1. Planning and Organizing the Production of Statistics on Violence against Women
Social and Housing Statistics Section
United Nations Statistics Division

2. Definition
Violence against women – broadly defined as physical, sexual, psychological and/or economic violence perpetuated on women as a consequence of unequal status of women and men in a society
Eradicating violence against women is a major concern of the United Nations

3. Sources of statistics Administrative Police and crime statistics
Court statistics
Health statistics
Government agencies dealing with victims of violence
Community and NGO
Social services

4. Sources of statistics Administrative – issues Non-reporting
Fear of perpetrator
Shame
Fear …
Ethical issues
Information on victim or perpetrator not collected
Partial coverage
Multiple counting

5. Violence against women statistical survey
Sources of statistics
Violence against women statistical survey
Most reliable method
Flexible
Dedicated
Module

6. Sources of statistics - summary
Data source
Strengths
Limitations
Health services
Identify potential victims
Identify extreme cases
Ethical concerns
Not representative
Cannot be used to measure prevalence

7. Sources of data - summary
Data source
Strengths
Limitations
Criminal and civil justice systems
Data organized in a useful manner
Can be used to evaluate court response to VaW cases
Non-reporting
Not representative
Cannot be used to measure prevalence
Not necessarily gender-sensitive

8. Sources of statistics - summary
Data source
Strengths
Limitations
Other government agencies/programs
Identify victims more directly
Small proportion of victims
Not representative
Cannot be used to measure prevalence

9. Sources of statistics - summary
Data source
Strengths
Limitations
Other support services
Identify victims unknown to government agencies
Source of qualitative data/metadata
Small proportion of victims
Double-counting
Not representative
Cannot be used to measure prevalence

10. Sources of statistics - summary
Data source
Strengths
Limitations
Population surveys
Representative of population
Can be used to measure prevalence
Detailed
No small area statistics
Resource heavy

11. What is violence? Prevalence Incidence Content of the survey Physical
Sexual
Psychological
Economic
Prevalence
Percentage of women
Incidence
Number of occurrences

12. Characteristics of the victim Characteristics of the perpetrator
Content of the survey
Characteristics of the victim
Characteristics of the perpetrator
Characteristics of the violence
Circumstances
Consequences
Reporting

13. National dedicated surveys (around 30 countries)
VaW surveys to date
National dedicated surveys (around 30 countries)
International Violence against Women Surveys (11 countries)
WHO Multi-country study (12 countries)
DHS module (at least 24 countries)
MICS module (at least 25 countries)
UN Regional Module (4 countries)

14. Scope of the methodological overview
Analysis of 59 nationally representative surveys from 49 countries
Dedicated surveys – 21 countries
Dedicated module – 5 countries
WHO-VaW methodology – 10+4 countries
DHS methodology - 10
Other - 1 14

15. Findings
Total and age specific rate of women subjected to physical violence in the last 12 months by severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrator and frequency 15

16. Findings
Total and age specific rate of women subjected to physical violence during lifetime by severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrator and frequency 16

17. Findings
Total and age specific rate of women subjected to sexual violence in the last 12 months by severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrator and frequency 17

18. Findings
Total and age specific rate of women subjected to sexual violence during lifetime by severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrator and frequency 18

19. Findings
Total and age specific rate of women subjected to phusical or sexual violence in the past 12 months and during lifetime by severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrator and frequency 19

20. Review conclusions
Statistics for only one indicator – physical violence against women in their lifetime – available in 80% of surveys
Short classification of relationship to the perpetrator
Lack of the availability of total rates – requires further technical analysis
Clearly points to the need to establish methodological standards and develop as universal as possible classifications of violence, severity of violence, relationship to the perpetrators and frequency
Developing guidelines 20