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HUSBAND ABUSE: FACT OR FICTION?
Author(s) -
Sarantakos Sotirios
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.1999.tb01079.x
Subject(s) - spouse , neglect , domestic violence , wife , publishing , criminology , project commissioning , government (linguistics) , ideology , psychology , sociology , social psychology , political science , poison control , suicide prevention , law , psychiatry , medicine , politics , medical emergency , linguistics , philosophy
During the last thirty years, ideologies, theories and policies relating to domestic violence have changed radically. As a result of this, community concern and state policies shifted considerably towards protecting and supporting abused wives. Although this shift was justified by the extreme severity of the problem and the relative inadequacy of relevant policies of the past to address wife abuse effectively, it nevertheless led to a partial neglect of other types of domestic violence. Particularly wife‐to‐husband abuse has been totally ignored and neglected, and even taken to be the fault of the victim. This paper explores the status of husband abuse, by re‐assessing relevant trends and developments in Australia and other countries, and presents a review of empirical evidence which shows that husband abuse is more common and more serious than it is generally believed to be, and that it is the task of the government to address spouse abuse by means of policies and practices which are free from a sexist bias.