Spousal abuse is primarily initiated by males.
The question of whether spousal abuse is primarily initiated by males remains contested in the literature, with some studies pointing to gender symmetry in self-reports and others highlighting structural asymmetry where men are the primary perpetrators.
The provided literature demonstrates an ongoing academic debate. While several papers and institutional contexts emphasize male perpetration and female victimization (gender asymmetry), other empirical work points toward gender symmetry in self-reported intimate partner violence or contextualizes female violence as self-defense. Therefore, the verdict is CONTESTED.
Caryn Bell Gerstenberger, Kirk R. Williams. Gender and Intimate Partner Violence. 2012. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260512468325
Paper 1 finds persistent gender asymmetry in intimate partner violence, with women primarily as victims and men as perpetrators.
Ko Ling Chan. Gender Symmetry in the Self-Reporting of Intimate Partner Violence. 2011. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260511416463
Paper 0 supports gender symmetry in self-reported intimate partner violence prevalence between men and women.
See more details
Fang Gao. Judicial Dilemmas of Female Domestic Violence Victims: An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Civil Judgments in 2020. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012221145303
Paper 3 notes that the vast majority of recorded domestic violence victims in legal judgments are female.
Tolulope Akinseye. A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Social Actors and Actions in Newspaper Reportage on Domestic Violence in Nigeria. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/csh-2025-0013
Paper 5 reports that media and societal analyses predominantly depict male social actors as aggressors and females as victims in domestic violence.
Thabang Motswaled, T. Garutsa, M. Madingwaneng. Utilizing an Intersectional Feminist Framework to Respond Against Domestic Violence in the COVID-19 Context. 2025. https://doi.org/10.65767/0278-839x.2025.50.30
Paper 10 highlights that gender-based violence during crises heavily features abusive acts by men toward women.
Hayley Boxall, Christopher Dowling. Female perpetrated domestic violence: Prevalence of self-defensive and retaliatory violence. 2020. https://doi.org/10.52922/ti04176
Paper 2 demonstrates that female-perpetrated domestic violence often involves self-defense or retaliatory actions against prior male partner abuse.
The paper trail · every fact has a biography
Challenge the receipt
Citation formatting by citeproc-js (Frank Bennett) and the Citation Style Language project. Source and licenses.
Terms · Privacy · How verdicts work · Dispute this receipt