Number of girls and women aged 15 years and older subjected to sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months

Number of girls and women aged 15 years and older

Sexual violence directed at women and girls represents one manifestation of gender inequality and is symptomatic of the widely held view that girls and women have low status in society and are expected to comply with and conform to certain defined gender roles.

While sexual violence may take different forms and occur in many settings, this indicator is limited to sexual violence perpetrated by individuals other than an intimate partner. Having data on this indicator will help to better understand the extent and nature of this form of violence and to inform the development of appropriate policies and programmes for prevention and response.

The conceptual definition of sexual violence covered by the SDG indicator, as defined in the 2014 UN Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women is: “Any sort of harmful or unwanted sexual behaviour that is imposed on someone. It includes acts of abusive sexual contact, forced engagement in sexual acts, attempted or completed sexual acts with a woman without her consent, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, threats, exposure, unwanted touching, incest, etc.” However, in most surveys that collect data on sexual violence against women and girls by non-partners, the operational definition is limited to forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts and attempted or coerced sexual intercourse or other sexual acts.

The availability of comparable data remains a challenge as many data collection efforts have relied on different survey methodologies and used varying definitions of sexual violence as well as survey questions to elicit information. Diverse age groups are also often utilized. Additionally, not all surveys on violence against women collect information on non-partner violence. Respondents’ willingness to discuss experiences of violence and understanding of relevant concepts may also differ according to how a survey is implemented and the cultural context, and this can affect reported prevalence levels.

Efforts and investment are required to develop an internationally agreed standard and definition of sexual violence by non-partners that will enable comparison across countries. Monitoring this indicator with certain periodicity may be a challenge if sustained capacities are not built.

Numerator: Number of women and girls (aged 15 years and above) who have experienced sexual violence by a non-intimate partner in the previous 12 months

Denominator: Number of women and girls (aged 15 years and above) in the population

In addition to age and place of occurrence, income/wealth, education, ethnicity (including indigenous status), disability status, geographic location, relationship with the perpetrator (including sex of perpetrator) and frequency and type of sexual violence (as proxy to severity) are suggested as desired variables for disaggregation for this indicator.

When data for a country are entirely missing, no country-level estimate is published.

No imputations are made in cases where country data are not available. Where regional and global figures are presented, clear notes on data limitations are provided. The number of countries included in the average is clearly indicated.

Global aggregates are weighted averages of all the sub-regions that make up the world. Regional aggregates are weighted averages of all the countries within the region. Where data are not available for all countries in a given region, regional aggregates may still be calculated if the minimum threshold for population coverage is met. The number of countries included in the average is clearly indicated.

Only figures published by countries are used.

About 100 countries have conducted violence against women national prevalence surveys or have included a module on violence against women in a national household survey on other topic, although not all include data on non-partner sexual violence. Moreover, not all these data are comparable and in many cases they are not collected on a regular basis.

Comparable data are available for a sub-sample of women and girls aged 15-49 for 37 low- and middle- income countries.

Time series are available for some countries. Global time series with comparable data not yet available.

The main sources of intimate partner violence prevalence data are (1) specialized national surveys dedicated to measuring violence against women and (2) international household surveys that include a module on experiences of violence by women, such as the DHS.

Although administrative data from health, police, courts, justice and social services, among other services used by survivors of violence, can provide information on violence against women and girls, these do not produce prevalence data, but rather incidence data or number of cases received in/reported to these services. We know that many abused women do not report violence and those who do, tend to be only the most serious cases. Therefore, administrative data should not be used as a data source for this indicator.

For more information on recommended practices in production of violence against women statistics see: UN Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women- Statistical Surveys (UN, 2014).

An Inter-Agency Group on Violence against Women Data and its Technical Advisory Group is currently being established (jointly by WHO, UN Women, UNICEF, UNSD and UNFPA) to establish a mechanism for compiling harmonized country level data on this indicator.

Name:

National Statistical Offices (in most cases) or line ministries/other government agencies that have conducted national surveys on violence against women and girls.

Description:

National Statistical Offices (in most cases) or line ministries/other government agencies that have conducted national surveys on violence against women and girls.

URL:

http://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/en
data.unicef.org
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/default.html

References:

1. United Nations, 2014. Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women- Statistical Surveys.
2. United Nations, 2015. The World’s Women 2015, Trends and Statistics.
3. World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council, 2013. Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence.
4. UN Women. 2016. Global Database on Violence against Women. Available at: http://evaw-global- database.unwomen.org/en
5. UNICEF Data portal: http://data.unicef.org/child-protection/violence.html
6. UNSD Portal on the minimum set of gender indicators:
http://genderstats.un.org/beta/index.html#/home
7. UNSD dedicated portal for data and metadata on violence against women: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/vaw/

Sexual violence directed at women and girls represents one manifestation of gender inequality and is symptomatic of the widely held view that girls and women have low status in society and are expected to comply with and conform to certain defined gender roles.

While sexual violence may take different forms and occur in many settings, this indicator is limited to sexual violence perpetrated by individuals other than an intimate partner. Having data on this indicator will help to better understand the extent and nature of this form of violence and to inform the development of appropriate policies and programmes for prevention and response.