Research tells us which men are more likely to commit acts of violence against women
Why aren't we doing more about it?
A 2024 Australian study showed that young men who agree with outdated ideals of masculinity are 8x times more likely to perpetrate intimate partner violence. So why did it fly under the radar?
Content advice: This article discusses domestic violence and refers to suicide and self harm in general terms. Please take care while reading.
The Minns government has just committed $3.5 million to deliver programs tackling harmful gender attitudes and norms amongst men and boys, responding to the findings of a new state-level report that highlights clear links between stereotypical masculine norms and intimate partner violence. Only one major publication picked up the story.
The NSW Man Box report, commissioned and released by the NSW Labor government, analysed NSW-specific data from the 2024 Man Box report, conducted at the national level by Jesuit Social Services.
The new report broadly mirrors the national findings. Based on the responses of 1,274 NSW men aged 18-45, it found that 30 per cent admitted to having perpetrated either physical or sexual violence against a current or former partner. It also found that 36 per cent of men aged 18-30 had perpetrated sexual harassment in the past month, and 18 per cent had done so ‘frequently’. These rates were even higher for men who endorsed rigid gender stereotypes - who were found to be seven and a half times more likely to perpetrate a form of intimate partner violence.
If these findings weren’t alarming enough, the report’s authors acknowledge that ‘social desirability bias’ could have influenced respondents to soften their answers, meaning the real picture could potentially be even darker. So why is a Guardian ‘exclusive’ the first that I am hearing of the study?
For anyone who has lived as a woman, the idea that there is a correlation between harmful gender attitudes - what we commonly refer to as ‘toxic masculinity’ - and intimate partner violence is not new. We know ‘mansosphere’-borne content is leading young men to adopt even more terrifying views of gender, sex, and relationships than generations before them, and we know rates of sexual assault and violence against women are on the rise. Last year 105 women were killed in acts of domestic violence, and 62 have been killed so far in 2025, according to Sherele Moody’s Australian Femicide Watch.
Within this context - and on the tail of advocates’ persistent pleas for governments to respond to this crisis more urgently, more radically - you might think that a report connecting gendered violence to support for masculine stereotypes would warrant more of a response. Particularly when these Man Box ‘rules’ embody the same traits that many conservatives are attempting to normalise as reasonable family values. The underwhelming lack of interest from media and policymakers is disappointing, though not at all surprising.
Besides the shocking top-line stats, there’s much more to the Man Box findings that society at large needs to grapple with. So let’s dig into some of the national takeaways from the original 2024 Man Box report, based on the responses of 3,500 18-45 year old men across Australia.
