Women in Australia
2004

CONTENTS	1. Population Characteristics	4. Working Life	7. Management and Decision Making
	2. Family and Living Arrangements	5. Economic Resources	8. Crime and Safety
GLOSSARY	3. Health	6. Education and Training	9. Selected Population Groups

Chapter 8. Crime and Safety

Women in Prison

In June 2003 there were 1,594 female prisoners (seven per cent of the total prison population) and 21,961 male prisoners (93 per cent of the total prisoner population).¹

The publication Prisoners in Australia notes that:

While males were 14 times more likely than females to be in prison, the female prisoner population has increased at a faster rate than the male prisoner population. Between 1993 and 2003, the female prisoner population has increased by 110% in comparison to a 45 per cent increase in the male prisoner population.²

Both female and male prisoners had high rates of recidivism, with at least 49 per cent of female prisoners and 58 per cent of male prisoners known to have been previously imprisoned.³

Graph 8.1 Most Serious Offence/Charge by Sex, 2003

Recorded Victims of Crime

In 2002, fewer women than men were the victims of crimes that were reported to the police. However, women accounted for 81 per cent of victims of sexual assault and 62 per cent of kidnap and abduction victims. According to reported crime statistics, women were less likely than men to be victims of robbery and assault at 28 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. The majority of sexual assault victims were under 20 years of age (62 per cent of females and 70 per cent of males). Female victims of homicide were much more likely to have been killed by a family member in 2001 than men at 45 per cent compared to 15 per cent of male homicide victims.⁴

Graph 8.2 Recorded Crime - Female Victims, 2001 and 2002

Women and Family Violence and The Women's Safety Survey, 1996

Much of the data available on violence, and sexual assault in Australia in this chapter comes from the Women's Safety Australia Survey, conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996.

The ABS will be conducting a Personal Safety Survey in 2005, which will be largely a repeat of the Women's Safety Survey, but will include a men's sample in addition to the women's sample.

The aims of the 1996 Survey were described by the ABS as follows:

The Women's Safety Survey's primary focus is the measurement of physical and sexual violence. While limited in focus to women's experience of violence, as opposed to that of children and men or other specific groups known to be at risk of violence, the survey collected information about experiences of violence, perpetrated by both men and women. As well as examining incidents of violence against women, the survey also collected information on abuse, harassment, and women's feelings of safety within the home and the community.⁵

Some key findings of the Survey were:

• 23 per cent of women who were currently or had been in a previous married or defacto relationship experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a partner.
• Of women who experienced violence from a previous partner, over two-thirds (68 per cent) had children in their care during the relationship. Almost all of these women said that the children had witnessed the violence.
• Of women who experienced violence by a previous partner, 42 per cent experienced violence during a pregnancy. Twenty per cent experienced the violence for the first time while they were pregnant.
• Younger women were found to be more at risk than older women, with seven per cent of women aged 18-24 experiencing one or more incidents of violence from a current partner in the 12 months prior to the Survey, compared to one per cent of women aged 55 and over.⁶

Victims of Sexual and All Assault

In 1996, around six per cent of women aged 18 years and over reported that they had experienced physical violence or sexual assault by a male during the previous 12 months. Thirty per cent of all women aged 18 and over reported experiencing some type of violence in the previous 20 years. In relation to the most recent incident of physical violence experienced, about 85 per cent of the perpetrators were known to the victim. About 21 per cent of the women reported the violence to the police and 19 per cent sought professional help. Where the incident involved sexual assault, only one in ten had reported it. Furthermore, only about one in five of these women had sought professional help.⁷

Graph 8.3 Female Victims of Sexual Assault by Age Group, 2002*

Violence and Young Women

In 2000, the second wave of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) was conducted, re-interviewing 10,000 young women who were aged between 22 and 27 and who formed the young women's age cohort of the survey (and who were aged 18 to 23 when first surveyed in 1996). Amongst other issues, the Study has a component which focuses on experiences of violence. For 2000, using four mutually exclusive population groups: women who experienced no violence, recent non-partner violence, ex-partner violence, and current partner violence; the survey found that of the young women's cohort:

