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Women are great at coercive control : Comments
By Bettina Arndt, published 16/7/2024Here we go, folk. The new attack on men has been launched. Coercive control is now a criminal offence in NSW, punishable by seven years in prison.
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Firstly, the ABS data she quotes refer only to the 12 months prior to the survey. But the same survey showed that since the age of 15 women were almost 50% more likely than men (23% compared to 16%) to have experienced emotional abuse.
What’s more, the survey Arndt quotes is not the most recent – it dates from 2016, whereas the most recent survey is for the 2022-23 financial year.
The latest survey shows that 23% of women and 14% of men have experienced cohabiting partner emotional abuse since the age of 15. During the year preceding the survey, 3.9% of females and 2.5% of males reported emotional abuse – a large and statistically significant gap.
So the data actually show that women are much more likely to experience emotional abuse by a cohabiting partner than men. The same survey shows an even greater discrepancy for physical and sexual violence – 16.9% of women and 5.5% of men have experienced physical or sexual violence by a cohabiting partner. Also for economic abuse – 16.3% of women but 7.8% of men.
Data can be accessed here:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/personal-safety-australia/latest-release#data-downloads
Note there have been some changes in the definitions of abuse between the 2016 and 2022-23 surveys that mean they are not directly comparable.