Around one in eight women were victims of sexual assault, domestic abuse or stalking in the last year, according to new estimates.
The figures have been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of its Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year up to March 2025.
The survey found 5.2 million people aged 16 and over (10.6%) were likely to have experienced one or more of these crime types – but the percentage was higher for women (12.8%) as opposed to 8.4% of men.
It is the first time an estimate has been made of the combined prevalence of the three crimes and is the main measure used by the ONS to monitor the government’s ambition of halving violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade.
The Home Office will provide more detail later this year on how this will be used with other stats to monitor its progress.
The individual breakdown of the prevalence of crime listed on the survey suggests:
- 2.9% (around 1.4 million people) experienced stalking
- 7.8% (around 3.8 million people) experienced domestic abuse
- 1.9% (around 900,000 people) experienced sexual assault
- 8.6% (around 4.2 million people) had experienced some form of harassment
A slightly higher estimate of 5.4 million people, or 11.3%, experienced one or more of these crimes in the previous year to March 2024.
But the ONS cautioned against making comparisons between years because the estimates were still in development and subject to change.
A report by the UK’s spending watchdog, published in January, found that Home Office efforts to tackle the “serious and growing problem” of VAWG had so far “not improved outcomes” for victims.
The National Audit Office found there had been three separate strategies aimed at reducing VAWG since 2010 – including the creation of a dedicated team in 2021 under the previous Conservative government.
But the report found “little evidence” the department had improved on earlier strategies.
In response, the Home Office said the report had looked at the previous government’s “failure to deliver systemic change”, and that Labour was “delivering a step-change in the government’s response”.
The charity Women’s Aid welcomed the data provided by the ONS as “clearly a step toward a more comprehensive overview of these crimes and reflects the governments commitment to ending VAWG”.
But Sarah Davidge, head of research and evaluation at the charity, said the data did not consider the number of times each person was a victim.
“We know that women encounter higher rates of repeat victimisation, are more likely to be subject to coercive and controlling behaviour and be seriously harmed or killed than male victims,” she said.
“Therefore, prevalence measures can underestimate the gender asymmetry of these crimes.”
Meanwhile, separate figures in the crime survey released on Thursday suggest there were 9.4 million incidents of overall crime in England and Wales in the year to March – up 7% from the previous year.
The biggest driver for this was a 31% increase in fraud to around 4.2 million incidents – the highest estimated number since fraud was first collated in the survey in 2017.
The ONS said that trends in police recorded crime were largely unchanged.
The number of shoplifting incidents rose for the fourth successive year to a record high, while homicides decreased to an 11-year low.
Some 530,643 shoplifting offences were logged in 2024/25, up 20% from 444,022 in 2023/24 and the highest total since current police recording practices began in 2002/03.
Theft from the person offences also remain at record levels, with 151,220 recorded by forces in the year to March, up 15% from 131,584 in the previous 12 months.
