Conflict and control: gender symmetry and asymmetry in domestic violence

General overview: This US article describes and discusses four types of intimate partner violence based on a dyadic control context of the violence.

Objectives: The article argues that the failure to distinguish these four types of violence has lead to confusion or unresolved debate in the domestic violence literature. One side of the debate (feminist perspective), presents evidence that heterosexual intimate partner violence is a problem of men abusing female partners. The other side (family violence perspective) presents evidence that women are as violent as men in terms of symmetric image of partner violence as a matter of conflict. This aims to address the gender symmetry debate by arguing that partner violence is not a unitary phenomenon; the two sides use different sampling strategies; the different sampling strategies look at different types of partner violence; and they differ in their relationship to gender. There are qualitatively different forms and different patterns of intimate partner violence, such as a general strategy of power and control (intimate terrorism) and the other involving violence that was not part of a general pattern of control but an escalation of couple conflict into violence (situational couple violence).

* in intimate terrorism, the individual is violent and controlling but the other partner is not;
* in violent resistance, the individual is violent but not controlling, and the partner is the violent and controlling one;
* in situational couple violence, the individual is violent but neither the individual nor the other partner is both violent and controlling; and
* in mutual violent control, the individual and the partner are both violent and controlling.

The article presents evidence from other research that shows in general surveys, situational couple violence prevails. However, in agency samples (courts, police, hospitals and shelters), intimate terrorism and violent resistance prevail. It argues that this is the source of differences across studies with regard to the gender symmetry of partner violence. Measures of control tactics are examined:
Measurement implications are raised, including the need for a consensus on developing a standard set of control measures.

Conclusion:It concludes that the different types of intimate partner violence have different causes, different development patterns with different consequences and which require different interventions. It points out that the gender symmetry debate ignores the different types of partner violence by using general survey data to generalise about domestic violence or intimate partner violence and to imply that men and women are equally likely to be involved in intimate terrorism.