Fatal Attraction

The United States is the most gender-equitable nation in the world—homicidally speaking. For every 100 men who murder their wives, about 75 women kill their husbands. This spousal sex ratio of killing is double that of other Western countries.

American women may kill their husbands almost as often as the reverse, but their motives and actions are far different from those of their male counterparts, report psychologists Margo Wilson, Ph.D., and Martin Daly, Ph.D., of McMaster University. While husbands kill in response to revelations of wifely infidelity, women rarely do--even though their spouses are usually more adulterous. Men will also kill their wives as part of a carefully planned murder-suicide or a famicidal massacre. Women, on the other hand, murder in self-defense.

--By "News & Trends," March/April 1993.