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Research

Our research

Violence against women and children affects everybody. It impacts on the health, wellbeing and safety of a significant proportion of Australians throughout all states and territories and places an enormous burden on the nation’s economy across family and community services, health and hospitals, income-support and criminal justice systems.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

News and events

ANROWS hosts events as part of its knowledge transfer and exchange work, including public lectures, workshops and research launches. Details of upcoming ANROWS activities and news are available from the list on the right.

ANROWS

About ANROWS

ANROWS was established by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments of Australia to produce, disseminate and assist in applying evidence for policy and practice addressing violence against women and their children.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Resources

To support the take-up of evidence, ANROWS offers a range of resources developed from research to support practitioners and policy-makers in delivering evidence-based interventions.

Research to policy and practice

Violence against women in Australia: Additional analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey, 2012: Key findings and future directions

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Compass

Research to policy and practice
Issue 02 | October 2015

Dr Peta Cox, Senior Research Officer, ANROWS

Read the PDF version of this report

ANROWS Compass (Research to policy and practice papers) are concise papers that summarise key findings of research on violence against women and their children, including research produced under ANROWS’s research program, and provide advice on the implications for policy and practice.

This report addresses work covered in ANROWS research project 1.1 “Violence against women in Australia: Additional analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey, 2012”. Please consult the ANROWS website for more information on this project. In addition to this paper, an ANROWS Horizons is available as part of this project.

ANROWS acknowledgement

This material was produced with funding from the Australian Government and the Australian state and territory governments. Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) gratefully acknowledges the financial and other support it has received from these governments, without which this work would not have been possible. The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and cannot be attributed to the Australian Government, or any Australian state or territory government.

Acknowledgement of Country

ANROWS acknowledges the traditional owners of the land across Australia on which we work and live. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past, present and future; and we value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and knowledge.

© ANROWS 2015

Published by

Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited (ANROWS)
PO Box 6322, Alexandria NSW 2015 | www.anrows.org.au | Phone +61 2 8374 4000
ABN 67 162 349 171

Sydney : ANROWS, c2015.

ISSN: 2204-9622 (print) 2204-9630 (online)
Creative Commons Licence

Attribution-Non Commercial

CC BY-NC

CC BY-NC

This licence lets others distribute, remix and build upon the work, but only if it is for non-commercial purposes and they credit the original creator/s (and any other nominated parties). They do not have to license their Derivative Works on the same terms.
Version 3.0 (CC Australia ported licence): View CC BY-NC Australia Licence Deed | View CC BY-NC 3.0 Australia Legal Code
Version 4.0 (international licence): View CC BY-NC 4.0 Licence Deed | View CC BY-NC 4.0 Legal Code

Design

Erin Snelgrove, GOOD MATTERS.

Introduction

The PSS is the most comprehensive quantitative study of interpersonal violence in Australia. The survey is administered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. Over 17,000 women and men completed the 2012 survey.

This ANROWS project provides substantial additional analysis of the data produced through the Australian Personal Safety Survey (PSS). The PSS is currently a largely untapped resource – even the publicly available PSS data has yet to be fully explored and applied to the most obviously relevant research and policy contexts.

The ANROWS PSS analysis provides several hundred new statistical items related to violence against women. Almost all the data is new – not only has this information not been readily available to the public before, but the data tables themselves have not been generated previously.

Limitations

The PSS is a complex tool for looking at a complex social problem. The PSS data is layered in a way that can make sub-population analysis difficult. Data becomes more fragile as more limitations are placed on it. Therefore, examination of sub-populations can be difficult because the estimates quickly become too unreliable for general use. Cross-referencing multiple contextual factors can also be difficult for the same reason, so that while extensive detail is available about incidents of violence, the ability to build an understanding of how these factors interact can be more limited.

A key limitation of the survey is that the ABS has difficulty in accessing and surveying a statistically valid sample of people from communities of interest, including women with a disability and women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Violence experienced by women and men

Violence is extremely common in Australia.

Men were more likely to be victims of physical violence while women were more likely to be victims of sexual violence.

Since the age of 15:

1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men have experienced physical violence by a partner, other known person or stranger. 1 in 5 women and 1 in 22 men have experienced sexual violence by a partner, other known person or stranger.

The violence experienced by men and women has some different characteristics.

Since the age of 15:

3 million men and 1.1 million women have experienced violence by a stranger. 1.5 million women and 0.45 million men have experienced violence by a cohabiting partner.

The most common place for most violence to occur: - Her home - His place of entertainment

But it also has some similarities.

Both women and men are 3x more likely to be physically assaulted by a man.

N.B. When compared to assaults by women.

In their most recent physical assault by a male:

5 in 10 women and 7 in 10 men said alcohol and other drugs contributed to the assault.

Sexual assault

Many women in Australia are affected by sexual assault.

Almost all assaults are perpetrated by men.

In the year prior to the survey: 87,800 women were sexually assaulted in Australia

Since the age of 15: 1.7 million women had experiences sexual violence. 1.5 million women had experiences sexual assault. Over 99% by a male perpetrator.

Women are most likely to be sexually assaulted by a man known to them.

Since the age of 15: More women were sexually assaulted by a boyfriend or date than by a male cohabiting partner. Women were equally likely to have been sexually assaulted by a cohabiting partner as by a stranger.

Certain characteristics are common to sexual assault incidents.

Regarding their most recent incident of sexual assault by a male:

1 in 3 women sexually assaulted by a know male thought the sexual assault was a crime. 3 out of 4 occurred in a private residence. 1 in 6 women had not told anyone about their sexual assault.

Partner violence

Intimate partner violence is experienced by a quarter of women in Australia:

Since the age of 15:

1 in 4 women have experienced violence by an intimate partner they may or may not have been living with. 1 in 6 women had experienced violence by a partner they were living with. 1 in 9 women had experienced violence by a boyfriend, girlfriend or date.

Of the 2.2 million women who have experienced male intimate partner violence:

Since the age of 15:

1.8 million women experienced physical violence by a male intimate partner. 0.9 million women experienced sexual violence by a male intimate partner.

Almost all violence between cohabiting partners happens in the home:

Of women’s most recent experience of cohabiting partner violence: At least 9 in 10 incidents happened in the home.

Cohabiting partner violence does not just affect the victim.

Since the age of 15:

Over half a million women reported their children had seen or heard partner violence.

Over 400,000 women experienced partner violence during pregnancy.

It can be difficult to leave a violent relationship.

81,900 women have wanted to leave their violent current partner but never have. N.B. For partner at time of survey only.

Since the age of 15:

1 in 4 employed women took off work as a result of their most recent incident of physical assault by a male cohabiting partner.Over half a million women left property or assets behind when they moved away after their violent relationship ended.

Multiple victimisation

Many women experience violence multiple times in their life.

Some women experience violence both as a child and as an adult.

0.78 million women had experienced multiple incidents of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, 0.32 million women had also experienced at least one sexual assault as an adult.

Experiencing both physical and sexual violence as an adult is a form of multiple victimisation.

67.3% of women who had experienced sexual violence have also experienced a separate incident of physical violence.

Repeated violence by the same man is also a form of multiple victimisation.

Nearly 1 million women had experienced multiple incidents of physical violence by the same man.

Multiple victimisation affects some groups of women more than others.

In the 12 months prior to the survey: Women with disability were more likely to experience multiple incidents of violence by a male perpetrator.

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