Has the number of male callers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline decreased or increased in Washington state over the last fives years? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
“Men can be victims too”
On the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s website, a blog post titled “Men can be victims of abuse too” states:
In 2013, 13% of documented contacts to The Hotline identified themselves as male victims.
– National Domestic Violence Hotline
Where can one find more recent data about male callers to The Hotline than 2013? Specifically, what was the gender breakdown of people contacting the National Domestic Violence Hotline from Washington state in each of the last five years?
Why is gender data missing from annual reports?
The Hotline’s website has annual reports for each state going back to the year 2015. Peculiarly, none of the reports break down the proportion of callers by gender. They do, however, break them out by age and race/ethnicity. Why don’t the reports disaggregate the data by gender?
Our attempts to obtain the desired data from the National Domestic Violence Hotline have so far been fruitless. We will keep trying. If anyone has advice about obtaining the data, please contact us.
The Hotline’s largest source of financial support is an annual federal grant from the Family Violence Prevention Services Office of the US Department of Health and Human Services [Source: TheHotline.org]. In other words, the organization receives public funding. It was created through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, whose gender bias is well-documented.
Gender data was collected in 2020
On June 5, 2020, The Hotline released a two-page COVID-19 Special Report covering data from March 16 through May 16. It shows that among 62,413 contacts to The Hotline nationwide, 15% were male, 78% were female, and the remainder were unknown or other. It is evident from the report that The Hotline was collecting data on the gender of callers for at least a two-month period in 2020. After May 16, did they discontinue asking callers about their gender? Assuming they did not, we hope that the 2020 annual reports for each state will include data disaggregated by gender.
