Unraveling the Gender Paradox at the Center of the Safe & Together Model

David Mandel, CEO and founder of the Safe & Together Institute, tackles a recurring debate in the domestic violence field: is the Safe & Together™ Model a gendered approach, or a gender-neutral one that applies equally to women’s use of violence and abuse in same-sex relationships? His answer is both, achieved by combining a rigorous behavioural focus on the perpetrator’s pattern, a gendered analysis of parenting expectations, and attention to each family’s unique context and culture.

Mandel argues that ignoring differing societal expectations for mothers and fathers would be “tantamount to malpractice.” Because mothers are typically held responsible for day-to-day family functioning while fathers face lower parenting expectations, assessments that skip a gender analysis tend to blame mothers for the fallout of a father’s abusive behaviour—missed school days, unstable housing, even the children’s own exposure to his violence toward her.

At the same time, the Model’s assessment questions focus on specific behaviours—the “how” and “what” rather than the “why”—which Mandel says lets it apply the same standard regardless of who’s using the abuse. The paper walks through how this pattern-based approach helps distinguish coercive control from defensive violence in cases involving a woman’s use of violence against a male partner, helps sort “mutual violence” claims and dual arrests by comparing each person’s actual pattern of behaviour, and extends to same-sex relationships, honour-based abuse involving extended family, and lateral violence within kinship networks.