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Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:  

“Like many others in the charity sector, Women’s Aid has faced a difficult and uncertain few years, with rising costs and a tougher funding environment creating real pressures for our organisation. These challenging times have forced us to make some difficult decisions about how we operate moving forward. However, supporting women and children who have survived domestic abuse will continue to be at the centre of everything we do. 

To ensure we’re sustainable in the long-term, and that survivors can access the support they desperately need, we’re changing how we run some of our services. The current model for our Live Chat service was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, with emergency funding, and as with many charities, we’ve continued to deliver this life-saving work despite not having dedicated funds for a number of years. Sadly, we can no longer afford to do so. We’ll be ending Live Chat on the 31st of July 2025 and are carrying out a phased closure, with full details on our website between now and then. This doesn’t mean we will be stepping away from direct support. We’ll continue to run a reduced version of our Email Service so we can support survivors within a set timeframe, and we’re looking into ways we might be able to offer an alternative service to Live Chat in the long term. We’ll also be clearly signposting survivors to the government-funded helplines that are run by other organisations within the sector. Our focus is, and will always be, making sure that women and children stay safe and get support when they need it, by working with our network of 185 member services across the country. 

We’ll be focusing our core funding on the areas where our members say we can make the biggest difference to the greatest number of survivors; campaigning for change, raising awareness, systemic change, maintaining our direct delivery services for some of the most marginalised survivors and supporting the services that women rely on every day. With our members who deliver frontline services we aim to make the whole system work better for survivors who urgently need it.  

The decisions we’ve had to make are not easy and they are not a reflection of the incredible dedication or impact of our team. Instead, they’ve been to protect our ability to lead nationally and keep supporting survivors in the long term.  

At the heart of our organisation is our vital work to keep as many women and children safe from harm, and able to access our members services when and where they need them. The experiences of survivors and those working with them on the frontlines have helped guide where we focus our energy – and will continue to shape everything we do next.”  

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About the programme

The Reach Respect Program is part of our Expect Respect initiative, offering free training sessions tailored for university students across the UK. 

These sessions help students: 

• Understand what makes a healthy and respectful relationship
• Recognise coercive and controlling behaviours
• Learn how to intervene safely as an active bystander 
  

This program is delivered in partnership with Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) and is available until June 2027. Free of charge from September 2024 to June 2027.

Join the movement

Together, we can help end domestic abuse by fostering a culture of respect, safety, and support on university campuses. 

Find out more about how you can support our work here.

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When it comes to responding to crime, it can be said with certainty that data matters – it matters when it comes to establishing who is most vulnerable, who the likely perpetrators are, what the underlying causes are and what can be gleaned from the data to keep those who are vulnerable, safe. While data on domestic abuse is available, it contains gaps which leave us with questions about the women’s lived experiences, while also often concealing the gendered nature of this abominable crime. What we must remember is that each week, a woman is still being murdered by her abuser and children left motherless because of this heinous crime.  

At the end of last year, the Office for National Statistics published its annual domestic abuse data bulletin, with figures for the year ending March 2023 showing that one in four women (27%) experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. For men, this figure is around one in seven (13.9%). When looking only at partner abuse, the figures are 22.7% for women and 10.2% for men.  

The latest figures also found that an estimated 1.4m women experienced domestic abuse in the previous year, an apparent decrease from 1.7m in the year before, but this is not a statistically significant change. The survey for the most recent year contained an error, which resulted in missing data, and the data comes on the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ONS did report a significant decrease in the proportion of women aged 16 to 59 years who experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2023 (6.5%) compared with the year ending March 2020 (8.1%). This comparison only relates to women up to the age of 59 years because the upper age limit was only removed in October 2021. This was following successful campaigning from Women’s Aid and others, finally demonstrating that domestic abuse can be suffered by anyone – daughters, mothers, grandmothers. Whilst the ONS reports that this is a statistically significant change with 95% confidence, they do note caution around the data, due to the caveats with data collection in the year ending March 2023. This period also covers the period of the Covid pandemic, which is likely to have had an impact on the figures, although this requires longer term analysis. 

We have previously spoken about the ‘hidden’ gender asymmetry when looking at the statistics. First, it is important to remember that the estimates published by the ONS are taken from the Crime Survey for England and Wales and are not based on reporting to the police. They are therefore the best available statistics on prevalence. However, in our blog we set out how these figures do not capture context, impact and repeat victimisation – whether these behaviours were experienced as a pattern of abuse in a context of coercive control, how they made the victims feel and whether the abuse formed part of a series of incidents. Extensive research shows that these factors are important in understanding the gendered dynamics of domestic abuse, as women are not only more likely to experience domestic abuse, but are also more likely to be subjected to coercive control, and to being seriously physically and mentally harmed or killed. 

