ABSTRACT Whether men and women are equally violent in their intimate relationships has animated considerable debate in the scholarly literature, and increasingly, in policy and law reform processes. This debate about the gendered nature of domestic violence (DV) has re-intensified over the past decade with police data from various countries documenting an increase in women identified as DV offenders. While there has been considerable research exploring the increase in women DV offenders overseas (particularly in the USA) there has been little research in Australia. This article seeks to fill some of these gaps. It reports on a NSW study which explored differences between women and men identified as ‘persons of interest’ in an incident reported to police in 2010, and then over time (2006–2012) to see whether that person was the predominant victim or offender. This article focuses on cases in which the police intended to take legal action arising from the 2010 incident; this is important, as one would anticipate greater similarity between men’s and women’s use of violence in cases warranting the attention of the law. The article highlights the limitations of an incident focus when examining a patterned form of behaviour such as DV.

中文翻译：

---

探索向新南威尔士州警察局报告的家庭暴力中的性别差异

摘要 在学术文献中，以及越来越多地在政策和法律改革过程中，男性和女性在亲密关系中是否同样具有暴力行为已经引起了相当大的争论。在过去十年中，关于家庭暴力 (DV) 性别性质的辩论再次加剧，来自不同国家的警方数据记录了被认定为 DV 犯罪者的女性人数有所增加。虽然有大量研究探讨海外（特别是在美国）女性 DV 罪犯的增加，但在澳大利亚的研究很少。本文试图填补其中的一些空白。它报告了新南威尔士州的一项研究，该研究探讨了在 2010 年向警方报告的事件中被确定为“感兴趣的人”的女性和男性之间的差异，然后随着时间的推移（2006-2012），看看那个人是主要的受害者还是罪犯。本文重点介绍警方拟对 2010 年事件采取法律行动的案件；这一点很重要，因为人们预计，在需要法律关注的案件中，男性和女性使用暴力的行为会有更大的相似性。这篇文章强调了在检查行为的模式形式（例如 DV）时事件焦点的局限性。