Harvard Medical Schoolannounced a major study showing that 24% of heterosexual couples have violence, half of it reciprocal, and that women initiate most of the reciprocal violence and 71% of the non-reciprocal violence, and both suffer significant injuries.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Richard Gelles states: 'Contrary
to the claim that women only hit in self-defense, we found that women
were as likely to initiate the violence as were men'