Since bringing this to the fore, we worked with a team of leading researchers led by the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol, to develop a measure of prevalence that incorporates coercive control and the impact of abuse. These questions were added to the Crime Survey in April 2023 as part of a split-sample trial until March 2025, and we look forward to seeing the impact this has on the figures that are being reported.  

The latest ONS bulletin also contains data on domestic homicides, which do clearly show the gendered nature of domestic abuse. Homicide Index data from the year ending March 2020 to the year ending March 2022 shows that 67.3% of domestic homicide victims were female. Of the 249 female domestic homicide victims, the suspect was male in a staggering 241 cases. In the majority of female domestic homicides, the suspect was a male partner or ex-partner (74.7%), whereas in the majority of male domestic homicides, the suspect was a male family member (66.1%). 

Furthermore, the total number of women killed by a partner/ex-partner over this three-year period was 186. All of the suspects were male. This is an average of 1.2 women per week killed by a male partner/ex-partner. In previous years, this average has been around 1.5 women per week, but homicide data changes year-on-year, so a longer-term analysis would be needed to establish a trend. Similarly, regardless of whether there is a trend or not, the stark reality remains that each week, a woman is killed by a man – the grief and devastation this leaves is unimaginable, as each woman is someone’s daughter, mother, sister, or cherished friend and each loss is an immense tragedy.  

One glaring gap in this data is victim suicides in the context of domestic abuse, and this is one area that new research is shedding more light on, including the Domestic Homicide Project, which has been looking at deaths in the context of domestic abuse since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Another critical gap is in the experiences of Black and minoritised women. In November 2023, Imkaan and the Centre for Women’s Justice launched a groundbreaking report into the deaths of Black and minoritised women due to domestic abuse. The report highlighted that there is currently no data available on the breakdown of intimate partner killings of Black and minoritised women by men. There are therefore many unanswered questions about the deaths of women experiencing domestic abuse, and particularly those women subject to additional inequalities. 

Since 2020, large scale changes including the Covid-19 pandemic, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the rising cost-of-living pose further questions about changes to perpetration, experiences of abuse and access to support. The need for more and better data on domestic abuse has therefore never been more critical.  

It is also vital to remember that every data point behind every trend relating to domestic abuse should not exist. Women and children should be safe in their homes – that is a basic human right. As long as this data exists, criminals abusing these rights are committing crimes with impunity. We must come together to end this epidemic, once and for all. 

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Women’s Aid

Reach out to one of our support services, including our Survivor’s Forum.

Imkaan

Imkaan address violence against Black and minoritised women and girls.

Men’s Advice Line

The Helpline for male victims of domestic abuse run by Respect.

Scottish Women’s Aid

Scottish Women’s Aid is the lead organisation in Scotland working towards the prevention of domestic abuse.

Welsh Women’s Aid

Welsh Women’s Aid is the national charity in Wales working to end domestic abuse and all forms of violence against women.

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Read the Joint VAWG Manifesto here.

Ahead of the next general election, a coalition of 70 leading organisations working to end violence against women and girls (VAWG) has today (18th September 2023) published a joint manifesto calling on all political parties to adopt its priorities for ending this abuse.

The VAWG experts and specialist organisations have come together to set out their priorities for the next government, calling for a comprehensive, whole-society approach to tackling VAWG that looks beyond the criminal justice system and centres those who face the greatest barriers to support and protection.

Recommendations include: 

• Defend our human rights and address the discrimination and inequalities which create barriers to support and safety for the most marginalised survivors.
• Sustainably fund the specialist VAWG sector, with a ring-fenced budget for services led ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised women and girls.
• Put prevention at the heart of the response to VAWG: challenging harmful social norms, supporting bystander interventions, holding perpetrators accountable and creating opportunities for behaviour change.

Rights and equalities

Black and minoritised women, migrant women, Deaf and disabled women and members of the LGBT+ community disproportionately experience VAWG while facing inequalities in access to support and protection.

‘Hostile environment’ policies such as the No Recourse to Public Funds condition leave migrant women facing particular barriers to safety, often left with an impossible choice of staying with an abuser or risking destitution, immigration detention or even removal from the UK.

Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation. However, we have seen a series of attacks on our fundamental rights – from the Policing Act to the Public Order Act, Nationality and Borders Act and Illegal Migration Act – all of which impact minoritised and migrant women most acutely.

If we are to end VAWG, it is vital that the next government protects our Human Rights Act and other safeguards including the European Convention on Human Rights.

Ring-fenced funding for support services

The cost-of-living crisis and lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has increased barriers to escaping abuse and left specialist support services grappling with the increased need for support from survivors without the funding to meet this need.

