That’s true. But arranged marriages (quasi-arranged marriages) are common even among folks who live in cultural subsets where wife beating is frowned upon (those who moved to the West or run in westernized circles). Those marriages seem just as happg as any others.

Part of the problem as I see it is that folks in the west often use their freedom to select for stupid things. (Omg she likes the same music!) My cousin just got matched up with someone where the criteria was: “she’s an engineer, her family is respectable and she’s not too religious.” I suspect it will be a good match.

Wives do beat their husbands, I'll grant you that. But I'm going to want to see one hell of an impressive citation before I believe that they are "just as likely to beat their husbands".

Not that I'm agreeing with the grandparent comment, but this is a pretty great paper discussing that.

They're not just as likely to beat their husbands, but violence against children appears to be 50-50; family violence vs. intimate partner violence, basically.

https://www.dvrcv.org.au/sites/default/files/Mens%20as%20vic...

That appears to be a study from Australia. Not exactly a country well known for arranged marriages.

In Bangladesh where I’m from (a “moderate” country) 80-90% of women are victims of domestic violence. The women do not hit back; that would get them killed.

Physical violence is more likely to be done by husband - by factor 10:1. Verbal abuse is less unequally distributed.

The rates of both depend on a lot of factors like culture, employment rates of males, employment rates of women, etc.