Using statistics to further your own agenda?

Well as soon as you start saying that women matter as much as men, that is taken as so much against the natural order of things, that many people read it as "women matter more than men". The idea that we matter as much, is far too shocking to grasp.

ElephantsAndMiasmas wrote "if we are talking about partner/spouse killing. I can't remember the exact stats but a recent discussion on here was talking about the number of women killed by their current or former partner... Someone produced a stat that claimed that men were killed by their partners at a rate of (let's say) 4 a month... BUT the key fact here is that women are being killed by their partners roughly twice as often as men are. "

I've posted those statistics on partner killings a few times on various threads. I always make a point of stating that the sex of the killer is not recorded in those statistics. I think that would be interesting data and hope that it is available somewhere. Does anybody know if it is? If it's not recorded in other sets of data, I think it should be. Until those details are known, one can only speculate.

I agree that the fact that women are being killed at twice the rate of men is a gender issue that needs to be highlighted and addressed. Likewise with gender imbalance of domestic violence in general. These statistics show that the numbers are unequal by gender in a population that is roughly half male and half female. Pointing this out is not the same as claiming a) men are not subjected to violence or b) that women matter more than men, which is what some men's rights advocates often accuse feminists of saying.

Yes, I agree. I work for the NHS and our spend on treating DV victims (about £7.5m a year in our small PCT alone) is based on Home Office stats, extrapolated from a sample population and then applied to our weighted population.

The point I was making though was that if you'd have asked me if I was in an abusive relationship, I'd have said no because I didn't recognise it as such (which shocks me now). I do wonder how many women out there are actually in a similar situation and yet wouldn't class their relationship as abusive either. Hence why I think that the problem may be not with sensationalising the issue but with actually under reporting it.

Perhaps the under reporting is taken into account when the stats (that 1 in 4 women will experience DV in her lifetime) are formulated, I don't know.

Jessin - "I was in an abusive relationship but it won't be recorded anywhere. There are many women who put up with violence and abuse and who never seek help."

I don't mean in anyway to minimize your experience, but I do want to point out that this is actually one reason why statistical methods are a very good tool for the voiceless.

Good statistical methods overcome the problem of general under reporting. They go out to random members of a population and push to find out what happened to them. If you do that enough times and extrapolate to a whole population you have a much better picture of what is happening than if you just rely on reporting by individuals. Methodology is important. Understanding the limits of any particular study is important. But one of the great things about good statistics is that it can expose the extent of an otherwise taboo subject, without requiring every incident to be meticulously recorded.

If anything, I would argue that the stats on violence against women probably understate the problem. I was in an abusive relationship but it won't be recorded anywhere. There are many women who put up with violence and abuse and who never seek help.

When I was coming out of the relationship I was in, I talked to other friends of mine and was shocked to find that most had been in a relationship where there had been some sort of abuse at some point in their lives. It was never reported - they moved on and that was that.

As the saying goes "lies, damned lies and statistics". Statistics can be manipulated to suit a certain line of argument so its important to look at how they were collected/calculated but they can be valuable in supporting an argument.

The stats in the flyer are shocking. But then that is because the level of violence against women is that shocking.

Is your friend maybe a bit in denial about how bad things are for women? Many people adopt a bit of a hand in the sand approach to this subject because the reality is very hard to face. Is she confusing 'shocking' for 'sensationalist' in an effort to protect herself a little from the horrible reality of the violence women suffer.

Also the thing with stats is that if you don't produce them people will demand that you do in order to prove that you aren't making things up.

A: "Gosh it's terrible this violence against women isn't it?"

B: "What are you talking about?"

A: "Well you know all this rape and trafficking and so on?"

B: "Got any figures on that - I'm sure it is not as bad as you say."

A: produces shocking stats with a litany of men's violence on women.

B: "Oh stop being sensationalist!"

Stats on violence against women do make for uncomfortable reading - and they damn well should. The situation is that bad.

Thankyou Wilf, you have just helped me with an essay on research methods, by clarifying dome of the problems with stats.

Mumsnet is astonishing sometimes!

It's a really interesting debate - I worked as a crime reporter and would blithely trot out stats from 'the British Crime Survey as 'the facts,' and yet it is not as clear cut as you might think.

what about them? Well they can get their own flyers, can't they?

Its a ridiculous argument that you can't focus on one thing because other things happen as well. Its like saying lets not bother with banning smoking in workplaces because people smoke at home. So what if they do, if my remit is to look at smoking in the workplace.

And come back to this argument when 2 men are murdered by their female partners every single week in the UK.

Sorry cross posted with Elephants

And also, the difference is the reason for the murders as well.

