The societal reaction though would be very different and in favour of the woman. For an example a few months ago some English tourist was in Sydney, got annoyed at some guy waving a flag around her, sucker punched the guy in the head from behind, and received one punch back plus a free broken jaw as her prize.

Now check out how it was reported - it's all about how bad it was for the man to punch a woman and the pretty important fact of her assaulting the man before getting said punch is mentioned once in passing (and it being a punch from behind with the man not aware is not mentioned at all, which is relevant because this is normally highlighted as a 'coward punch' in Australian media).