https://web.archive.org/web/20200102220428/https://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

There is a great body of research detailing the substantial prevalence of women's use of physical violence against men in relationships, yet the prevailing attitude of most women here seems to be dismissal/downplaying whenever the topic comes up.

In addition to victimization data, several studies in this reference page found that women are substantially more likely to report perpetrating violence against their partners than men, with others reporting similar rates of self-reported perpetration (Ctrl+F "perpetra").

  • One study involving a sample of over 10k adolescents and young adults(Whitaker et al.) found that women are the perpetrator in 70% of relationships with unidirectional IPV(roughly 35% of all relationships with IPV).
  • Another study(Strets et al.) found that women reported that they hit first in 52% of cases, and their partner hit first in 42% of cases(remainder is unknown).

I can't say that I've seen any sociological/psychological research from western countries suggesting that women are substantially more likely to be victimized by IPV, or that men are substantially more likely to perpetrate it.

Most often I see feminists instead rely on law enforcement data to make their case that IPV is gendered, but this is especially ironic given how these same people often make the point(accurately) that most IPV isn't reported to the police, so those samples are far from representative.