Women in the study were slightly more likely than men to have slapped, kicked, bitten or punched, hit or tried to hit with something or threatened with a gun or knife. Men were slightly more likely than women to have beaten up their spouses or choked them. Both sexes were equally likely to have used a knife or a gun on their partner. The overall finding that women were as assaultive as men matched that of a similar study Mr. Straus conducted 10 years earlier. 'A License for Hitting'

"I was originally very surprised at the numbers on women assaulting men but I shouldn't have been, given the cultural messages that it's O.K. to slap the cad if he gets fresh, or chase him with a frying pan." Mr. Straus said. "In this society, family relationships seem to be a license for hitting, whether it's women assaulting men, men assaulting women or parents assaulting their children."

Many advocates for battered women say that despite Mr. Straus's reputation as an early researcher on battered wives, his findings are an outrageous skewing of the truth. It is misleading to speak of men and women as equally assaultive, they say, when it is almost always the women who live with broken bones, repeated visits to the emergency room and a constant fear for their lives.

"Women abused by male partners tend to sustain multiple injuries to multiple sites of the body, an injury pattern not seen in men assaulted by female partners," said Dr. Angela Browne of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The Straus findings also fail to measure whether the women's violence is in response to prior aggression or threats by the partner. Dr. Browne and Ms. Pence say that the results are misleading because they fail to reflect the reality of a male-dominated society. Men Assail the System

Men who have lived with violence, however, complain that though men may dominate, women are wrongly seen as the only victims. Mr. Gilliland likes to tell how he was arrested and charged with domestic assault although he says he never retaliated against the former wife who yelled at him, pushed him and threw hot coffee at him.

"We were having a family argument in 1988, and she said something about calling the cops and getting me thrown out," he said. "I said, 'All right, I'll call the cops.' She ran out and screamed, 'Take me to a battered women's shelter,' and they took me to jail. The system is 100 percent stacked against men."

Even the most ardent advocates for battered women acknowledge that women can be assaultive. Indeed, one of the 13 therapy groups in Ms. Pence's intervention program is for assaultive women. But, Ms. Pence said, in a decade of domestic-violence work she encountered only one man truly battered by his wife and more than a thousand such women. Man Trapped and Hurt