• five per cent had experienced recent (in past 12 months) physical or sexual violence, from people other than present or past partners;
• six per cent had experienced previous partner violence (but not in the past year);
• five per cent had experienced recent physical or sexual violence from their partner; and
• the remainder of the survey participants (82 per cent) had experienced no violence.^*9

Taft, Watson and Lee note that overall 24 per cent of women reported violence in Survey 1 (the first wave conducted in 1996) and while:

...the majority of women remained in the same categories, more women freed themselves of violence (13.6%) than became abused by 2000.¹⁰

The figures relating to experience of violence were somewhat lower for the young women's age cohort in 2000. Significantly, some of the women who had experienced abuse in 1996 had dropped out of the survey by 2000.¹¹

Violence and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women

For a multitude of reasons, not least of which has been the breakdown of traditional family structures, violence is a large issue for many Indigenous families and communities.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare joint publication, The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, in discussing Indigenous hospitalisation rates notes that:

... hospitalisations that are attributed to 'Assault' are at a rate eight times higher for Indigenous males and 28 times higher for Indigenous females, compared with non-Indigenous males and females respectively.¹²

An investigation by Murray on domestic violence found that while Indigenous people accounted for only three per cent of Western Australia's population, Indigenous women accounted for almost one-third of the state's total women's refuge population.¹³

In addition, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women comprise 15 per cent of femicide victims, although people of Indigenous origin are just over two per cent of the Australian population.¹⁴

Indigenous women's concern about domestic violence and sexual abuse in their communities have led to reports such as the Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Task Force on Violence being presented to Government.¹⁵

Violence and the Cost to Health

In 1996, the Women's Safety Survey found that 18 per cent of women who had experienced physical assault by a man and 12 per cent who had experienced sexual assault had taken time off work in the 12 months after the incident.¹⁶

Violent relationships can have serious repercussions for women's health. According to findings from the second survey of the young cohort of the ALSWH:

Experience of violence, particularly violence by partners was associated with significantly poorer reproductive and pregnancy outcomes and reproductive risks, as well as with a range of demographic factors, poor mental and physical health, unhealthy behaviours such as drinking and smoking and low social support. As women who experienced partner violence separate and are more removed from the violence, some aspects of their physical health and overall mental health improves.¹⁷

The [survey] data demonstrate that partner violence in particular is associated with a worrying level of health problems, many of which have far-reaching implications for these women's health and the health of their children.¹⁸

Amongst other findings on the detrimental effect violence has on those women who have experienced it, the survey found when comparing women's general health against women who had not experienced violence that abused women had:

• Worse general physical and mental health
• Higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation
• Higher rates of problematic or disordered eating
• Higher rates of smoking and heavy alcohol use
• Higher rates of sleeping difficulty.¹⁹

---

Footnotes

1 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2004, Prisoners in Australia, 2003, (Cat. No. 4517.0), Canberra.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002, Recorded Crime - Australia 2001, (Cat. No. 4510.0), Canberra.
5 Australian Bureau of Statistics 1996, Women's Safety Australia 1996, (Cat. No. 4128.0), Canberra.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Taft, A., Watson, L., Lee, C. 2003, Violence Against Young Australian Women and Reproductive Health: Final Report to the Office of the Status of Women - Cross Sectional and Transitional Analyses of Surveys 1 and 2, younger cohort, Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, Centre for the Study of Mothers' and Children's Health, La Trobe University and Schools of Psychology and Population Health, University of Queensland, Women's Health Australia.
* Figures do not add up to one hundred due to rounding.
9 above n 8.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003, The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 2003, (Cat. No. 4704.0), Canberra.
13 Murray, S. 2002, More than Refuge: Changing Responses to Domestic Violence, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, Western Australia.
14 Mouzos, J. 1999, Research and Public Policy Series No. 18 - Femicide: The Killing of Women in Australia 1989-1998, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
15 Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development 1999, Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Task Force on Violence, Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development, Brisbane.
16 Australian Bureau of Statistics 1996, Women's Safety Australia 1996,(Cat. No. 4128.0), Canberra.
17 Taft, A., Watson, L., Lee, C. 2003, above n 8.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.

---

Table 8.1 Recorded Crime, 2001 and 2002

Table 8.2 Experience of Violence in the Last 20 years, 1996^(a)

Table 8.3 Female Victims of Sexual Assault in the 12 Months Prior to the Survey