ABSTRACT
This chapter widens the study out to explore the social and spatial parameters of violence against both women and men from known and unknown persons. It delineates the overall level of violence, the social characteristics of victims and perpetrators and its location, in terms of public and private space. This enables the testing of various hypotheses derived from the theoretical literature about the nature of violence in contemporary society. The spectrum of violence experienced by women, particularly young women, is seen by left realists to be much wider than that for men, ranging from harassment to more serious assault. Radical feminist research has centred on violence against women. The studies conducted by radical feminists in this country, like those of left realists, have highlighted the myriad forms of violence experienced by women and been used to challenge the figures produced by the British Crime Surveys conducted by the Home Office. Patterns of victimisation have been found to be distinctly gendered.
