Who perpetrates domestic violence and who are their victims?

When it comes to understanding intimate partner violence in Australia, misinformation can derail the conversation.

The results from the 2021 National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women Survey from ANROWS have just been released, showing 41 per cent of respondents mistakenly believe domestic violence is equally committed by men and women, an increase from 23 per cent in 2009. 

"There are community attitudes that have this idea of what we call sex symmetry; this idea women and men perpetrate domestic, family and sexual violence at similar or equal rates," says Chay Brown, research and partnerships manager at The Equality Institute.

"And because we live in a male-dominated society in terms of leadership and power structures … people don't want to have that kind of reflection."

But preventing domestic violence benefits everyone. Violence towards male victim-survivors is also overwhelmingly perpetrated by other men.

And while that doesn't mean women don't perpetrate violence – they do – Dr Brown says things like severity and frequency grossly differ to that of male perpetration.

ABC Everyday is publishing this story to complement our domestic violence reporting and help readers better understand the context of intimate partner violence in Australia.

What the data does, and doesn't, tell us

Dr Brown is a co-author for The State of Knowledge Report on Violence Perpetration released earlier this year, produced in response to the limited information available on the perpetration of domestic, family and sexual violence.

It shows the "most significant and consistent finding in scholarship on violence perpetration" is that most violence is perpetrated by men.

Dr Brown says that finding is evident from victimisation data, legal system data and self-reported data.

But because of the ways it's collected, there are gaps.

For example, statistics from victim-survivors via the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show 75 per cent of respondents reported their perpetrator as male, while 25 per cent reported them to be female.

But the rate for male perpetration is actually much higher, explains Dr Brown, for a number of reasons.

"We know that most of women's violence is in the context of self-defence," for example, Dr Brown says, while with men it's about "entitlement, power and control".

Women are also more likely than men to self-report their use of violence, inflating the stats, as well as studies using "clumsy methodology" such as "simply counting the blows", says Dr Brown.

And as most victim-survivors don't report to authorities – or anyone at all – police and legal data are limited sources of information on perpetration, Dr Brown says.

"We looked at hundreds of studies. We included so many systematic reviews in this paper," she says.

"What we are certain of, because of the weight of that evidence, [is that] regardless of your gender, you are most likely to experience violence at the hands of men."

Alina Thomas is the CEO of Engender Equality, a not-for-profit that supports people affected by family and domestic violence in Tasmania.

She says the data we have fails to look at patterns of violence, and is more focused on categorising sites of abuse.

"What we really need to be able to see is where there is a power imbalance, and one person is using that power imbalance to meet their needs at the expense of other person."

"It's not to say women don’t use violence," she says. 

"But in terms of rates, impact, severity and motivation, that violence is different."

First Nations people left out of the picture

Misidentification — when a domestic violence victim is incorrectly named as the respondent (person reported to be the perpetrator) on an intervention order, or charged with criminal offences — is alarmingly common.

For example, close to half of all female domestic and family violence related deaths in Queensland from 2015 to 2017 were of women who had previously been identified as a respondent to a domestic violence order.

Failure to appropriately identify the primary domestic abuser disproportionately impacts First Nations women, who are also more likely to experience structural racism in the criminal legal system.

"The deceased person had been recorded as both a respondent and an aggrieved party in domestic violence orders in nearly all of the domestic and family violence related deaths of Aboriginal people," The State of Knowledge Report on Violence Perpetration shows.

There is also lacking research on this community. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey doesn't collect data in very remote communities, explains Dr Brown, therefore "excluding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people".

Data gaps exist in other key areas including for at-risk groups such as children, people with disability and queer people.

The impact of derailing the conversation

Ms Thomas says there are people who assume their own experiences always reflect those of others.

"We might be talking about how traditional gender roles influence family violence, then you'll hear someone say 'But my husband is actually really great at home — he always does the washing', as if their example can be applied universally.

"It's such a way of derailing the conversation, even if they are well-meaning people."

Dr Brown says people who become defensive about the reality of domestic violence are a disruption in working towards prevention.

"Rather than being part of the solution they become part of the problem, by derailing the conversation with 'what about men', 'women use violence too'.

"Men suffer from this violence as well. Solving it benefits everyone, including men."

She says while we can know more about perpetration, the evidence is clear and "not up for debate".

"Even if you simply counted the bodies, it will tell you everything you need to know about domestic, family, and sexual violence in Australia."