Domestic and family violence
Domestic and family violence is a pervasive social problem, impacting individuals, families and the entire community.
Community attitudes on violence against women
This measure shows how the community feels about violence against women. Domestic, family and sexual violence has far-reaching impacts on individuals, families and our entire community.
Community attitudes help explain and influence women’s safety.
This measure is important because it tracks changes in attitudes that play a role in violence against women.
From 2017 to 2021, there was a significant increase in the proportion of Canberrans who rejected domestic and sexual violence including sexual assault and harassment. In 2021, compared to the rest of Australia, the ACT had significantly higher rejection of domestic violence and sexual violence, including sexual assault and sexual harassment, and significantly lower mistrust in women’s reports of violence.
As of February 2026, there was no new data available for this measure.
The National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women Survey (NCAS) is a periodic, representative survey of the Australian population that is conducted every four years.
Data source
Chart description
Line graph of community rejection of violence against women in the ACT, in 4-year intervals from 2013 to 2021. In 2020, the ACT scored 70 compared to 67 in 2017.
Technical notes
The sample consisted of 19,100 Australians aged 16 years or over, who were interviewed via mobile telephone between 23 February and 18 July 2021. The sampling approach largely involved random digit dialling (RDD) of mobile telephones, which was supplemented or “topped up” with listed mobile telephones. 81% of the interviews were achieved via RDD mobiles. The response rate was 11%. The Australian sample included a minimum of 1,000 respondents from each jurisdiction. This minimum criterion ensured sufficient respondents from each jurisdiction to allow jurisdictional-level analysis (as well as national analysis). A full RDD sample would have resulted in too few respondents for reliable reporting on the smaller-population jurisdictions (i.e. the ACT, the NT and Tasmania). Thus, to meet the minimum criterion of 1,000 respondents, the smaller-population jurisdictions were deliberately “oversampled” compared to their share of the Australian population.
Prevalence of domestic, family and sexual violence
This measure tells us how many women aged 18 years and over living in the ACT have experienced physical, sexual, emotional and economic violence since the age of 15.
Out of the nine different types of violence reported, sexual harassment, physical violence, intimate partner or family member violence, and sexual violence are the most prevalent.
In 2022, the most recent available data, compared to the national averages, women in the ACT reported higher rates of:
- sexual harassment (58.9% in ACT vs 52.9% nationally)
- sexual violence (25.1% in the ACT vs 22.2% nationally).
However, compared to the national averages, women in the ACT reported lower rates of:
- cohabitating partner emotional abuse (21.3% in the ACT vs 22.9% nationally)
- cohabiting partner violence (15.1% in the ACT vs 16.9% nationally).
This is a new measure on the dashboard. Data for this measure is collected by the ABS as part of the Personal Safety Survey every four years. Data from the 2025-2026 Personal Safety Survey is expected to be released in 2027.
