point of this chapter is that the effort has been handicapped by conceptualizing physical assaults on a

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