Given Women’s Aid’s recent findings which show that services delivered by specialist services are able to deliver savings of up to £23 billion a year for the public purse, the manifesto calls for  a secure, national multi-year funding settlement for the specialist VAWG sector, that is accessible to these services. This must ensure all forms of service provision for survivors, children and young people and perpetrators are resilient for the future.

A VAWG response with prevention at its heart

Too often, the response to VAWG sits with the criminal justice system, but to truly create a world without VAWG it is critical that the government invest in prevention – namely shifting the attitudes and behaviours that underpin this abuse. The next government must continue investing in quality, well-funded, multi-year public information campaigns developed in partnership with the specialist VAWG sector.

The rise of misogynist influencers online has had a real impact on boys and men’s attitudes and behaviour, with schools often left to pick up the pieces. Yet our schools present the best opportunity to challenge attitudes which condone VAWG. We need to invest in education, including quality Relationships, Sex and Health Education developed in partnership with the specialist VAWG sector, and creating a Whole School Approach to tackling VAWG.

In the context of our broken justice system which for many survivors is a site of harm rather than justice and protection, stopping women and girls from becoming victims in the first place has never been more urgent.

Andrea Simon, Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), said:

“Violence against women and girls is one of the most urgent human rights violations we face as a society. We know that this abuse is entirely preventable and a different world is possible, and that the 2024 General Election can be a real turning point to create the change women and girls deserve to see.

We call on all political parties to listen to us as experts, specialist services and survivors, and to back up their commitments to endingVAWG with actions that are going to make a real difference. It is vital that work to end violence against women and girls gets right to the root of the issue, rather than waiting for harm to be done and forcing survivors into a criminal justice system that is failing them.”

Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:

“Being safe from violence and abuse is a basic human right, however, the heartbreaking reality remains that women and girls are still subject to these heinous crimes. Ahead of the general election, we are joining our sector colleagues in calling on all parties to make the safety of women and girls an absolute priority, ensuring that they can be safe regardless of their race, communication or other needs, residential status or any other possible factor that prevents them from accessing life-saving help.

It is vital that all parties not only make this a priority for the next government, but that they also take a whole-society view of the dangers facing women and girls. To create a world where abuse and violence against women and girls is intolerable, we must prioritise prevention as much as we do the criminal response, stopping perpetrators in their tracks, just as much as we work towards ensuring that survivors see justice being done.”

Elizabeth Jiménez-Yáñez, Policy and Communications Manage for Latin American Women’s Rights Service, said:

“Migrant women face enormous intersecting and structural barriers that increase their vulnerability to experiencing violence against women and girls (VAWG) while reducing their access to support, safety and justice. In light of recent crises, victims and survivors with insecure immigration status often find themselves trapped in cycles of abuse and institutional violence at risk of further harm. We join this VAWG manifesto, which centres recommendations that respond to the needs of the most marginalised, calling on the next government to commit to ensuring legislation and policies protect all women without discrimination.”

Selma Taha, Director of Southall Black Sisters, said:

“Black and minoritised women escaping abusive situations continue to fall through the cracks, similarly, migrant women who are fleeing domestic violence often find themselves being primarily viewed as immigration offenders rather than victims in need of support. The act of denying sufficient support to those who have experienced violence against women due to their immigration status and racial identity is a deliberate decision that represents a significant problem within a democratic society.

Drawing from our extensive 40+ years long commitment to supporting migrant and minoritised women who have fallen victim to various forms of abuse, as well as advocating for systemic changes, we urge all parties to ensure that to ensure that these victims are not compelled to face the distressing decision between enduring abuse and facing deportation, or enduring abuse and experiencing extreme poverty, just due to their immigration status. Ensuring adequate support for those who have experienced abuse is an essential entitlement grounded in the principles of human rights. It is imperative that all political parties, demonstrate a steadfast dedication to safeguarding this right for victims belonging to marginalised communities. It is imperative to seize the opportunity presented by the upcoming general election to implement comprehensive reforms and establish essential support for migrant, black, and other marginalised women in order to address and alleviate the pervasive issue of violence against women and girls”.

Amelia Handy, Head of Policy and Public Affairs for Rape Crisis England and Wales, said:

“When the prevalence of rape and sexual abuse is so high, with 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 children subjected to it, it is absolutely critical that responding to sexual violence and abuse is firmly on the agenda for any incoming government. All women and girls should have access to specialist, independent, trauma-informed Rape Crisis counselling and emotional support. These services are transformative for victims and survivors, helping them to rebuild life after sexual violence and abuse. We call on all political parties to show their commitment, through the pledge of sustainable funding, to ensure access to support for those impacted by sexual violence and abuse, and to recognise that criminal justice outcomes should not be the sole priority.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• The full list of organisations that co-signed the joint manifesto is below:

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