Sir, - Isobel Butler (July 2nd) cites a number of studies, and her own professional experience, to highlight the seriousness of domestic violence experienced by some women. I agree with her.
The studies cited are based on the experiences of women who have been victimised and, by virtue of this research design, inevitably show that men are the perpetrators and women are the victims of domestic violence.
When you broaden the research design to include men as well as women and when you ask both about their perpetration as well as their victimisation, the results of these studies indicate that domestic violence is a serious problem for some men as well as some women. These broader and more inclusive studies show that the incidence of domestic violence is broadly similar among men and women for both physical and psychological violence, both minor and severe.
That is the fairly consistent result from a range of gender-neutral studies including the US National Family Violence Survey, 1975/76; the US National Family Violence Re-Survey, 1985; the US National Survey of Families and Households, 1987-88; the US National Youth Survey, 1983, 1986, 1992; the British MORI Survey, 1994; Canadian surveys in Calgary in 1981, in Edmonton in 1983/84, and in Alberta in 1987; as well as a New Zealand survey in Dunedin in 1972/73. It is important to point out that these studies also show that the physical and psychological consequences of domestic violence tend to be more injurious to women than to men.
Our research on couples who seek counselling with Accord and MRCS - the two largest couple counselling services in Ireland - contained one question on domestic violence as follows: "People sometimes use force in a relationship - grabbing, pushing, shaking, hitting, kicking, etc. Has your partner ever used force on you for any reason? Have you ever used force on your partner for any reason?"
Our results, based on responses from nearly 700 couples, are in line with the pattern just described in showing broadly similar rates of domestic violence for both women and men. It might be noted that women and men in our study were also quite similar in their tendency to criticise and insult their partners.
These results, though interesting in themselves, should not be used to make broader generalisations about the incidence of domestic violence between men and women in Ireland generally since our study, like every other study on this topic in Ireland, is not based on a representative sample of the entire population. It is also worth pointing out that the results of our study do not undermine what is already known about domestic violence.
What is undermined is the view that men are its only perpetrators and women are its only victims. The research clearly indicates that domestic violence is larger in scope and complexity than is usually imagined. These findings, as Isobel Butler observes, are troubling and a challenge to all who care about the quality of relationships between men and women. - Yours, etc.
Dr Kieran Mckeown, Social and Economic Research Consultant, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.