Women's involvement in serious interpersonal violence

The relationship between gender and acts of serious interpersonal violence has generated much scholarly interest and debate. Research now encompasses work on individual-level predictors that include biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Other scholars have focused on the situational correlates of violence involving women and men in order to determine what factors are associated with the initiation and outcome of violent events. Still others have looked at the distribution of violence by gender across time and space. This article evaluates and synthesizes work within each of these levels of analysis in an effort to identify critical research domains and questions that may help us to further understand the longstanding and marked gender differences in the nature and extent of interpersonal violence. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.