In almost all cases, the murdered woman has been subjected to years of violent abuse. In most cases of the murder of men, that is not the case. In a significant number of cases, it's women fighting back.

And another thing - a man who murders his partner will on average get a lighter sentence than a woman who murders hers. Because women's lives are less valuable than those of men.

And of course stats give no room for explanations or background. If I hear on the news that a man has killed his female partner, I would bet thousands on there being a history of him being violent towards her, if you read the small print in the papers it usually gets a mention. Whereas if a woman kills her male partner, there is often a history of violence - again him against her. A good example of this is Emma Humphries who finally killed her partner after years of violent abuse from him. The law is only just starting to recognise that previous violent episodes from a person can mean that a killing is a form of self-defence.

Also when talking about violence it's easy to make yourself look bad by claiming that one group suffer more violence, thereby (to some) implying that violence against the other group doesn't matter.

For instance, if we are talking about partner/spouse killing. I can't remember the exact stats but a recent discussion on here was talking about the number of women killed by their current or former partner. It's about 2 a week, so roughly 8/9 a month. Someone produced a stat that claimed that men were killed by their partners at a rate of (let's say) 4 a month. Now it's easy to get drawn off track here because 4 a month is a hell of a lot of men being killed. And some might think that few or no men are killed, so 4 a month is a lot higher than might be assumed. BUT the key fact here is that women are being killed by their partners roughly twice as often as men are.

If you then go on to discuss the problem of women killed by violent partners, it's easy for somebody to accuse you of being callous/sexist by ignoring those 4 men a month. The bigger issue - that this is a gendered crime in that if you are a woman you are twice as likely to die at your partner's hands - is lost.

Yes I think the issue with male violence against women, is that women are blamed for that violence.

Whereas when men are the victims of violence, quite rightly, the blame falls where it ought - on the perpetrator.

I have a maths background and been involved in a lot of advocacy groups in the US (mainly anti-poverty, not feminist) and it's made me quite cynical. I give little credence to the actual stats that groups tend to use in their campaigns.

In fairness I haven't looked at the MWR stats and there are good reasons why advocacy groups use the stats they do.

We live in a society that is very bad at receiving nuanced messages and most stats give a somewhat complex picture. At the same time we have been conditioned to think that only statistics can give us the "truth". So groups advocating for change need to provide stats. It's almost impossible to run a major campaign that doesn't use overly simplified stats, if only because you can bet "the other side" will use them of you don't.

I tend to point to the number of women murdered by people they know as a reason for treating violence against women as a reasonable focus for advocacy. Though I personally am more incensed by the way society tries to make women responsible for men's actions.

Just saw the link FlamingoBingo posted so will have a shufty.

I'm an academic and so dealing with reported stats is part of my daily business (and sometimes generating my own!)
I would say that the throwing around of individual findings to 'prove' a point (although we all do it sometimes!) does not really make a case a strong one. You have to assess the balance of interpretations in credible sources, know where the stats came from, how they were generated and how robust they are.

So something published by a govt body (eg the Home Office) will be flawed (ie will be representing their political masters' view) but pretty robust. I would give more credence (well I would!) to academic sources, since these are independent and reviewed. Data published in academic journals is always going to be more independent than any thinktank, charity, campaign organisation, govt agency...

And I can tell you, fairly unequivocally, that the academic literature on violence against women suggests that the problem is underreported, enormous and the counter-case (that women are violent against men) has very little weight. When you drill down into the figures - as many have - what you find is that men - of course - report that women are violent towards them. And no doubt they are. So what you have to look at is how the questions are asked. At which point you find that - eg in the British Crime Survey - the question goes something like 'Have you ever been hit or threatened with violence by a partner?' to which large numbers of men answer yes, not surprisingly. And then there's another question which asks something like 'How many times have you suffered severe physical attack from a partner?'. The answer to '2 or more' is overwhelmingly from women, as - sadly but predictably - is that for 10 or more times...

So it's also about the interpretation of statistics that matters. And your friend's interpretation is just, er, wrong!

Agree that it's good to have a healthily sceptical attitude towards stats in general and to follow them up (the MWR flyer gives at least one source).

As to the "but what about male-male/female-male/female-female violence?" thing, I am a bit nonplussed by that really. I mean, there is a clear problem with a lack of access to justice for women victims of male violence. To feel angry about that and want to do something about it doesn't imply that there are no other injustices in the world, or that you don't care about those too. Lots of people support campaigns on more than one issue

Can you post a link so I can look at them? I have no idea where to find them. Thanks.

If someone was doubting a statistic as the OP says, I would check them myself and give them my opinion.

I have no opinion on the MWR statistics, I know nothing about them. I was making the point that the original poster's friend should check the numbers out themselves if they are uncomfortable with them.