Why the government's violence against women and girls target includes men, but not girls

Almost two in five victims of what the government defines as violence against women and girls are neither women nor girls, but adult men.

The government describes violence against women and girls (VAWG) as a "national emergency" and one of their central promises has been that they would halve it within a decade.

Today, 18 months in to their time in power, we know what they mean by that. As part of a strategy labelled Freedom From Violence and Abuse, the Home Office has been working alongside the Office for National Statistics to define a new measure of VAWG.

Among the crimes it says are included in the definition of VAWG are: domestic abuse, stalking, sexual violence, including rape and other sexual offences, sexual harassment, 'honour'-based abuse, female genital mutilation, online and technology-facilitated abuse, fatal VAWG such as domestic homicides, sexual exploitation and spiking.

But in terms of the numbers of offences committed, the majority of VAWG crimes involve either sexual abuse, domestic abuse or stalking - some 5.1 million victims in the year ending March 2025, according to government figures.

The government's strategy includes a range of educational and preventative measures aimed at supporting men and boys, in a bid to reduce the number of crimes of those types women and girls experience.

That will include training for teachers to spot early signs of misogyny in boys and steer them away from it.

It also pledges money for victims, although it's unclear how much of that is new funding and how much is from programmes already in place.

Domestic abuse charity Woman's Trust told Sky News they welcome the approach, but that the plans as they stand "lack both ambition and investment."

It's also unclear how the help for victims will be targeted.

Out of those 5.1 million victims, representing more than one in ten adults in England and Wales, some two million are men, and it doesn't track the experience of under-16s.

The fact that such a high proportion of men were included in the measure was described as "counter-intuitive" by the Police Foundation. But it added that it would have been controversial to announce a policy that ignored male survivors of sexual crimes.

Niki Scordi, Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Woman's Trust, told Sky News that although the fight against VAWG has always been led by women, they recognise that the issues also affect men.

"Many women's charities also support male victims of these sorts of crimes, so it is appropriate that the government are also trying to support all victims as well. Many of the perpetrators of male abuse are also men, so efforts to educate and prevent abuse will help victims of all genders."

Read more:
'National emergency' of violence against women and girls
Male survivors 'ignored' as abuse is classified 'violence against women'
Teachers to be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys

James McKinnon, a spokesperson for Survivors UK which supports male and non-binary victims of sexual abuse, told Sky News "it is understandable and right that strategies for tackling sexual violence prioritise women and girls since they clearly account for the majority of victims."

He added: "That male victims of sexual violence are parcelled in under VAWG does in effect mean that supporting male survivors is seen as an afterthought and their experiences not as important."

"This presents a self-perpetuating problem because men are less likely to report being a victim of rape, sexually assaulted or abused to the police, or in some cases even recognise their experiences as abuse."

Is violence against women and girls growing?

The figures the government is using come from the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW), using survey responses from about 34,000 households selected at random each year.

It is generally considered a better measure for recording people's experiences of crime than police-recorded data because it is not affected by changes in police recording practices, the introduction of new offences, or victims not wanting to report their crime for any reason.

The last factor is particularly relevant for VAWG offences as we know that many domestic or sexual abuse victims in particular find it difficult to report their experiences to police.

The CSEW data suggests that number of sexual assault victims has gone up and down a bit over the last twenty years, but overall it's not changed much. Across all genders, 2.36% of people aged 16 or over were sexual assault victims in 2024/25. That's the same as the average from 2004 to 2023.

The government will be hoping that its new strategy can start moving that line more consistently in the right direction.

The most common sexual assault experience in 2024/25 was unwanted sexual touching, experienced by 3.6% of women and 0.6% of men aged 16 or over. The most serious offence of rape or attempted rape was experienced by 0.4% of women and 0.1% of men last year.

There was a significant fall in the number of over-15s that say they experienced stalking through the 2010s. It fell by almost half between 2004 and 2010. The figures have flat-lined since then, however.

There was actually a rise in female victims between 2010 and 2022, which has started to come back down again in the last few years.

Unfortunately, the definitions of domestic abuse changed recently, meaning we don't have comparable data for such a long time period. The percentage of over-15s affected by it fell slightly over the last year, from 8.0% to 7.8%.

The most common form was emotional abuse by a partner, experienced by 4.8% of women and 3.2% of men aged 16 or over. Other significant partner-on-partner offences included economic abuse, threats and stalking.

Abuse by family members, another part of the VAWG strategy, was experienced by about 2.7% of over-15s. Ms Scordi from Woman's Trust told us that children - who are not represented in the crime survey figures - are particularly at risk from this.

A report published by the National Audit Office earlier this year, whose statistics were also used by a House of Commons library report on the same topic, pointed out that the number of rape and sexual offences recorded by police grew by 264% between 2009/10 and 2023/24.

The ONS, however, says that police recorded sexual offences are not a good indicator of trends over time.

Girls not included

One significant criticism of the data is the fact that under-16s are not included in the CSEW. This means it's not possible to measure the government's efforts to protect "girls".

Before the government confirmed that this would be their approach, the Police Foundation told Sky News that excluding under-16s would be "a glaring omission".

Following up after the announcement today, Ruth Halkon, a researcher at the Police Foundation, said that there isn't currently much reliable crime data available on girls, but that it would not be impossible to start getting the data, as some police forces like Gloucestershire had done.

Ms Halkon said that doing so would be "expensive and time-consuming" but that getting hold of that important information would be a good use of time and money.

The Home Office told Sky News "children and girls under 16 who experience sexual abuse and exploitation are considered throughout the strategy, with specific commitments aimed at tackling these appalling crimes".

Funding questions

Another criticism is the amount of money pledged to the various policies. Ms Scordi told us that it's currently unclear how much of the funding is new and how much is from either existing projects or ones that were cancelled recently.

For example, £2m has been put towards a specialist police unit dedicated to investigating sexual violence. Ms Scordi says this replaces a team that was closed down a few years ago, but it now has a narrower remit because the old team was also empowered to investigate both domestic and sexual abuse.

She added that £500m announced by Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to support housing for domestic abuse victims has already been in place since 2022. And that the additional £500m to support victims in other ways replaces services previously offered by local authorities.

Ms Scordi said that the £5m announced to train health workers to recognise signs of domestic abuse is strengthening a service that is already in place. And it's a similar story with the £20m allocated to train teachers to recognise either signs of abuse or developing misogyny.

Ms Halkon from the Police Foundation also said that the definitions used for things like domestic abuse were also potentially too broad, which makes it harder to measure whether the strategy is achieving its targets.

She welcomed however the fact that the strategy supports programmes that have already been proven to help in pilot schemes, and that the approach was cross-departmental - involving work in schools and healthcare settings, not just criminal justice.

Ms Halkon added that other issues like social media safeguarding for young people and the courts backlog also need to be addressed in order to prevent VAWG and improve outcomes for victims.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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