Sorry for the long post below, but even a cursory check of Wikipedia shows just how complex the domestic abuse issue.... have a read - some of interesting (and surprising) information in there...
"There continues to be discussion about whether men are more abusive than women, whether men's abuse of women is worse than women's abuse of men, and whether abused men should be provided the same resources and shelters years of advocacy, money-rasing, and funding has gained for women victims sekä Carney (2007).
Martin S. Fiebert of the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, provides an analysis of 195 scholarly investigations: 152 empirical studies and 43 analyses, which he believes demonstrate women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men. Fiebert also argues that women are more likely to be injured, but not a lot more. Also Dutton, and Nicholls (2005)state that Results show that the gender disparity in injuries from domestic violence is less than originally portrayed by feminist theory. Studies are also reviewed indicating high levels of unilateral intimate violence by females to both males and females. Males appear to report their own victimization less than females do and to not view female violence against them as a crime. Hence, they differentially under-report being victimized by partners on crime victim surveys. It is concluded that feminist theory is contradicted by these findings and that the call for bqualitativeQ studies by feminists is really a means of avoiding this conclusion. Archer's (2000, 2002) meta-analysis of 82 couple-conflict studies found that women were more likely to use physical aggression than men, and to resort to violence more often than men. In the most serious violence the men do dominate for example in 1999 in the US, 1,218 women and 424 men were killed by an intimate partner, regardless of which partner started the violence and of the gender of the partner. On the other hand, Michael Kimmel of the State University of New York at Stony Brook found that men are more violent inside and outside of the home than women. Theories that women are as violent as men have been dubbed "Gender Symmetry" theories.
A problem in conducting studies that seek to describe violence in terms of gender is the amount of silence, fear and shame that results from abuse within families and relationships. Another is that abusive patterns can tend to seem normal to those who have lived in them for a length of time. Similarly, subtle forms of abuse can be quite transparent even as they set the stage for further abuse seeming normal. Finally, inconsistent definition of what domestic violence is makes definite conclusions difficult to reach when compiling the available studies.
Both men and women have been arrested and convicted of assaulting their partners in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The bulk of these arrests have been men being arrested for assaulting women. Determining how many instances of domestic violence actually involve male victims is difficult. Male domestic violence victims may be reluctant to get help for a number of reasons. The belief that men are less likely to report domestic violence to the police than women may be a common myth, as 75% of all incidents still go unreported in the UK.
Another study has demonstrated a high degree of acceptance by women of aggression against men. Unfortunately, the researcher does not provide a sample of the test questions used to gather this evidence. Male victims are likely to face some verbal abuse and occasional, isolated incidents of physical aggression but are rarely exposed to a fear-inducing regime involving sustained emotional and physical abuse. After research into aggression in 393 married couples, O?Leary and colleagues (1994) concluded that violence in (heterosexual) marriage does not arise from the same causes for women as for men.
Murders of female intimate partners by men have dropped, but not nearly as dramatically. (See, for example, the report Violence by Intimates from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.) Men kill their female intimate partners at about four times the rate that women kill their male intimate partners. Research by Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD RN FAAN has found that at least two thirds of women killed by their intimate partners were battered by those men prior to the murder. She also found that when males are killed by female intimates, the women in those relationships had been abused by their male partner about 75% of the time.
Some researchers have found a relationship between the availability of domestic violence services, improved laws and enforcement regarding domestic violence and increased access to divorce, and higher earnings for women with declines in intimate partner homicide. (Laura Dugan, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld. Explaining the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide: The Effects of Changing Domesticity, Women's Status, and Domestic Violence Resources in Homicide Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, 187-214, 1999)
Gender roles and expectations can and do play a role in abusive situations, and exploring these roles and expectations can be helpful in addressing abusive situations, as do factors like race, class, religion, sexuality and philosophy. None of these factors cause one to abuse or another to be abused.