The Prevalence in New Zealand of Violence Against Women by their Current Male Partners

The Women's Safety Survey, conducted in 1996, asked a sample of 500 New Zealand women (selected from a pool of almost 2000 women) about their experience of any form of violence (psychological, physical or sexual) used against them by their partners. This article reports some of the survey's main findings on the prevalence of men's physical and sexual violence against their current partners and contrasts these findings with selected examples of recent research elsewhere and in New Zealand. The results suggest that New Zealand women, particularly Maori women, experience a comparatively high rate of violence at the hands of their male partners. However, violence by partners is a complex area to research and different surveys have used different methodologies in their attempts to measure its prevalence. The article concludes, therefore, with a discussion of some of the methodological difficulties in carrying out this type of research and suggests that, in interpreting and comparing research findings, methodological differences cannot be discounted.