Violence against women and girls
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) covers domestic abuse, rape and sexual offences, stalking, harassment, so-called 'honour'-based abuse, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and technology-facilitated abuse. In 2024 the National Police Chiefs' Council declared it a national emergency, and in December 2025 the UK government published a strategy committing to halve it within a decade.
Prevalence
The scale of VAWG in England and Wales
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is the most reliable measure of how many people experience VAWG, because most incidents are never reported to the police. The figures below are for the year ending March 2025 - based on a half sample, so the survey notes that caution should be taken when using them.
| Women | Men | |
|---|---|---|
| Any sexual assault (last year) | 3.0% | 0.7% |
| Rape or assault by penetration (last year) | 0.4% | 0.1% |
| Indecent exposure or unwanted sexual touching (last year) | 2.8% | 0.7% |
| Rape (since 16) | 7.3% | 0.5% |
| Assault by penetration (since 16) | 5.7% | 0.4% |
Source: ONS, Crime Survey for England and Wales, year ending March 2025. Based on a half sample.
Around 72.5% of victims of police-recorded domestic-abuse-related crimes are female. Police recorded crime is influenced by changes in recording practice and victim reporting, so trends should be read alongside the survey above rather than as a direct measure of incidence.
Government response
The 2025 VAWG strategy
In December 2025 the Labour government published Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls. It is the latest in a series of UK VAWG strategies dating back to 2010, and the first under the current government. The headline commitment is to halve VAWG within a decade as part of the broader Safer Streets Mission.
The strategy is built on prevention, pursuing perpetrators, and supporting victims. Headline measures include specialist rape and sexual offences investigation teams in every police force in England and Wales; a £20 million prevention package focused on schools and tackling misogyny among young men; expanded Domestic Abuse Protection Orders; Raneem's Law, embedding domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms; and a new statutory aggravating factor for murders involving strangulation. A January 2025 National Audit Office report had found that previous strategies struggled to deliver a genuine 'whole-of-government' response, and the new strategy is the government's answer to that critique.
Data availability
Why this page has no constituency-level data
Other pages on this site present data at parliamentary constituency level. This page does not, because that data does not exist.
The Office for National Statistics maintains a published inventory of VAWG data across government, academia, and the voluntary sector - 231 sources at the November 2023 update. None publish below local authority level for England, and the great majority publish only at England-and-Wales, UK, or country level. The CSEW, which produces the most reliable prevalence estimates, is a sample survey that cannot statistically support estimates below regional level. Police-recorded crime is published by police force area - there are 43 in England and Wales, none of which align cleanly with the 650 parliamentary constituencies.
Imputing constituency-level VAWG figures from force-area or regional data is technically possible but produces errors large enough to be misleading. This site does not do that. The figures above are the most granular reliable data the public sources publish.
Sources
Data sources
- ONS, Sexual offences in England and Wales overview: year ending March 2025
- ONS, Violence against women and girls: Data landscape (November 2023)
- HM Government, Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy (December 2025)
- National Police Chiefs' Council, Violence Against Women and Girls National Policing Statement (July 2024)
- House of Commons Library, Tackling violence against women and girls (CDP-2024-0183)